I've had a Thermaltake case forever, and I pretty much hated it. So I've been planning on doing something special for a long time. Well, this summer, I took the plunge, and created Darkness. I got the name from The Chappelle show. I liked the famous line: "Darkness is spreading". In a way, I was hoping to get noticed, we'll see. The origonal idea was to paint it black on the outside, and get some chroming on the interior, add some lighting, and a VooDoo quality cabling job, but as I started buying parts, etc, I went instead with a color changing paint and a regular interior(you'll see why later). So, heres the first stage (I'm about 1/2 way into the build, so I'll just post pix to get you guys up to speed). First off, the reason why I had to do without chrome: The kit set me back REALLY far, but I plan to do a lot of airbrushing, so I splurged. Hopefully, I'll get some good use out of it. Now, I had to take apart the case: After that, I started laying down the base coat for the paint job: Here you can see the blowhole I made for my watercooling kit: The base paint I used was super cheap, like $2 a can @ Kragen, worked ok, but did create some flaws int the paint. Nothing major, just small imperfections when you look at it very closely. Just as a sidenote, a 4.5" holesaw is practically perfect for making 120mm fan holes. I have a bunch of pictures of the finished paint job, but I got some pix it in progress that I wanna put up, so you'll have to wait till tomorrow. In the meanwhile, heres a teaser:
Cool looking case, I have seen a few of them before but this is the first time ive seen a Thermaltake Iwata thats going to be modded... Also when I first saw that title I thought to myself: "Darkness eh? Justin Hawkins from the chessy band THE DARKNESS?" and I got flashbacks to old videos of glam rock 70's... Quite disturbing, but thankfully it won't have any airbrushed art on it... Looks like a good case to mod, what hardware are you using?
I'm going to have a DFI ut NF4 Extreme, AMD X2 3800+, and an old 6600GT that I plan on upgrading later on in the year. I also have an old DVD burner I plan on replacing, since I couldnt get the cover off, and I wanna have it match the color of the case. Hard drives are nothing special either. Anyways, enough of specs. Heres some pix of the case after the paint job was completed. Much thanks to Primo Customs for helping me out with these. (If anyone remembers Spike in CPU magazine; this is the guy that fabricated the case). If you'd like your case to have a custom paint job, contact this guy, and he can do it. You can check out his website here. He does awesome work. Area code is 805 (Reseda, CA). As you can tell from the pics, USC and the Navy are very dear to me.
Heres what I've been doing after I got the case painted: First, I took apart and painted my mouse Then I mounted the fans. Then I wired the EL wire to the front bezel, the radiator, and feet using some Krazy Glue and a hot glue gun. Now that the case was ready, I put it all together: Then I got to working on the internals. First of all, the power for all of the EL wire. I used phono connectors and a project box I bought from Radioshack. I've actually got to leave for Active Duty soon, but its only going to last a month. During that time, I hope to get in some stuff to revamp my Asetek watercooling kit. I'll try to get some more work in before I go tho.
I noticed that you painted over the mx1000 sticker on your mouse. I know my stcker started to peel up, so you might want to check on that and remove it possibly (although that would mean another painting...) Keep up the good work, and im glad you are a fan of the REAL USC. uni of southern cali... and not uni of south carolina.
Im eager to see how all the el wire will come into play as i see you've used alot btw that project box looks nice you're planning on putting it into a drive bay I assume USC! my grandfather and my father both went there and I cant wait till i go there but i noticed you put USC in orange is that part of the theme as i see what looks like orange el wire
USC and the EL wire are both red. Im not sure why the el wire is colored orange, but I turned it on to make sure. As for the USC logo, its red as well, it must have been the lighting. Hopefully, I'll be able to post some pictures with some good lighting.
I just got back from my Naval responsibilities, and I've been working on my case, and I almost got it completely finished. Everything is done now, but the EL wire isn't working anymore. I have no idea why, so I'll prolly have to spend forever debugging that. Here's some pix on the progress. Heres the dumbest thing I've ever done: I inadvertantly created a short when I neglected to individually heat shrink the wires at a solder point. Here I am right now. Pretty much 100% done, I just gotta figure out whats wrong with my EL wire setup.
It looks jsut like the angle from the flash and the black background of the pic. I love the paint job. "Eyes old thermaltake Xaser 3" so do you live down in the Socal area or are you just a fan of our prestigious school?
i live in northridge cali, very close to you. just thought id point that out. good job reppin socal. case/paint looks good.
If you mean the door is bright and the drive bay covers are dark and other things because the flash only lit the one area. Now about socal my cousin also lives in northridge.
The paint is a color changing paint, so that's prolly why it looks like that. Although I did mess up and didn't hit the slim side part as much as I would have liked to. With the side panels on tho, you can barely even see that part so its cool. I currently attend USC and I live about 45 min away in Simi Valley. Fight on!
Looks brilliant. The only thing is that the L shaped things look like plumbing and take away the nice look. Great work otherwise!
I thought about painting the elbows, but decided against it. I won't have a side window, so as far as the inside goes, I just want a clean job to help airflow. I'll post a picture of the completed case with the sidepanels on once I'm done overclocking it.
Alright! It's finally finished! Here's some final pix of it. In case you're wondering, yes, I painted both side panels with different logos, but the way my case is going to be situated, you'll only be able to see one side at a time. I figured it'd be cool to change them out once in awhile.
