Welcome to my first mod. This is a mod on the cheap as it’s my first project, I did not want to buy the best case I could and then muller it right up.. Also its a home made job down the shed with a dremal, as I dont have a friend with a CMC, lazer cutter or a powder coater in the back garden. Ive gone for Razer colours, satin black for the outside and dayglow green for the inside, with a large duct @ 45deg's with 2x92mm fans in the side. Its got a E8400 (oc to 3.6ghz) 4GB of Dominator RAM a HD3870, 320GB samsung T166 spinpoint, Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro and a Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 460W PSU + Xfi Extream Gamer (the mobo has been changed to a P5Q P45 pro from the photos) The PC will be in a unit so dust is not a major problem, there will be a 120mm fan at the bottom to cool the DVD drive and the HHD but the top will be open mesh. Got some nice perferated steel with 5mm holes from B&Q The case started life as a cooler master RC-330 and I gave it a good going over. And you never know it might make it into the mag somewere . First was the strip down, I got the drill out and removed the DVD drive and HHD rack, as Im mounting the DVD drive and the HHD to the bottom of the case Ive no need of the rack, and it will aid airflow. Next I had to cut the front of the case for the DVD drive and ubove the power switch to open it up a bit more. Now I had the basic shape I wanted I set about on the plastic front panel, I needed to remove all of the unwanted plastic, again the mighty dremel was king and cut nice and clean. I took my time to get the best finish I could ( took about 2 and a half hours just on the front panel) Next up was to mock up the side vent and window so I could position the fans and see where the cuts needed to be, then spent a lot of time marking it out before cutting using the cardboard mock up as a template. Most of the time was spent making custom brackets to fit the audio/usb and the fan controler, as the cage that they would have fit into, I ripped out. I made a bracket that fits behind the power button that both adds strength and will mount the fan controler (below power button) and audio/USB bits (ubove power button) … I cut the slot for the DVD drive and made the mounting brackets with out ever fitting a real DVD drive. When I did get round to taking the DVD drive out of my current PC, it fitted first time.. Shows the use of taking good measurements…Twice.. The front was harder than it looks, first I wanted the front to come off and there was no where to attach the metal mesh to the front plastic panel. So I had to pop rivet the metal panel to the case 30mm behind of the front panel, so after a lot of bending and bending and more bending, I got the front panel to fit flush with the mesh panel, and still be able to remove it. All of the metal work had now been done, so all that is left to do is use body filler to smooth all the edges. All of the vent work was bonded rather than poprivets, so it will leave a smoother finish. After that it’s paint time. The fans are bolted from behind, so from the front there are no bolts or screws visible…. It last it was finished !!! All the paint work is done, the fans and cathode tubes are in and wired up. All the fans (2 x 120mm and 2 x 92mm) are controlled by a fan controller just above the DVD drive, and the cathodes are conected to a switch next to the power button. The two side fans have there own power switches as I dont want them on all the time. Its not a power house but plays COD4, Grid, TF2 and CCS(including every readers nite) at max settings with no problems. Thx for reading, and please make any comments !!! When I work out how to put pics on I will
hey, nice looking mod there, btw, did you get the case and a PSU in a deal from ebuyer?, Is it any good?
Yeah I did. And Yes it is. When it first turned up I had second thoughts of cutting it up it look so good and the PSU powers to system no probs. Ive had the CPU upto 4ghz with no probs. I cant say how easy it is to build the system in the std case as the first thin I did was rip everthing out!! But for the money its a good buy....
