Nothing to get too excited over... But I thought I'd give reference to my reasons for cutting the holes up... near the bottom of the thread: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=82009 Near the bottom you can see a simple table I made detailing the trouble with my case cooling since my blower fan died a horible dusty hairy death. Since i've gone through 2 of these things, in 2 years, and they have a "dishonorable" 5 year warranty... I thought I'd mod up the case to use a more reliable fan: Here's me drilling relief holes in the case side = less dremel work Here's the completed holes. Used a pair of sheet metal sheers to cut the thin webbing between the holes. I consumed 4 cutting disks on the dremel trying to get closer to the line before I started hand filing everything... Seemed like a lot to me, but they were really thin disks... is that normal? Here's the fan installed and running... it's got a built in thermal resister... so it's not any louder than when the case was untouched. I know it looks a little rough... but I didn't care too much because I'm going to CompUSA tomorrow to pick up a nice 80MM grille... something cool. I'll post up another pic once I decide what to get. Total mod time was about 2 hours. I'll post up again after a little Battlefield 1942, and let ya know how the temps hold up! -TZ
The inside of this machine is a REAL snoozer... more booring than John Kerry... No need for a window. My next case will be a liquid cooled 100% plexi monster with the mainboard fully exposed, all cables and stuff will be wrapped around to the back of the baord, and stealthed BEHIND it... so all you see is the mainbaord, GPU, soundcard and liquid cooling rig. Everything else will be visible from the other side. Very nice idea I think... if I can pull it off. Once I get the grille on there, it will look like it came from the factory that way. Temps seem to be holding up pretty good. Running POVRay ratracer, with a huge demo scene, pulling off a 100% processor usage for 10 minutes straight has resulted in a 56C/132F CPU temp, and a 37C/98F case interior temp. Much better than my previous results (which were taken at IDLE) Interesting to see the CPU temps rise while the case temps barely move... I'm certain it's due to the processor usage though. -TZ
what type of files did you use to hand file it and also how sharp are the edges i ask cos i'm in the process of modding an old compaq base unit for one of my kids and its going to need a couple of blow holes but i'm slightly concerned he is going to take the top of his finger off because of rough edges on the blow holes so i want to smooth them down
I have a full set(dozen) of pencil files... they are roughly the length of a pencil. about 14cm long, 1/2 cm wide, and .2cm thick, with a VERY fine grain. Just a quick once over is all it took for me. I did the inside AND ouside of the cut with a stroke that was about 20 degrees down angle from the surface of the cut... did that make sense???? basicly, I laid the pannel flat, and did a stroke that was 20 degrees down from horizontal... hope that helps... But I'm going to put a grill on it to protect it, which will also cover the cuts... so if your doing this for your kids, I'd suggest you do the same... even after filing, it's still possible to get a little snag on something you've missed. -TZ
#1 rule of modding... buy ALL your parts before cutting the holes! I couldn't find any decent 80MM grills at CompUSA, so I ended up buying a 92MM fan and 2 grills... the grills were only $.99 each... a steal at twice the price... Anyways... I fixed it up... what do you guys think? By the way... ------> DeWalt > Dremel I knocked that hole out in about 10 minutes including setup and cleanup with a dewalt 3 speed cordless drill, and a 2" drum sander tip. Done and Done! -TZ
That's a scanner. HP photosmart S20. It's designed to feed pictures, slides, and negatives directly, instead of using a bed. Very convienient for scanning slides, because you don't have to worry about position, cropping, etc. It does all that for ya. It's about 8-9 years old though... and not very good by todays standards. I'm actually in the market for a new scanner but can't find one cheap enough that is properly configured. That one was about $500 new. My brother has a sweet NIKON scanner that does slides only... but it's like 2K and I'm not paying that much for one! So I wait patiently. -TZ
It's Old and Heavy... and not even close to what I want to do as far as mods go... I think I'll call my project "doublewide" becasue it will be twice as wide as a standard case.... but perhaps a little shorter... if you UK guys don't know what a doublewide is, it's a mobile home that comes in 2 parts... then joined together at the trailer park. I don't know though... I might choose a different name. One question though... what program are people using to mock up their case layout. I've seen some pretty cool transparent looking pictures that show all the internals, but I've never seen what program they were made in. I'd like to try my hand at that to see if it's better for laying out stuff than my current program (which takes a lot of work to do layouts... but is VERY accurate). -TZ
