Case Mod - In Progress der_george - Fear IT! (Höllenmaschine Casemodding Contest)

Welcome to my Worklog of my entry for the Höllenmaschine Casemodding Competition by the PC-Welt - a german magazine for hardware - Translated the competition would be called something like hells machine casemodding competition:

I have named my project "Fear IT!" - like Fear - well yes.. the fear we all have and "IT" - the stuff we work with every day.

The cases have now finally arrived - nearly three weeks late... Xilence promised to send the cases using express shipping - they did - but three weeks later. Cases? - Yes plural! Everyone gets to cases to modify. I will only need one case - not even most of one - but now I have the luxury of being able to mess something up and still have spares.

Here a picture of an unpacked case - it is huge!



For size - a bavarian beer, 50 pack of recordable discs and a creditcard size bit of plastic (german driverslicence). Just to let you know how huge it is.

Because Xilence made such a fuss sending out all the stuff (they were supposed to send us the PSU as well) Enermax jumped in and sent us some (much better) PSUs and some Fans. Enermax managed it in 2 days - thats what I call service! The 1.5kW one is a bit overpowered for our machine for normal use - but for a hells machine just right - need the best of the best.



A huge thanks goes out to Enermax for the quick and uncomplicated support!



Here the unpacked case - and for size the bottle of beer. The feet are still missing, but I am not going to screw tem onto the case because I don't need them and have to screw them back off. My first Impression: Huge, really heavy, crappy build quality, but looks easy to take apart.

The case is so huge that I have to stand on the opposite side of my room to take a picture of it - it is the first case I would need a wideangle lens for...

Then I started to take it all apart.



In the next picture I had taken everything off that you can get rid of just using a screwdriver - well that is what I thought wenn I took the picture. If you look more closely you will see that I forgot to unscrew the PCI-slot bezels.



Here is the heap of stuff I will no longer need.



This is how I had to get rid of the stuff I couldn't unscrew:



There were still more that enough rivets to fill a whole drill. (and a few more). During the unriveting of the case you notice that hte guys and girls in the production didn't put much love into it. Most of the rivets havent been tightend properly and are loose. It was the first time that I had any problems with any rivets, because wenn you stick your drill in the middle zu drill them out they just happily spin around in the hole.

A few rivets later I had completed my first goal:



This here will be the main frame for my mod - from now on it will grow again.There is still a lot to do!

Not much more will happen this week, because I have to put the free time I have into organising the Livemodding Workshop and Showmodding for the Make Munich Faire. And I have to polish up my mods I am taking with me. Next week I will hopefully have more to show you.

Anyone going to Make-Munich? If so check out the We-Mod-It.com stand and vote for your favorite case in the Make Munich Modding Masters. Would be nice to see some Forum faces there!

So long :0)

 

Ooohh another one going to be watching this

 

thanks

As I promised I have got my first drawings and information to my project.

The shape of my case is inspired by shapes in comics and should suggest a strong and fast PC.



Now I will continue with my planning. One thing is for sure only the best of the best will be used. For cooling I am going for a custom watercooling loop and not one of these AIO-things or aircooling – just the best.
I not 100% sure yet, but I am probably going to go use a quad rad. I know what CPU-cooler I’m going to use – only the best – so Phobya UC-1 Extreme.
So long :0)

 

The next step has been taken - "hells cooling" has been ordered! Feeling like a liitle child at the moment - so happy!



For all who are interested - here the link to the shopping basket: http://www.aquatuning.de/shopping_cart.php/bkey/544f0f059b438d968cd7cf5282b68944

Can't wait for it to arrive - luckly Aquatuning is usualy quick when it comes to shipping - so hopefully I don't have to wait to long. :0)
But knowing my luck murphey will have his fun in making something go wrong.

In my "Hellsmachine" there should then be a hell of a cooling loop that also fits right into my concept. Oooh I just can't wait - way to happy at the moment.

So now I can carry on planning!

So long :0)

 

Got a tiny Update for you guys.. well it's not really an Update as such.. Just a happy guy (more like a child really) and his news toys.

My Aquatuning delivery has arrived! I really really hoped that it yould come quickly but next day - more than I was hoping for - thats what I call quick - but good for me. Now I can start and do something and not have to bite my nails waiting for my parcel to come.



Well, it was not exactly your nomal parcel (not mine anyway) more lieke a huge shipment. Oh yeah - everything in this big boy has to fit into this bit of frame. Sound like a lot of fun to me.

So long :0)

 

I've been further taking the case apart and made a horrible discovery:



Urgh. The guys and girls in the factory really did not put much love into making this case.. not only are most of the rivets loose this one here was not even cut properly.

So long :0)

 

I took a picture of the case a a whole - so you can see where this especially bad rivit is. In the bottom left corner of the left hand side panel.



Yes a lot of the others are really bad as well but this is the worst. This is where the side panel fits on and on the side looking onto the mainboard - so this is the one you have to put on and take off the most. It scrapes the inside of the sidepanel - and it's quite sharp - you could easily cut youself on it. But it does have an advantage - by pressing against the side panel it stops it wobbeling as much.

(P.S. Yes, I have cut out a few more pieces that I don't need anymore. )

And this is how I got rid of it:



On friday I got a nice little parcel from PC-Welt - big thanks to them and to the companys supporting this competition!



Then I started messing around with some of the hardware: First off all the Phobya G-Changer 480 V2 Full Copper and the Enermax T.B. Apollish. Both are really nice pieces of kit even if I do say so myself....



But in combination I find that they look even nicer.



and the 7991 type screws look really nice and clean I think.



Thanks for reading if you got this far!

So long :0)

 

I carried on with the 480 G-Changer and the Fans.

I want the system to have hell of clean cabling so I started to clean up the rad fan cables.

I started off by shortening the cable. Then I left the ends at different lengths so that I didn’t have to insulate them singly (with heat shrink) but just the whole cable as such.



Then I could solder them together. To do that I had to carefully cut away the insulation in the middle of the other cable in the area where I was going to join them. Then I could join the cables.


This is how the fans looked like when they were all joined in parallel on one connector. I’m only using the fan speed signal from the bottom fan.



Looks a lot better I think so then I tested it.




They work and are all turning equally – very nice.

Let’s start the next little piece of hardware modification:



The lovely Adata XPG DDR3 2400 - 16 GB Kit are going to get some devilishly nice Phobya RAM Cooler Extreme Perfomance Sets strapped on them.

More to come next time.

So long :0)