Case Mod - In Progress Cosmos Cruizer - Final Pics!

Adding another color would be cool, but I want to keep it monochromatic. The case will be painted in Atomic Orange, as will the shrouds. And there will be a fade at the base of the flames.

 

So while I continue on the flame grill bending spree, here are a few other pieces I made up.

The EK reservoir comes with an acrylic insert with their logo, but it seemed kind of piddly inside this long tube res.


So I designed a custom insert more appropriate to this case and size of the res...


Installed...




Also made a cover for the PSU. Another simple 4-piece box with some holes in the top for cabling.


Glued, sanded, and in place...


No fasteners required! Some double-stick tape should be enough to hold it in place, along with the cables going through the holes up top.


The large holes are for the 24pin and 6pin PCI cables, while the smaller holes are positioned over the 12v power and molex cables. I'll explain my cabling scheme in more detail a bit later when I have more to show.
:wink:

 

Bod you do make it hard to reply to your updates, especial ones like your 3D flame grill, not sound like a character from an early 90’s TV show… Why fight it?

That grill is awesome.

 

look good!

 

Quite fitting phrase for a grill such as this.

Thanks r104.


Small update: Yet another mounting piece I designed and had laser-cut...

This part will be for mounting the Crucial SSD's on the back of the fiberglass panel, next to the EK res.



All pieces glued together, with the drives set in place. "Cosmos Cruizer" logo cutout in the center will have UV orange behind it.


Soon I will show how this piece will be mounted to the fiberglass panel...

 

Finished heat-bending all the flame grills over the weekend.

Here's one of the shrouds with the grills in place. Haven't glued them in yet.


Placed both shrouds on the 240mm rad for a look-see...


Other side...




I also made a flame grill for the back panel..


The idea is to have these grills integrated into the shrouds/panel so there will be no seams. Should look pretty cool after everything's painted.

 

wow those flames look SICK !

 

Been doing a lot of little piddly things over the last week, including some wiring, more sanding, radiator tab mounting, and remaking the rear IO panel trim piece. Yep, once again I have to re-do something I already did. This time, due to spacial concerns, I had to revise the port positioning, which meant cutting a whole new trim piece. :x

But enough of that, let's show something I did get accomplished...

I posted earlier about the SSD mounting system I came up with...




Here is the bracketry that will hold the mount to the fiberglass panel. I'm using flush-mount alan socket screws from the other side that screw into the threaded brackets.


I sanded down the mounting piece, as it will be painted to match the case.


The SSD drives are fastened on utilizing their top-face mounting holes.




A look from underneath shows the mounting screws for the SSD's.


The whole mounting assembly is screwed to the brackets via two flush mount screws on each side.




The cutout lettering in the center will have a UV orange backing, and it will be lit from inside.

Now back to the cabling debacle...

 

It's looking good and I'm looking forward for the next update

 

Nossa, fiquei de boca aberta, parabéns, estou acompanhando ..

 

great idea with the flames

 

Thanks a lot guys. I'm hoping I can at least get 8 solid hours in the garage this weekend so I can make some notable progress...

 

Awesome flames.

Really nice progress again.

 

Thanks Wayne.

Getting all the cable routing sorted. I ran into an issue involving the cables from the power supply and the IO port cables. It seems they both want to occupy the same space. Of course I brought this on myself back when I relocated the power supply and mounted it vertically, then positioned the IO port where I thought it looked the best on the back panel, which just happened to be directly above the PSU. So now I get to figure out a way to make it work, while still looking decent.

Well, first thing I did was simplify the IO port. There were just too many things to deal with. Of course, removing things that had corresponding holes in the IO plate meant that I had to make another one with less holes. I'll show a before/after shot of the face plates later.

One of the things I omitted from the IO plate was the psu's power plug. It has a lot of wiring and electrical do-dads stuck to it that I just don't have room for. So I re-relocated it...

The power plug should be as low as possible on the back of the case anyway, so I found a suitable spot to flush-mount it into the back of the side panel.


After tracing the plug onto the panel, I cut it out and worked the edges until the plug fit nice and snug.


Then I cut a corresponding hole in the frame so all the attachments clear.


Now there's room for everything. And I can easily mount the grounding wire to the frame.


Fast forward past all the gluing, drying, bondoing, sanding, and priming...






Next up I'll show the rest of the IO cabling and the simplified plate.

 

Nice detail. Clever solution.

 

Not much progress over the Easter weekend since I was out of town, but here are a few pics of the cabling and new IO plate...

I got these short USB 3.0 extension cables to run from the motherboard to the back panel. But one end must be modified into an angled plug.


So the rubber casing was stripped away, exposing the wax underneath...


using my heat gun, the wax is easily melted, and becomes clear.


Then I just scraped most of it off the wiring so I could bend the USB port over creating my angle plug.


I proceeded to apply the same treatment to the other 3 USB cables, as well as two HDMI cables, and hot-glued them into place behind the back panel. Here you can also see the two DVI cables which were stripped of their gigantic white casings, and the back of the PSU power switch (top left) with extended wiring. Also hidden behind the usb cables is the ethernet adapter. I know this doesn't look pretty, but it will be all covered up in the end.


And here is what hopefully will be the final IO plate.


What the heck is going on here?? SSD watercooling?

 

Made some good headway on the PSU wiring yesterday. This being an automotive/hotrod theme, I couldn't just do normal sleeving and be ok with it. I had to go with the theme and run simulated brake lines from the PSU for all 12v accessories and motherboard power.

Using the same technique as I did with the 1/2" stainless tubing, I made templates out of soldering wire and bent the 1/4" aluminum tubing to match. These runs will carry the SATA power cables to the SSD's.


I employed 90° compression fittings to transition from the tubing into the SSD mount.


On the other end, the tubes simply fit into the PSU cover where the cables plug in. The next set of tubes will provide power for the fan controller and LCD screen on the front bezel. The tubes drop down to the floor where the wires will continue hidden underneath to the front.


This pair runs power to the led strips that will run around the inside of the frame.


These tubes are for the dual 8pin CPU power cables. Each tube will carry 4 wires, hence the need for the slightly larger 5/16" tubing. Again, 90° compression fittings are used to bring the cables through the fiberglass panel to the motherboard.


Here's an overall shot of the PSU cover with all brake line tubing installed. The open holes on the right are extras. I was going to do one more set for the pumps, but they are so close to the PSU, I will just run the wires under the floor.


Next up is the main ATX 24pin and PCI-E cables. But these won't be run in aluminum tubing, nor will they be sleeved. To give you a clue, hotrods typically have 8 cylinder engines in them, and you can see there are 8 large holes in the PSU cover... :wink:

 

I'll be curious to see how you pull the cables through those pipes...

 

Shouldn't be too difficult. Each 1/4" tube will carry two wires, so it will be easy to thread them through. I will run one wire first, then tape the second wire to the first and just pull. Once through, I'll cut to length and put the connectors on.

 

The piping looks great.

Sadly my first thought upon reading your above comment was, did he do his conduit fill and derate calculations? I guess I cannot forget about work even on the weekends. sigh