After at least two years of complete silence from my side, it's time to get back into casemodding once again. The case which the mod is going to based on, is Phanteks Enthoo Primo, a one-hell-of-a-beast case, suitable for high performance water cooling. I don't do 3D sketches of how my mod is going to be, as most of you guys are doing. I'm more into doing the whole thing as the project goes, at least that is how i work the best. Here is some list of what the overall theme is going to be, and what kind of hardware there is going into it: Color theme: Black, White and Blue Hardware: Motherboard: MSI Z68A-GD80 G3 CPU: Intel i5 2500K @ 4.2 - 4.4 GHz Memory: 4 x 4GB @ 1600 MHz (Might be changed) GFX: Gigabyte HD7870 OC (Looking for another one, for a CrossFire setup) OS Disk: 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS (Either I'm going to buy a 240GB og getting another 120GB, for raid) PSU: 1200W SilverStone Strider Gold Evolution Well, let's first take a look at the actual case. That's how it looks right from the factory, but lets get started on the modding part. I'm really eager to get it going. First off, i removed all the mesh, and there is a lot of that on this case. Sanded it, primed it, and painted it white. Looks quite good, better than i had expected. As i don't own any optical drives, I'm going to remove the bottom of the 5.25" cage, to get more room for the upcoming water cooling, and some other stuff. The 5.25" cage is attached to the actual case with both screws and rivets, so firstly i removed all the rivets, and drilled the holes a bit larger, and cut a 4mm thread into the holes, so i don't have to rivet it together once again. That's it, for the first update, and thanks for peeking. And also, thanks a lot to my sponsors, for letting me do this, and making it all possible.
Just a quick update on the process so far. You've seen that i've painted the most of the mesh, but now it's time to see how it really looks, attached to the case again. I really like how it looks together with the black case, and i really think it makes the case shine even more, with the white mesh. I've also got another sponsor on the project, and it's AKASA. A big thank you to AKASA, for their help! They have been so lovely to sent me 3 x Vegas LED Strips in white, and 3 x in blue. They've also sent me their FX.SIX fan controller, which can control both the standard 3-pin fans, but also 4-pins PWM fans. The faceplate of the fan controller is going to be painted white, just as the mesh, and I'm also going to paint the mesh on faceplate's for the 5.25" drives, and as you might have guessed they are also going to be white. But for now, i've only disassembled the fan controller, getting it ready for primer and paint.
It's been a while since my last update, but been having some long days at work, 54 hours last week, so I've been pretty wasted once i got off from work. B) But, now I've got some time off during the Easter, and got some things done. I've also got one more sponsor on my project! Please welcome BitFenix. Thanks to BitFenix for helping me out with this huge project! They've been so generous to sent me 8 x 120mm Spectre Pro PWM (White), 4 x 140mm Spectre Pro PWM (White), and a lot of their Alchemy sleeved cables. I actually got two of each cables, one in white and one in blue, so i could mix those two colors together, just as i wanted to. But lets take a look at the things they've sent me. A shot of all the products, which BitFenix sent me. I'm almost drooling as we speak, just from looking at the photo. As this case has soooo much mesh in it, these Spectre Pro PWM will fit perfect into it, with their neat and different design. Also found some time to shoot a picture of the LED strips, which AKASA sent me together with the fan controller. The length of the LED strips, 60cm, is just the right size for the case, and they fit snuggly around the inner sides of the case. Yummi yummi! Looking forward to putting them in, and see how they'll light up the whole case! I've got another update for you tomorrow, so hang on and thanks for looking and commenting!
As i promised, here is another update on the mod. I've been using all kinds of different sleeving tools, and almost everyone broke in the end, so this time i made my owm ones, and they can be used for ATX male/female, Molex male/female and for 3/4-pins fan connectors. The thing, which in my opinion is wrong with the sleeving tools on the market, is that the pins break if you just use a tiny bit of force, and that ends out with a looooot of anger, which isn't ideal. Now you surely wonder how i made these tools, well, it's really easy. I took an old hacksaw blade, cut two pieces out it and started shaping the pins, and for safety purposes i finished them off with two pieces of heat shrink. They work like a charm, and is a LOT easier to work with compared with the tools you can buy. The looks of them aren't that pretty, but hey, they do their job, and thats the most important thing. Remember how a 24-pin single sleeved cable always looks terrible as the cables hides between another, and it almost always looks terrible. So I've watched a lot of different methods, and ended up making some small brackets with 24 holes in them, to drag the cables through, to keep track of them and of course for a much nicer and cleaner look. The brackets are made out of 6mm lexan acrylic, cut and filed down to size and finished off with a matte look. Firstly i thought about making a small incision, so i just had to push the cables down into the bracket instead of dragging them through it, but after some thoughts i went with my first idea. I'm actually really happy with the outcome of my work, and the brackets works like a charm! Thinking of painting them white, but I'm still not sure what I'll do.
Been having a great Easter, and found some time to install almost all the BitFenix fans. I know this isn't one huge or fantastic update, but haven't got had the time to more to the mod over the Easter, but thanks anyways for checking out the mod and for the comments.
Update time once again! White carbon foil! Update time once again! Found a big piece of 3mm clear acrylic laing in my garage, and thought about using it for something rather useful. So i made a "box" to go over the 360mm radiator at the bottom of the case. Cutting it and bended it to the shape. In the start i thought about just painting the backside of the acrylic white, as it would give it the acrylic a neat shine to it, but then i fell over some white carbon foil on ebay. I think it looks neat, and it hides the rather ugly looking radiator. I'm going to put a dust filter on the bottom back-fan, to pull air in, and let the fans on the radiator push the hot air out through the bottom of the case, and with the "box", i won't f?ck up the airflow. And to those of you who have been watching my worklog, will remember that i did get a fan controller sponsored from AKASA. But but but, as the faceplate of the fan controller didn't fit that great into the front of the case, as the 5.25" blind-plates was mostly mesh, so i had to come up with another idea. After some thinking i found a piece of mesh in a box in my garage, and went with the first idea that popped up in my head, a mesh plate that would fill the whole front, where the 5.25" drives would normally go, but as i don't own one of those, it wouldn't be a problem. But as the mesh is relatively thin, i had to make something that could strengthen it a bit. I made a piece of 3mm acrylic in the same size as the mesh, marked up the holes where the controllers had to go through. Once that was done, i drilled some holes so i could attach the mesh to the acrylic, threaded them with a 4mm screw tap, and i actually found some 4mm screws in the box included with the case, i could use for it. As of now, I'm thinking of sticking some white carbon foil onto the acrylic behind the mesh in the front, but I'm not quite sure yet.
