Case Mod - In Progress Frozen Throne - [COMPLETED]

ToddK · 8 Nov 2015

Hi all, back again with another mod project. This one called "Frozen Throne" inspired by the Lich King trailer. My son had an idea for a castle themed mod, so here's what we're working on.

PARTS LIST:

FX-9590 4.7Ghz Eight Core CPU

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 Motherboard

Corsair Hydro H100i Cooler

Thermaltake Smart 750W

8 GB Kingston HyperX Fury Memory

AData Premier Pro SP900 128 GB SSD

2x Seagate 1TB 7200 for Raid 1

Crossfire Sapphire Dual-X R9 290 GPU

Ancient Antec broken nasty old case

Many thanks to the good folks at AMD for their contributions to this project.

INSPIRATION:
So for the castle theme we did some digging around the internet. One thing we really liked was the scene in the Lich King trailer where Arthas cracks the ice. We thought that would make a pretty sweet window.

Did some design work.

Did some concept testing with some acrylic.

Then some case mockups in cardboard.

Finishing up the design stage with photoshopping of it.

ToddK · 20 Apr 2015

Some product shots.

UV acrylic and uv lighting.

ToddK · 20 Apr 2015

Per my usual modus operandi I'm gutting all of the drive bays from the case.

More bits & bobs for the drive bay graveyard.

Seriously, if this is all I'm starting with I should just start doing scratch builds...

Building out a new front and some shrouds for the case.

ToddK · 20 Apr 2015

Cutting out the holes for cable routing.

And chopping up the door for the feature window.

Have to fill in the space for the old door handle too.

Decent start.

Mockingbird · 20 Apr 2015

This has definite potential!

I'm intrigued by a laid-flat case which can't have anything put on top - is there a plan for where it'll go?

ToddK · 20 Apr 2015

It's just going on top of a desk. This is an older case, so it's not quite the monster size some cases are today. In fact, I have an Air 540 which is a cube shaped case which takes up about the same amount of desk space.

Mockingbird · 20 Apr 2015

Fair enough!

I wonder if any companies make WoW-themed miniatures in the right scale...

ToddK · 20 Apr 2015

Yeah, we've thought about that a bit. We were considering just having a half sword sticking out. I'm thinking I may even just sculpt a Lich King to sit on top of it.

ToddK · 21 Apr 2015

Not too bad. The hole isn't quite invisible yet, but a little more priming and sanding should help. And once the black paint goes on we should be good to go.

ToddK · 26 Apr 2015

Took a screenshot of the Lich King trailer to use for designing the window crack.

Did some tracing in Flash.

And hid the image layer for printing.

Centered under the acrylic and traced that with a box cutter.

Then checked the effect with the darkside UV lights. Lights up nicely. Have some buffing to do on the acrylic itself, but otherwise is coming along nicely.

And with the leftover UV acrylic cut out some custom backplates. Design TBD.

Wasn't totally happy with the filler work on the door hole, so got some different filler and went at it again. You know you have it right when you forget for a moment which side you filled in.

Threw the window back in for a few shots.

Hopefully get some work done on the external facade today.

ToddK · 10 May 2015

Picked up some supplies from MNPCtech.com. Grommets & templates.

Getting the shroud prepped for some fans.

And a custom fan grill from acrylic.

And getting a little creative.

ToddK · 10 May 2015

Getting the panels prepped.

Using the screw caps to provide easy access to the wiring under the shroud.

Slowly but surely coming along.

ToddK · 11 May 2015

Did some work this weekend on a design element for the fan grill.

Traced out a funky design from online using flash for it's vector drawing.

Put it in multiple layers to add some depth to the design.

And some acrylic, a set of hand files and a whole bunch of patience later.

Still some clean up and painting to do on it. Should work out well.