Hey guys, I just recently found an old workstation when I was cleaning up the back storage room at the shop I work in. Its an old Antec 900 and it was in pretty rough shape. It didnt have any sides and was missing a few front components like fans and drive bays and such, not a huge deal. But the second I saw the big ass fan on top, I knew I wanted to turn this into something cool. I have never done any modding on a computer case before, I am a CAD designer and prototype machinist so I have plenty of experience in making and designing parts, just never a case before. I started stripping her down and cleaning her up so I could start planning my attack. After cleaning the thick layers of dust off every square inch, I was pretty pleased with the condition it was in. My mind started racing with ideas and I started taking measurements and debating my options. As I was continuing to clean up the shop, I opened a box and BAM! Two black pieces of metal, one with a window, one without, I knew instantly what they were. Thats right, I found the sides! I hope you guys are as excited as I was about this find haha. I will be using this case for my current gaming rig I built a year or so ago, and I also wanted to use this case as a way to get into custom water loops. What better time to spend money when you didnt have to buy the case. Knowing my goal of fitting a big radiator and after taking this picture, I finally decided what I wanted to do with this case. Im going to shove the biggest radiator I can fit right into the huge opening in front, kind of like a front mount inter cooler on a car. I have a quick render of my current design idea and I would love some feed back and opinions. Im only using the SolidWorks rendering tool so it isnt the best, but this is what I have so far. I want to go with a matte black case with deep red and purple accents, with very few flashy LEDs since im not a huge fan like some of you guys are. Right now I plan on using EK-CoolStream PE 360, mostly because of my size constraints, but Ive also read plenty of great things about EKWB. I want to add 6 Noctua NF-F12 iPPC fans in a push pull config to throw all the air into the case, using a big 200mm Noctua NF-A20 to throw it all out of the top. For now, I think I will just start with cooling my CPU with this loop just to get a hang of how everything in a water loop works. Eventually I will add my GPU once I have some experience. Now i need to pick out a pump and res. I was thinking about going the pump/red combo route and I was looking into the XSPC Ion pump. I like how it looks different than a basic cylindrical res, and I like how its more compact than a 5.25 drive bay res. Do any of you have any experience with this XSPC pump? Or would anyone suggest going a different route? Well, there is still plenty of this build to figure out, but I plan on starting to order parts next week to start lighting the fire under my ass. Let me know what you guys think, as always, any input is appreciated. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for checking it out!
You will struggle to fit a 360 in there, I did a mod on a 902 a LONG time ago and only managed a 240mm with push/pull - It was that build that pushed me into more serious modding:
Ya its going to require a bit of modification to have it fit the way I want it too. I went to Micro Center yesterday and grabbed a radiator to start test fitting. I picked up an EK-CoolStream PE 360 Triple for about 70 bucks on sale. It seems to fit alright, I just need to cut the bottom frame piece a little to be able to push it to the front a bit more. I'm trying to make the fans in front, dead flush with the plastic front piece. You can see the area I marked to cut in these pictures. I might end up cutting the top of the hard drive cage out as well, to make more room for wire routing and possibly lifting the radiator up a bit. Would you recommend the pump/res combo you used in that red build? I'm trying to pick one out now.
I posted a guide when I did this, it was my very first mod back in like 2013/14 so be nice haha - I reposted it on overclock where the pictures seem to have saved as photobucket is pretty crap. http://www.overclock.net/t/1535604/antec-902-mod-for-240-radiator-and-wc-loop As for the pump/combo - if I was to start again I would go with an alphacool reservoir and separate pump - I feel they give a simpler look. Keep in mind, you're gonna struggle for space, as you can see if you look at thread, it's pretty cramped in the end This is my current build, I definitely got better after that haha!
