Case Mod - In Progress Project: Reverse² [completed]

Special delivery:
About 3 weeks ago (I write this worklog with a 3 week delay, so I will always have a buffer for the no-modding-weekends) a guy stood on my doorstep.
Special delivery! *knock knock* Hello.. Sir, I have a package for you!
Aaaaaah, the products Xilence.. Or something else this time?

Yep, that’s definitely a package from Xilence!

I quickly unpacked it all (duh!) and stalled it for a nice picture.

4x 120mm Red Wing
2x 140mm Black fans
1x Vibration dampening set
1x Xilence Blade Lite (CPU cooler+fan)

Without unpacking it, I took them to my photo booth, and snapped these pictures:
The 120mm Red Wing


The 140mm Black fans


After these shots, I took the time to unpack them, and snapped a more shots:
Xilence Blade Lite


The 92mm fan that came with the Blade Lite:


The Blade Lite + its fan:

The indented logo on the top of the Blade Lite:

Have to say, this thing is of amazing quality!


The bottom of the CPU cooler, protected as it’s supposed to be!

Detail shot:

Overall shot, on a black background:

And I liked this phot very much, I even sent it in HR to Xilence, and they loved it aswell!


The 120mm Red Wing
I received 4 of these monsters =D


Now, the red fan isn’t that special to photograph, but I made it look good anyway!


See the dimples in the surface? Increased airflow?
Normally I would take stickers off, but this one simply looks good on it!


The 140mm Black fans


The vibration dampening set:

Containing:
4x Casefeet (teflon)
12x Optical drive screws (with rubber rings)
4x Thumb screws (with rubber rings)
6x Cable ties
8x Silicon fan-fasteners
12x HDD-Screws (with rubber rings)
24x Silicon and rubber washers.


These products were sponsored by

And a shout out to my other sponsors, for making this mod happen:

 

Congrats on the new sponsor!

 

Really nice fans you received! Keep up the good work

 

Yeah! congrats on your new sponsor. Those fans are really awesome looking. Your mod is definitely fly man. Its an inspiration to the modding comunity. Like we say in the Army Charlie Mike! (continue mission)

 

Thanks guys, i'm very happy with these parts.
I received the CPU cooler without asking for it.
Lucky me, because the guy(s) at ThermalLab has decided not to answer my e-mails anymore...

 

Looking good. I'v never seen that heat sink before. Any links to benches? Frosty doesn't have it listed.....

 

I couldn't find any either... Weird..

Lighting arrived:
Again, a small update regarding parts (did not get much modding done due to personal reasons). This time the parts for the internal (and slightly external) lightning came in.
I connected with the people at DeboLED.
DeboLED specializes in LED lightning, they sell LED-lamps, LED-strips, LED-modules, DMX lightning and everything you need to connect and control them.
After talking to the guys they have decided to sponsor me with the parts I need for this project:
4 x LED-Strip Warm white (SMD 120 LED/M 12V) 30cm.
1 x LED-Strip Warm white (SMD 120 LED/M 12V) 40cm.
2 x LED Modules bright-white.

These will be used like this:
1x 40cm LED-strip will be used to light the orange-slit in the frontpanel/door.
The other 30cm LED-strips will be used as internal lightning, they will be placed in a aluminium L-profile, to make sure the light will not go where I don’t want it to go.
The LED-modules will be used to light the “REVERSE” log in the optical-drivebay.
Here are the pictures, as you would’ve guessed:
All the LED-strips next to eachother.

One of the strips, on a black background:

The LED-strips on their sides, they are sooooooo small!

And we still got the LED-modules to show:

Funny, you can even see the resistors in the resin:

Ok, let’s light these baby’s up (note: No baby’s were actually set on fire!)
Here’s the LED-strip on 6volts, this is half the voltage it can handle:
Here’s the LED-strip on 12volts, the full load:

And the LED-modules at 6volts aswell, making a photo with 12volts simply didn’t work.


These products were sponsored by DEBOLED!


And a shout out to my other sponsors, for making this mod happen:

 

Really nice with an update, I was about asking for an update when I saw this
It´s gonna look really nice in your case!

 

This is looking great so far. I attempted a black and orange case mod myself but your attention to detail is great. Looking forward to more!

 

Ghehe, thanks man!
Next update should be sleeving the 24pins cable.
I hope I can find some spare time for modding next weekend...

Thanks for the compliment!

 

Sounds good! Thats the bad side, not enough time to mod ; )

 

Sleeving the remaining cables:
Ok, it’s been a while since the last modding update (yes, I had updates about parts, but that isn’t modding right?)
This was mainly due to the weather (intense snow) and personal reasons.

So, time to sleeve the remaining cables, being a 24pins and 4pins (12V) cable.

The cables:
I ordered a 24pins extension cable on the internet a little while ago, I simply could not find those at local parts or computer stores. And tracking one down for a reasonable price on the internet was tricky aswell…
Anyway, it’s an AKASA 24pins extension:


Let’s take off the plastic shall we?


Now, that’s sweet. The connectors are black =)


But it’s pre-sleeved… And we all know what that means right?


This… Needs... To… Go!


With the factory-sleeving removed we can clearly see the cable has been twisted a lot.
We need to re-arrange every wire by hand.

First the length of the sleeving must be measured. I decided not to sleeve the complete cable, they won’t be exposed anyway.

I also ordered a 4pins (12V) cable at the same e-store.


No sleeving here, good =)



The sleeving:

Ok, so the size was determined, and we started cutting up the sleeving.
12 orange and 12 black for the 24 pins. 2 orange and 2 black (a bit longer than the others) for the 4pins.



And then, sleeving every wire individually. I think everybody here has seen it before… So I won’t show that many of the process itself.


Sleeving on, and ready to go back in the connector!
Each wire had 2 pieces of heat shrink on them, one for the connector part, and one for the backside:



Done, all sleeved!
Took me a pretty long time, about 3 hours in total.. I think…





Thanks to my sponsors once again!


Next up, painting the fans!

 

Looking lovely... keep going. Sorry to bother you about the lighting but what was the final decision?

Looking forward to the next update. (leave the fan stickers on, they are cool) xD

 

Thanks man!

No problem at all. I'm not 100% sure. But I'm almost positive i will link all the SMD-LED strips to 1 molex plug. Using only the 12V and GRND wire ofcourse.

I will, and infact. I have already done so. Looks stunning. Like it came straight off the factory in orange =D

 

That sleeving is stupendous!

 

if you cut the sleeving with normal (not hot) scissors you'l have a better looking sleeving, or just dont melt the cuts
that melted sleeving, that's seen trough the heatshrink is no "good-looking"

 

The cuts were made with a regular pair of scissors.
And if i wouldn't melt the cuts, it would unraffle like crazy. Trust me, I tried.
That said, it doesn't really bother me that much. As it will not be shown that much.

 

Nice job with the sleeving

 

Great looking mod so far


keep it up

 

Looking good mate, keep it up.