Case Mod - In Progress Project: miXture, rebooted

This is what i call "pure modding awesomeness cheesecake!!!" Mod on brother I love every bit of this mod!

 

what Ang3l said!!

Damn this is going to become one sweet mod!

 

The Brink of Modding Madness was it right?
You just pulled of the impossible dude!

 

Wow, I'm flattered. Thank you AnG3L

Thank you also

Brink of Madness would be a good name also, but I'm sticking to the one I'm using now

 

Update

In a moment I will continue with the fillports, but until then I want to show you a few pictures of the cutouts for the tubing of the radiator. It's not very special, but hey, it's progress





For the tubing of the reservoir I drilled four 10mm holes:





There it is The center to center distance of the fillport block is the same as the distance on the reservoir to make the tubing straight:



If I wanna be able to use the fillports, I will have to cut a hole in the roof. And as anything with hex mesh looks cool, I made you a picture



Instead of one big hole, I will make two holes close together:





Drilled, cut and filed. I really need a step drill



The result of the past few days, completely mounted:







I'll have to figure out what I will work on next, I think I will work on mounting the pump I will also have to start searching for a motherboard, so I can continue working on the side panel and the CPU cooler.

 

Update!

This is what the bottom of the case looks like right now:





Because I modified a few things on this case (that's an understatement ), most of the holes can't be used the way they were intended to. On this picture, the PSU will be placed more to the right, the fan will be placed more to the left. So let's cover all that up with white acrylic Starting with the rough shape:



The rough shape is ready and was measured correctly, now it's time to make a few smaller cutouts:



The back fits now, hiding the mounting of the bars and some rivets:



Doesn't quite fit in the front though, there are still some nuts and bolts there:



I drilled a few shallow holes on the other side:



To make room for these protruding bolts:



I made some room for the nuts and bolts in the front also. I couldn't use countersunk bolts, so I drilled two holes that were slightly bigger than the bolt head:



Just a little filing left to do, on the edge on the left:



Done





I promised you that I was going to work on the pump, and I did. Before I could mount the pump, I had to make the bottom plate though. I still had this mini pump lying around:





When it ain't broke.....



I has to be mounted right here, but sunk into the acrylic. That would set the inlet of the pump on the same height as the outlet of the radiator. I know it's more common to route the tubing directly from the reservoir to the pump, but I'm placing the radiator in between. I'm confident that will work just as well.



Cut and filed:



Nice, it fits



To mount the pump to the acrylic, I drilled and tapped two holes in the part that isn't in contact with the water:



I will mount it with this tiny part:





O RLY? That's what came to mind when I saw this next picture:



I will glue the plate later, once I cut all of the holes that still have to be cut. As I said, a power supply and a fan will probably be mounted there also. I will leave you with a few overview shots of the state the case is in now:







(much better than before, don't you agree? )

 

hey cool you have shown amazing stuff of your case..described really good...i also did purchase a case from south-pak.com

Amazing quality...

 

LOL @ the spam above

Update

It took me a while, but here it is. Only two more weeks before the deadline, that's going to be tough

A few posts ago, I was whining about needing a step drill. A few days later a nice guy named Mexel sent me a message, that I could have his. Have? Yes have. I gladly accepted, and sent him some of my products in return. This is the drill, it makes holes up to 22mm



In 2mm thick aluminum, the hole looks like this. Not perfect, but way faster then my previous methods:





Now it's time for my first sponsor ever. Cooler Master responded to my email and were kind enough to send me this huge V8 cooler. Exactly what I needed, thanks Marco!



Because I was looking for a big cooler, this one will fit perfectly. Well, actually it won't fit, but that's the idea







Back to modding. This is the original left side panel of the Cosmos S, that will not be used in this case. The design is very clever, with multiple layers and bolt connections. I removed the lower part, that's the part that I am reusing right now. I may use the rest as a photo frame in the future





My new side panel has a weird shape, so I can only use a little part of it:



I wanted to bend the edges to add strength, but chose to cut a piece of lexan to size to reinforce the steel:



Fits like a glove:





I still need to remove a chunk because of the Nexus fan grill:



All bolted together, once again with M3 bolts that leave the front of the sheet flush:





I hope the next pictures show why I am using this. One of the nicest features of the Cosmos S is that the side panel remains standing when flipping the switch at the back. The same principle will work with my side panel now, only without the back switch:







Now that is sorted, I can more easily drill the holes for mounting that part to the case:





For now, the Lexan is still clear so the reservoir is easily visible. The side panel will be white later on though, so I needed to cut a window in my window:





Roughly cut:



Filed:





The second plate will have an exact copy of this window, only rotated, through which the reservoir will be visible also. I will use some thin acrylic for the windows itself.

Last weeked I was at The Party 9, a lan party for about a 1000 people here in the Netherlands. I brought Cubeleon with me to take part in the Casemodding Contest, but I was beaten by The Black Box and a cardboard box that was thrown together a day earlier. The only reason that I won a price, was because they put me on the website as a second place winner, which turned out to not be the case. Highflow got me a Cooler Master V10, the big brother of the cooler I just got straight from Cooler Master.







But I will still be using this one:

 

That plate looks awesome mate. And I love the overall shape as well.

 

Thanks a lot Attila, you're doing very well also, again

 

Update

We've got one more week to go before the deadline, so here is an update of a few days ago..

The first thing was to make a strip of aluminum to join the two major parts of the side panel, as I don't trust a glue joint alone. Fortunately, the test piece was glued very well, very solid. This is the 2mm strip:



A nice series of holes has to be drilled. At some places this isn't possible because other parts are in the way:



Drilled the holes and added a bending line. I grinded a line into the metal with a Dremel to be able to make a nicer bend:



Bent with the use of a wooden hammer while clamping halve of the strip. I used an angle measurement device to make sure the bending angle was the same all the way:



Now to something else, the second part of the side panel. That needed a window also, so the reservoir is very visible:







These two pieces of 3mm acrylic will be the actual windows later on:



This is how all of the parts mentioned above fit on the side pane:



The rest of the time was spent on mounting the PSU and the hard drive. The power supply doesn't fit in its original position anymore, so I decided to shift it back a little. It still needs to get rid of its hot air, so a few holes were cut in the back panel:



A short cable was created:



To make the big hole look a little nicer, I added some hexx mesh and glued it in with super glue:



The power supply will be mounted with two bolts and an Attila-style bracket





With the use of some more white acrylic, I am making a compartment for the PSU and its cables:





I used some nice angles, that make the fit even better:









The thick piece of acrylic was added because this is a very short power supply. Most others are 20mm longer, and they need to fit also.

Now it only needs a roof:





Because I have cut away all of the drive bays and filled it with some weird shapes, there is not a lot of room to fit a hard drive nicely. This is how it will be mounted:


I am skipping the pictures of the drilling and countersinking the mounting holes if you don't mind Here a test drive is mounted:



The last thing to do was to cut a hole for the hard drive cables. Unfortunately I also had to cut off a part of the compartment, otherwise the side panels won't fit:



I will probably glue these parts together, or bolt it if there is no other way.

To fill the case, I ordered some new hardware. An Asus P8P67 motherboard fitted with an Intel i5 2500K unlocked processor. The memory is a set of 4GB Corsair Vengeance boards. I will probably use my old graphics card for the final pictures, as I can't afford to buy one right now.

Some more work has been done by now, but I really need my time to finish the case

 

In a few hours, the deadline for the Cooler Master competition will pass. These are the five picture I have sent to them. I'm sorry for the big gap between the updates, I will make it up to you











Good luck to all the contenders, but I hope to beat at least some of you

 

This contest deadline has made for a lot of cheesecake today.
That came out really slick. I was wondering what you would do about the handle.

-nice plastic spoon lamp, too.

 

Hey Cheaps, thanks for the comment Cutting the handle took us a while, as it was like cutting through 60mm thick aluminium.

We've got a plastic fork lamp at the other side of the living room to

 

Update

Although you have already got to see the end result, I will update you on the progress of building this case. I will write it in present tense, that feels more natural. The side panel is the biggest feature of the case. It is a complex part, made of e few bigger and smaller parts of polycarbonate, it has windows, and intake and soon an outtake. All of that took a lot of time to build Since it needs to look like one part, I have glued the parts together:





(Oh I forgot to update you on the painted frame, won't happen again )

I kept the nicest feature of the side panel a secret for a long time. I will add three black strips of 8mm Lexan. This is a fuzzy picture of the rough shape of the first one:



After a few drawings, I drew a nice fillet on the front:





This is how the three strips will have to fit later on:







The top of the side panel still has to be reshaped. It still has a straight shape. Before I do that, I drilled a few mounting holes for the side panel so I'm sure they line up.





I also mounted this strip to the side panel more solidly now with some new bolts:



And then I am finally able to cut a nice curve out of that sheet. Once again I cut all of it at an angle, to make the top line horizontal:







The most recognizable feature of the Cosmos cases are the tubes at the top and bottom, so I will mount all of them in the end result. The side panel needed a modification before that was possible though:









Of course I won't leave the end hanging in mid air, I need to cut it

My hardware order has also arrived. First the motherboard, an Asus P8P67. There are about seven versions of this board, I got the one with the easiest name I would have liked a Z68 chipset board, but I needed it a few days before it came out.







The fastest Intel i5 sandy bridge processor, the 2500k:



And a set of memory sticks, unfortunately with mesh stickers



I didn't try the boxed cooler, I just went straight for the big one





Hmm, doesn't fit!





But we'll work around that. Don't tell this to anyone, but it has always been the plan that the CPU cooler wouldn't fit How do you like my new dishwasher?



After I cut a rough square, I created the exact lines with tape:





That's it for now, more about the side panel next time. That will be a big update

For now, I can still use your vote for the case in the Cooler Master contest. I'm in the 10th position or something, in the Tower category. I hope to rise a few places within the next few days, but I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. Remember, you can vote once in each category.

 

Update

For the Cooler Master contest deadline, I could only send in five pictures. And even worse, they had to be resized to 355x267, which meant that I had to throw away 17,9 megapixels of every picture. Since I have made many more, I am sharing the best of them with you. I haven't polished them up in any way, just resized and bordered them.

Clickable for 2000 pix wide









































And my favorite