Case Mod - In Progress Gigantea-CM Elite 130 casemod-[Completed]

It's alive !!

 

I'm actually working on the pulley system to lift it to the roof during the next lightening storm. Muahahahaha!

 

More updates! I noticed that the tinting on the legs didn't really come through in the earlier pics so I grabbed a better pic. And, well, it still doesn't stand out, but I guess that's the point of fading it in, right? The tips are obviously black, and the section next to the body is orange. It came out sort of mottled from the gun, but I liked it so I kept it.



Got the back armor put on except that last red piece is supposed to be a black piece. I put it on to see if it would look ok, but I think it needs to be redone. It just doesn't work with the black body section.





This is me stealing some mod blocks out of my shop rig. Performance PC's was out but I had some I could nick and not hurt the structure. It needed to be cleaned anyways.



Those blocks let me put the nose piece and head armor on.



And, oh yeah, got the res mounted up. The lines to it are a little loop-y. I've ordered a couple of extra 90's to tighten up those runs.



Monsoon's MMRS comes with a pair of CCFL bulbs for backlighting, but I totally forgot to figure in inverters. I don't have any or an easy spot to tie into my 12v light run.



So they're out and I needed to figure out something else. I've been thinking about thicker walled reservoirs that would allow you to punch mounting holes for LED's and not kill the tube, but this res is way too thin. And there are Primochill light towers and light plugs, which I have a few, but I didn't want a wire running from the top of the res. But the other day I did see, I guess, an 'exclusive' light ring from Alphacool, which was basically a LED strip inside a round plastic housing, and that looked pretty cool. And it's just a LED strip wrapped around the res, how hard could that be. Turns out, not hard at all.



They used a much denser packed LED strip, but this strip's spacing turned out to be perfect for the coupler to also be the clamp that holds the strip in a loop and be the exact size to fit over the res. On a side note, I'm glad I ordered an extra res tube for running clear coolant because pulling the other one off the case would have been a pain.

And tossing some power to it.



Here is my finished product. I wrapped the outside of the strip with electrical tape and painted the connector black. I'll also be covering most of the connector with heatshrink so it won't really stand out.



For the redneck engineering that went into it, I think it came out awesome.



I'll have to write up a little how-to because this is a great way to light a res. And I will give Alphacool or whoever total credit, I didn't come up with the idea, but I did make it for about a $1. Plus anything with a bezel on it wouldn't have worked on the MMRS anyways because of the tension bars.

After getting that done I threw in some Mayhems Blitz to clean everything up especially since I have old blocks in there. Don't want anything growing or blocking up the system.



And she's pumping away in the workshop now, pulling all the old dye residue out.

 

So before, I had shown off the 1" red acrylic rod and the bend I put into part of it. Well, I needed two so gas torch and tape to the rescue.



For as bad of a job as I did taping them together, they came out very similar. Next was to hit them with the portaband, die grinder, mini sander, and anything else I could find to get them shaped into points.



When it was all said and done, I wound up with two canes for gnomes.



Not giving away what they're for just yet though.

I also got some 90 fittings in so I could finish the res. And since it was all cleaned and rinsed, it was time to fill it with some Mayhems X1 in blood red of course.





The 90's really helped clean up the tubing. And with the lights out, the res is eerie.



With the res done and filled, I figured it was time to see what happened when I hit the power switch. Luckily, no blue smoke!

Relatively mild mannered with the lights on.



Little peeved when the lights start going out.



With the lights out, it's time for an exorcist!







I wish the PSU LEDs were a bit brighter, but they do a pretty good job of lighting the back end.



I also grabbed a video with the lights out. This thing looks freaky!



Just a few final things to finish up now and she should be ready for final pics in no time! Thanks for following along!

 

Update time! I'm down to the finishing touches.

I'm relocating all my cables to the new back panel and this includes the power cord for the PSU, so I had to make up a short jumper out of an old power cable. After soldering it up, I went ahead and put some urethane resin around the connectors, just for a little extra protection.



After some heatshrink to pretty it up(I only had white quickset resin), I mounted it and all my other connections in the back panel.



The panel connectors are pretty bulky, but they made life easy allowing me to use generic patch cables.



And the booty all buttoned up.





Next on the list to finish up were my gnome canes, the acrylic rod that I bent and sanded into points. These are going to be Gigantea's antennae. I marked the spots on the nose piece and drilled a hole in each antennae.





I debated on lighting them with some LED's. I doubt I will since I'm planning on clear coating them to get a nice shiny finish and they won't have the crazy glow that the rest of the edge lit parts have. Plus, it's already pretty freaking bright with the lights out.





Now all that's left are a few coats of clear on a few pieces and this project is done!

 

Last update before pics, thank god!

Just finishing up a bunch of small stuff, mostly touch up.  First, the back armor is now done and all the correct color.



And I got the 2 legs I messed up touched up as well. So now we have all the banana legs!





And the antennae are cleared.  That sure beat trying to polish them!



I didn't light them, but they do pick up some of the glow from the eyes.



For a little touch of detail, I decided to do something with the CM logos that come on the front panel of the 130.  First, I dusted them with some black paint to tone them down a bit.



Then I put a pair of them on the head and tail, in about the same place they would be on the case.





I think the one on the head is a bit off, but I was standing on the table with my head in the floor joists trying to work around a shop light, so I'll straighten it up when I can actually reach it and look at it head on.  The last one was a way to fix a little pre-planning mistake.  I had thought of using pass throughs to go from the res into the body for the GPU, so I left a blank in the hex pattern.  Turns out I didn't need to, so I had a weird patch with no pattern.  Well, no more.



And that finishes the build up.







All that's left now are the final beauty shots!

Thanks for following along!

 

Incredible!

 

Thank you!

 

So the final shots. Or rather the first of them. I like these, but I wasn't feeling artsy so I didn't get any good detail shots this go around. On to the pictures!

http://insolentgnome.com/Piwigo/_da...a_800x600/Gigantea-2013-03-26_01.29.05-me.jpg























Hope you like them. I'm gonna go back and try to grab some shots of the detail work and hopefully get those up soon.

 

I went back and got a few more shots of details.  And also dust, because I just can't escape it.

























And that's the end, literally and figuratively!  Gigantea is done!

 

Since this build is in the Cooler Master World Series, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell everyone that the public voting has started and runs till the 24th of June.

But rather than give you a link that sends you to the voting page for me, I'm going to give you the landing page for the contest. Links for both the tower category and the scratch category are there.

http://mod.coolermaster.com/en-us/infohub/103

Check out all the builds, some you may have never seen before. You can vote for as many as you like, but only once per mod. So if you like all of them, vote for them all. If you only like a few of them, then only vote for those few. And if you vote for me...awww, thanks!

But get over there and vote!

 

An update for Gigantea.  Finished second place in the tower category of the Casemod World Series 2016.  Great finish for a crazy project.  Now to get it ready for PDXLAN in Portland next week.  I'll see if I can't intimidate those CaseLabs guys I'm sitting next to, LOL!  Thanks for following along everyone!