Case Mod - In Progress Project Perennial P182

In exactly a week's time I will have been modding the same case for 5 years. >_<

I'd always intended to put my project log here on Bit-Tech, but the mod never felt complete enough to do so, or I'd end up finding something else I wanted to change first. But I've finally caved and decided to share it on here anyway.

Due to this never-ending-project, I've decided to give it a new name (it didn't really have one before), so I present to you..

... Project Perennial P182 ...​

Rather than try and fill you in on 5 years worth of tinkering all at once, I'll just bring you up to speed on what I'm currently planning and go from there.

I'm in the process of completely rebuilding my case at the minute, so it's the perfect jumping off point to do so. I'll throw in old updates where I need to bring you up to speed on something I've already done, but as it's all new here you won't know that I've done that except from maybe how fast I'm going through updates

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So here's the basis of what I'm currently doing.

I'm going to take this Alphacool NexXxos Monsta 420 radiator...



...and mount it internally into my Antec P182 case...



Needless to say the tollerances on fitting this radiator in a P182 are going to be down to 0.5mm.

In fact, before I bought the radiator I had no way of knowing 100% if it was all going to fit.

I always said I liked a challenge though!

 

Imitation Is the Sincerest Form Of Flattery

I've always liked the layout style of the Silverstone TJ07, allowing for isolating large radiators out of sight in the bottom, and a nice clean top section.

Due to the very limited mounting options for radiators in the P182 (let alone one this big) I decided I'd pay homage to the TJ07 layout style and mount my radiator in the bottom section of the case.

So out came all the bottom section rubbish, and a few additional cuts were made to swap the PSU mount from horizontal to vertical...





As luck would have it, this bottom section is exactly the right size to mount a PSU sideways, but I still needed a way to mount the radiator.

I originally planned to make a mount myself, but it didn't work out. I couldn't find a hole saw the right size and didn't trust my freehand circle cutting ability (though I still might end up doing some later ), so instead I decided to get it done properly (laser cut) out of steel.

Here's the design I made for the mount...



And here's what that got me...





While I was doing things properly, I picked up some nice hex-head screws to fix it to the radiator, and used some acousti fan mounting things to deaden the fan vibrations.



I intend to run my pump in the bottom section of the case too, and will run it on this (rubber decoupled) aluminium pump mount from my last build.

I've said before that the tolerances in this phase of the mod will be tight, you'll get an idea of that in a second, but I need to make sure my drill holes are spot on in this part of the case, and not owning a centre-punch, I ghetto'd one up...



Some nice drill guides later...



Then's time to start assembling things.

Except I didn't have a spanner for the bolt size I'd bought. >_<

So I dremmeled an old one to fit.



I hadn't really thought through how I was going to assemble the parts together for this part of the case, I think I assumed I could fix the mount to the case, then attach the radiator and fans to it afterwards.

Well I couldn't, due to the bottom case lip covering up the bottom set of mounting holes. So, I had to screw the radiator and fans to the mount first, then go through this fiddly process to secure that whole lot to the case at once. >_<



It's a hassle, but I'll not be taking the radiator off very often, so it should hopefully be fine.

Though I've realised that this radiator is so big, I'm going to have to build my case around it. >_<






Here's a quick visual on some of those tolerances for fitting this thing in the case...





And the ghetto-aligned pump mount from before?



It's bang on...

 

Caging The Monsta

From the last set of photos, it looked like the radiator might actually fit completely internal to the case. I'd already measured it by this point, and knew it wouldn't quite.

Fortunately the P182 has a drive bay door, and behind that, space is allocated for dust filters. Without using those, this actually gives me enough clearance to have the radiator protruding slightly out of the case frame.

So, lets mod it to fit!

First off, time to adjust the front panel...



And then the some more cut outs at the back for the PSU..



Then putting the case parts around the radiator, we can get a good idea of what it's going to look like...





Pretty snug, eh?

And how close was it to fitting completely inside the case?



It was almost perfect!





I've said it before, but I think it's worth saying again. I wasn't kidding about having barely millimetres of tolerance in this build!

The case mid-plate is at the exact height to rest on the radiator and PSU when installed, and with the 120mm fans centred on the 140mm radiator, I get this much clearance below them to the bottom of the case...



Snug as a bug in a rug.

 

A Second Chance

I've been able to get hold of a second P182 to replace some choice parts from my original case, as I wanted to clean up a lot of the cuts I originally made, and needed to expand others in ways I couldn't do.

I'm pretty please about being able to have a do-over, and next part under the chopping block is the motherboard tray. The old one had been through 3 motherboard revisions, so I had to expand the CPU cutout in an ugly way to still have access. This rebuild will be my 4th motherboard for this case so it'll be nice to have a clean cut-out again.







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Next up is something I'm going to let you guess at what I'm doing:









Can you tell what it is yet?

 

Got it in one.

Yeah, I'm planning on doing quite the number on the side panels. That is if I can actually work out how to separate their three layers without warping the ridiculously bendy outer aluminium layer in the process.

As a last resort, I might just end up sanding all the plastic midsection out. >_<

 

Will be watching this one.

Have this case myself.

 

T-T-Titanium

I've tended to use a T-Line to fill my WC loops in the past, mostly because I didn't have the space for a full sized reservoir and I felt T-Lines gave me a cleaner looking system. But I did sorely long for the quick-bleed ability of reservoirs.

Due to this I've been keeping my eye out for a suitable small res for a while now, but I had not found any that would fit that wasn't a bay res (something I didn't want to go for as it'd make my WC run go places I didn't want it to and would look a bit messy doing so).

However I recently found this, and decided it was perfect for my build:



It's a FrozenQ FlexTank and is both really nice looking and small enough for use in my system.

I don't know if I'd got one from a bad batch, but the mounting hardware was crap, and not even finished off properly (there should have been screw holes where there were none and the acrylic clips snapped the first time I tried to use them!). But that didn't matter as I wasn't planning on using them anyway.



I was going to just stash the FlexTank just under this bit in my case (where a FDD would have gone a long time ago) but realised that I liked the look of it too much to hide it like that, and I really could do with being able to see it to know when I need to top up the coolant.

So I had the epiphany of keeping the res stashed away there, but cutting out a hole in the case surround to see the top of the res.



So out came the trusty dremel (and safety goggles, don't forget those!) to cut up my case ...



I made the cable routing hole bigger round the back of the motherboard tray at the same time, as I wasn't going to have enough room after sleeving all my cables to fit them through the existing slot.

A res without a fill port is a very sorry res indeed, so I had to find somewhere to connect up one of the unused res ports without making a massive obvious hole somewhere.



Round the back of the case should fit nicely, but I didn't have the right sized hole saw for my fill port. So off to Maplin's I went and picked up a set of titanium coated step drill bits.



Oh my gosh, these are awesome, I can't believe I didn't have some before. They cut like butter in steel and the edge is really clean!



I mean, look at these!





Before I started cutting, I must have spent half an hour measuring the right place to drill, and it paid off. The ports will match up perfectly.





Job's a good 'un.



(Yes, I did scuff the powder coating on the back of the res >_>
But it's ok, as I'm getting it re-done with the rest of the stuff that needs powder coating in the first place)

 

This work is really awesome! Congrats!..

 

Where Does The General Keep His Soldiers? Up His Sleevies!

A mod like this won't be complete without sleeving, so I ordered some supplies...



Paracord! I'm going for the sleeveless paracord look, and while it might be a lot more effort than normal heatshrink sleeving, I think it looks a lot better.



One down, a bazilion to go! This is a slow process!



Finally after two hours, a sleeved 8pin EPS connector!



I'm very happy with how it's turned out, and I am going to like this very much!

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Got a nice little something in the post from MDPC-X too



While I'm not going to use their sleeving, I did need a decent molex crimp and replacement ATX remover to carry on. My sunbeamtech remover had left me needing to replace several crimp pins with now broken wings, and not long after the crappy remover broke entirely on me!



So with the tools to carry on again, I got stuck in with doing the rest of the sleeves.

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Had to sort out the power cable for my sound card, and I'm pretty of this custom FDD modular power cable I made for it. I know it's not in keeping with the no-heatshrink sleeving, but it's the best compromise I could come up with.



I was able to use my new toy's hot-knife attachment to melt the insides of the connectors out a bit, allowing me to tuck the heatshrink into the connector for a no-wires-visible finish.

But I'm dreading working on this nightmare:



I've already re-wired the cables so they don't cross over each other to the PSU-split connector (as much as I can), but there are 4x two-wires-on-one-connector-pin on the motherboard side which I'm going to have to find a way of hiding or cleanly sleeving, and yes, that is a wire pair twisted together for some inexplicable reason.

Wish me luck!

 

Sleeving... Done! --- Mod In A Box

I was finally was able to finish my sleeving.

Had an amazingly timed postal delivery too, I had literally just run out of paracord when the postman knocked on the door bringing me my ordered resupply!

The nightmare of a 24pin cable came out like this:



While I'm not able to get straight cables all the way down (due to the cables crossing towards the PSU side), I'll at least be able to get the motherboard side looking clean.

Rather than try and run two sleeved cables from one pin (like I had done on the PCIe PSU connectors), to keep it looking clean on the motherboard side I chose to sleeve the two wires as one, and then split them out with some heat shrink hiding the join near the PSU side:



Whatever I did here I'd have had to have a join somewhere on the cable, and this way saved me having to break out my soldering iron.

I took back everything I said about the 24 pin cable being a nightmare when it was time to do the SATA power cable though, how have I not come across people bitching about sleeving them before?!



It's not 100% perfect, but I'm sick of messing with this cable, so it's close enough!


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The rest of my case panels are off being powder coated at the minute, so hopefully this time next week I'll be able to put a case together again. In the mean time, I thought you'd get a kick out of how I'm currently running my rig.

Step 1. Cut a hole in the box.

Step 2. Put your di..., erm, PC in the box.



With external PSU mounting for heat isolation.



Oh yeah, and that blue carrier bag next to the box?

Rain-protection during transport.

 

Cool project Not a millimeter to spare

Nice work on the Rez

Agree with ya on the sata power cables

 

Not Much Of An Update

Thanks!

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Not much of an update, other than to say my case is off being powder coated, and the last little thing I did to it before I sent it was to cover a couple of holes on the back plate and epoxy on a little structural support for a corner that I'd weakened a little more than I was comfortable with.





Should have the parts back next week, and then can hopefully make some decent progress for a change!

 

Hmm...

Still waiting on getting my case back from powder coating, but I was toying around with a couple of things and ended up pondering if this would work...



Compressing it as hard as I can with my hands to simulate it being mounted doesn't seem to budge it, so I'm seriously considering doing it.


One thing's for sure it'd be worth it for the super clean look when lit up...

 

Well It Ain't Pretty, But It Works!

Ok, I was actually able to steal some time this evening and have a proper go at the LEDs on the waterblock.



This was a royal pain in the arse to solder, the smallest gaps were a nightmare.



So it's a bit of a mess, but it works, and it'll be hidden away nicely by the mount hardware anyway, so I can get away with it.

And for a little sneak peak at what's now possible, here's my first ever project video!

 

I love that RGB led effect in the CPU waterblock. Good work!

 

Guess Who's Back...

Thanks.

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Got my powder coated case parts back!!!!!one!!!!



It's going to be nice having a computer case again.

Here's the assembled structure, with the PSU and Radiator now built into the case.





Suddenly there are a lot of things that need doing again, and I'm not sure what to focus on first! >_<

 

that's what you call dedication! I like the raystorm idea. great job so far

 

Damn...