Case Mod - In Progress Corsair 600T GREEN (Updated 11th december)

Very Nice Green and Black for the win
subbed...

 

P-14 fans green + black = win

copper tubing = win

great work mate, I really got to follow this work

 

Well the main reason for the cover was that i didn't like the color of the intel SSD drive. It was too shiney, and had a bit of that brownish silver color that marantz audio equipment had, that was marketed as silver color. Do love my NR1601 receiver though, but that one is black.

You certainly have a point there, but it would have needed a nickel plating to go with it. Alu and nickel are two very different metals, and the color shows. Aluminium is very silver looking when polished, but much whiter in tone, and nickel is just a bit darker than silver. If polished, it definatly needs a nickel coating otherwise it would not fit in. Painting it black was easier to do, and it does not look that bad at all.

Thank you!

The one green with black looks just awesome, but the work behind it masking and painting it was too much trouble for me to do the rest. If these fans were possible to dissasemble, it would have been a breeze, but these SSO bearing fans are impossible to take apart.
The copper tubing was not my idea, seen it on another build (Project White) and it looked so neat i wanted to use this in my build. Alot of stuff that goes in this case is not original, but loaned from other designs and altered.



Can't reply without another update, can i?

Unfortunatly, i have been busy so i did not have much time to work on the project. Also money is a concern, so i have to take things slowly so not to overdo the monthly budget.



First of all, i sleeved the 1 meter SATA-600 cables in a very noticable green sleeve.



Then it was time to mod the front that Kier sent me into something i could use for my build...



And the finished but dissasembled product. I will need to repaint these, since the paint got damaged during bending the bottom end, and the slot for the DVD drive needs touching up.



But overall it doesn't look that bad....



Paint it silver and you have a Mac G5 case.... Nice and clean, just the way i like it!



The DVD drive had to be placed 6mm backwards into the case to make room for the front, so the tray had to get a thicker bezel. I've glued a piece of black and UV-green acrylic together, and this will be glued onto the DVD tray bezel.



All that hard work made me thirsty... Time for a bud, not the regular imported stuff, but the real thing imported for american car meetings over here in the netherlands. Not bad, but (bud) i do prefer belgian beer.



Also a package came in... During my General-Li build, one of the drives was delivered DOA. So i RMA-ed it a few weeks ago, and got a fresh 2TB hitachi drive... How fresh? The invoice was dated 15th of october 2011, and the drive was manufactured october 2011.
I just don't get it why it had to be shipped out of singapore with ups... Seems so expensive for just a RMA....



Also been tinkering around a bit with Mastercam X4... Scanned it and Raster to vector integrated into MC X4 is sweet, but the text did not turn out hat well. Unfortunatly the machines we run at work operate with Heidenhain, and i don't have a postprocessor for it, so i have to edit the ISO/Fanuc data trough Cimco Edit to generate somewhat of a heidenhain program, and it still has errors. Well, i'll need to find something more efficient, otherwise it's back to mastercam 7 for me.

This is just a try-out, and i'm not sure if i will use this in the build. I don't use much cad/cam software at work, so if i don't use it, it still has been a learning expierence.



Also been heating up a piece of acrylic inside one of the side panels.. Looked great, but unfortunatly the panels are little bit sferical, so the plate buckled a bit on me.



It looks ok, but it has been a little bit warped. I'll go ahead and see what the result will be, if it is not up to my spec, i know the guys at mnpctech.com make a very nice side panel, but i'm allready over budget and not sure if i want to pay the price for that panel... yet.



Also made a choice on color... The white corsair 600T looks awesome, why not in lime green? The contrasting parts will be painted in satin black.



And how the case looks at this moment....



And a closeup of the SSD drive cover... Not to bad, and the acrylic/lexan plating inside the case does give some very nice effects.

Well, that's it for now... Hopefully i can get the power cables done next weekend.

Happy modding!

 

Wow man, amazing job!

Congratulations

 

wow
good job

 

It's great how your cooling this baby as reguards to the use of the copper piping, it makes a really neat and tidy job. Also like what you've done with the T- balancer, do they get very warm then, I was planning on using a couple myself? Good work

 

Fixel!

Verry nice 600T u got there! keep on modding it !

 

Thanks!

Well, i've seen pictures of older version T-balancers without heatsinks, and the standard fan controller of the Corsair 600T case also comes without heatsinks. But the components are getting very hot, too hot to touch. Standard heatsink with a little bit of airflow should be ok, but the place i'm putting my T-balancer will not get any airflow, and i don't want to take the chance of overheating because the T-balancer also controlls the pump. The block i made is pure overkill for what it has to cool, but better safe than sorry.

I'm guessing it will be ok just on air cooling, but the stock heatsink definatly gets hot though..

Oh and you might want to know that i had some issues with the USB cable connected to the motherboard while booting. My system crashes, and writes a memory dump. Unhook the cable, and it's a quick boot to win7, and i can hook it up again to edit the eeprom.

Thank you, and will do!

 

Update!

I'm sorry for the long wait between updates... Last week i did get a lot of work done, but also ran into some problems.

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes, I3p noted that the rear badge on the PSU does not fit the mod colorwise, so i had to do something about it.



Unfortunatly Seasonic is not listed on www.brandsoftheworld.com (great for vector images of logo's!) so i had to vectorise a jpeg instead. It did not turn out that bad, and a CNC program was made. Only thing now needed is a piece of acrylic, and machining time.



I also received some more sleeve and wires, so i can complete the electrical wiring of this case!



Due to the fact my case layout is a bit different than standard, i am forced to solder my own wiring. These will power the optical drive, and any lighting that goes behind the side panel.



And there's alot of wiring to stuff behind the side panel...



Seasonic delivers their molex connectors with those nice clips to remove the connector. Well, i don't like those so they will be replaced for the standard ones in black.



Fortunatly i have a stash of connectors in my parts bin.



Even though all that sleeving will never be seen again, it's a detail i don't want to overlook.



And installed.



With the cables to the optical drive installed, the acrylic cover could be put into place. Here i noticed a terrible flaw.. Look at the reflection of the SSD cover... The back plate is warped by the copper pipe that connects both dual radiators...



This will definatly not do....



My attempt to use an x-acto knife to widen the hole did not turn out that great.. Oh well, only one way to get this fixed properly.... Drain the loop, remove the pipe, widen the hole and respray the pipe.



Widening the hole with a round file in the cordless drill...



Well atleast my paycheck came in, so i treated myself to a brandnew EVGA GTX580 superclocked.



Nice cooler tho... But i have a better one for this card....



I did need to respray the pipe, so that also was a good excuse to give the EK single backplate some color aswell.



Between paintjobs i'm installing the waterblock....



What's wrong with this picture? This is a reference design card, and i have a block that is supposed to fit onto a reference card... Well it wasn't nice of Nvidea to decide to remove the IHS from the GPU. While installing the hardware into the case, everything went ok up to the point of booting. My screens went black after 30 seconds, and after some tinkering i decided to pull the block off again and concluded that my GPU wasnt making any contact with the block... I spend a good deal of my sunday afternoon making a shim to fill up the gap. First a 2mm piece of aluminium.. Too thick... then a piece of 1mm... Too thin.. Then i used the hack saw to cut out a piece of 1,5mm thick out of a Lian-li front bezel i had laying around... Fits! Not the most ideal solution, but it works and the card stays nice and cool, even when running 3Dmark 11.

Also my PSU gave me grief, i knew that the GTX580 was a power hungry card, but a 660Watt PSU should do it.. Well the solution was to devide the power connections equally over all the available connectors, and the beast is running!



Here are some pictures of the card with EK goodness installed...



Well that's it for now... I'm off to the shed again to get some painting done... I will post another update soon. This will include paint, some CNC and installed hardware pics!

Thanks for watching!

 

Update!

Last week was a bit of a drag with the video card, but i managed to install all the hardware in the chassis:



Not there yet, but atleast i can enjoy part of the work that has gone in this case so far. Booting this beast is just one of the fun things to start my evening.. Everything turns on, the t-balancer kicks all fans and pump to maximum revs, and then it all quiets down for a serene computer expierence. Only wished that the pump was a little more quiet though.



This will take some work to fit it all behind the panel... Good thing the 600T is a big lady.



Also made a mounting plate for the HDD-VU meter. I've cut it about the same size as the print, drilled holes, tapped it and placed standoffs.



Looks nice... And it will be mounted next to the PSU.



Also got the new badge for the PSU done... 3mm acrylic, and the text is milled on the underside, 0.4mm deep.



After cutting out, sanding and heating the edges, i applied some black vinyl to the back. At first i thought it would be ok to paint the underside, but i was afraid this would also make the letters stand out less than they do right now... The vinyl is not the perfect way to go, but looks good enough for me though.



I'm not complaining one bit.



Also made a big decision about the custom on/off and reset buttons... I'm going to drop those after all, so i epoxied the holes shut and applied filler.



I've purchased white primer, hoping that this will be sufficient to get the base coat done, but unfortunatly this was not covering that well at all...



So i was forced to apply a few coats of white too. With dark colors, a dark background is ok, sometimes even better when applying metallic coats to give it depth, but with light colors, white is best to let the color really stand out.



The handles and grills were easy enough... from antracite to semi gloss black was just a little plastic primer, final coat and done!



After painting, i moved the parts to the living room table to cure, so i could continue painting the other parts green.



Daylight picture of the system so far.. Sorry for the unsharpness of the picture.



Still think this is very surreal... All those cables and stuff... Too bad it will all be covered up.



I'm afraid this will gonna bite me in the rear though... A few months ago i applied a coat of matt black on this piece, and it shows trough the white coat. And this is after several coats of white..



Well, i've tried anyway, and the result did not turn out bad at all! Here are the parts drying in my shower. This color will certainly need some getting used to though.



Did i mention paint fumes are hazardous to your health?



Little test fit... That's green allright, and definatly needs some getting used to... But i'll stick with it.



Seeing that green will be the dominant color, i also installed a fitting screensaver.



After applying the first clear coat, i had that "oh cr*p!" moment. Somehow the standard color of the case is showing right trough, and yes i have let the color coat cure for 24hrs before applying the clear. Oh well... I'll let the parts cure for a week, repaint and leave the clear out that time. (sure is shiny tho)

Well more to come next week. Happy modding, and thanks for watching!

 

Very nice and tidy desk
and the green looks awesome!!

 

Haha! Yes, i'm a bit disorganised, but somehow the chaos returns every time i tidy up.
As for the green, i have been having second thoughts about that, it's a screaming "LOOK AT THIS HUGE GREEN COMPUTER" color, but it does look awesome. I can't wait to see it fully assembled. Unfortunatly i haven't been able to do some paintwork yet... I want to give the previous coats some time to cure, and it has been terribly moist the last few days.. Not rain, but humid and foggy. This season is not ideal for spray painting, but we'll make the best out of it.

 

Wow, awesome work! Lots of inspiration for watercooling my 600T!

 

Great to know i'm inspiring 600T owners! This case is really great for a watercooled setup, even in it's pure stock form.

 

Update! Got paint dust? I do!

Well just a small update this time.. I've bought the Skyrim game last friday and wanted to put some game time in. Unfortunatly i did not get that much time in, but atleast the game was very usefull to tweak the T-Balancer, and i added a second sensor to the front rad.



What i noticed about the T-Balancer, was that it reacted a bit laggy on the load the PC had to handle. But when you only monitor the temperature of the reservoir, such things could be expected. This had to change, the GTX580 is outputting alot of heat and it's very noticable touching the rear 120mm rad while under load.

Placing a sensor at the rear rad would be best, but this sensor would have been a pain to install in a stealthly manner, so i opted to place it where the warm water of the rear rad enters the front radiator. Now it's not that sluggish to react to loads, but more tweaking has to be done.


(click for full res)

Temps are not bad, not bad at all. This is after running Skyrim for 15 minutes on ultra settings on 1080P resolution, room temperature 20 degrees C. Just awesome to run a brand new game right off the bat at ultra settings! (btw this is my second monitor, somehow i could not capture both screens in one image)

Besides that, i've also did some work on the case:



Right side panel is painted, and besides a few minute flaws, it turned out very well.



For the limited resources i have, this turned out pretty good. This time i'll leave out the clear coat, and buff the paint with some Commandant paint polish.



Fortunatly all the cables still fit behind the panel. All those sleeved cables really take up space!



The top panel went again for a respray. I wasn't sathisfied with the result due to some inperfections that sneeked in while closing the holes for the new on/off and reset buttons. (the idea i scrapped) After alot of sanding and putty i finally got those nasty marks out, when the paint is dry, it's time to paint the insides that is covered by the grille black.



Between painting i have also modified the front PCB a bit. The original reset button will be used to open the optical drive, and i've added a UV-led to replace the HDD led. Hopefully this will shine up those rings i milled for around the 3,5mm jackplugs. The old case where i had temporary parked my hardware in, graciously donated its reset button, this will be accesable when removing the top grille. I'm not intending to use it much, but a reset button sometimes comes in handy, so i added it.



Rear side. I've severed the connections on the PCB to the reset button with a file, and soldered a header to the button to connect the optical drive.



Also repainted the front. At this pont, all the paint has been used, and it's sunday. I called it a day and hoped for the best. Fortunatly it turned out great, but it still needs a little buffing to make the paint shine.



Meanwhile, not only my case is turning green, but also myself and my appartment. My shed has a doorway to the hallway, and i noticed a slight green fog on the floor... Turns out it also sits in my fans, and the dust in my apartment is green colored...

When this project is done, i allready have a new one: Authum/winter cleanup.



Well atleast my Hattori Hanzo... erm, paintball wise returned after a slumber party at friends, and yes it's also green. I don't play much these days, so i loaned it out. It's also the main reason why i stopped playing any shooters. Just can't get the same level of sathisfaction...

It's not as green as the 600T though..

And that concludes this update. I am still messing around, and with a little luck the case will be done in a few weeks. (a casemod is never done, but well...)

Thanks for watching, and till next time!

 

That is very true... I recently started paintball and its so much better than shooters (just so expensive though )

And that case will be sooo GREEEENN ....lol
It will definitely take some time getting used to....

 

Expensive? And casemodding isnt? offtopic: I've seen a video once of a field near johannesburg, with lots of small rooms to fight trough, do you play there? Think the place was called Field 19... Looked pretty awesome!

Ontopic: The green has allready grown on me. (wish that money did the same though ) It's really something different, and i had my doubts, but this is the color for this case, definatly!

 

Update! - Are we there yet?

Not quite, but i can see green light at the end of the tunnel.



I've painted the inside of the top panel black, but i should have waited a bit longer for the paint to cure, because 24 hours is just not enough to apply masking tape over fresh paint. The paintjob got a little damaged, but not to worry:



Nothing a little commandant won't fix. This stuff is ideal to buff out dull paint or small imperfections.



Just don't overpolish... Oh well, back to the spray booth... The rest of the panel turned out great, only the front part didnt, so i wrapped it into a garbage bag, masked it off and resprayed.



The next project when painting is done.... Cleaning out the shed. That green dust is everywhere...



Well the respray turned out good, so after a day it was time to install the buttons and PCB. I've also glued UV-Green rings in the holes of the headphone and mic jacks, and some aluminum foil to give the UV-HDD led some more reflection inside. After mounting and testing, the result was very dissapointing because the UV rings barely light up. But no biggie, i still have the 20-led UV-meter under the thermal shield of the motherboard.



Time to work on the left sidepanel. I've made this piece of acrylic and tried to bend it into shape with a heatgun. Unfortunatly, this panel is too warped to look good, so i had to think of something else.



Plan B: 2mm acrylic. A bit more flexible so i'm hoping this will do the trick. I've made windows out of this material before, but those were flat sidepanels... Well we'll see.



In the meanwhile i also mounted some of the painted parts to the chassis, though i do need to do some polishing here and there.



Very green...



But also very nice! The color was a daring choice, but i really like how it turned out.



Back to the side panel... I will need a window, and i long have debated the shape of the window. Also i will need some switches somewhere to turn the lights on and off... Well, i wanted to make some progress, so lets go cutting!



First i used the dremel with a 1,5" cutting disk, these are a bit thicker than the regular ones, so the blade of the jigsaw will fit in. I used the jigsaw to cut the straight lines, and then a fret saw to cut the round corners.



And the result. I still have to tidy up the cuts, but i didnt feel like it at the moment, so i did some other things instead.



The cables behind the right panel were a real mess, so i tried my best to tidy them up as much as possible with zip ties. It won't be super clean, but this way the side panel goes on much easier.



Also placed the top part of the front. At first, you could see the HDD trough the grill, so i had to change that. I've cut a piece of 2mm acrylic, painted it black and placed this between the HDD and the grill. This way the HDD is out of sight, and there wont be any dust sucked in trough the top part of the grill... (i hope)



After a bit of fidling to get the panel to fit so that the DVD drive is not blocked. (had some parts sticking out a little bit) Then i glued the new bezel onto the original drive's bezel. It is made out of 2 pieces of 3mm acrylic, one black, one UV-Green. This was needed to fill up the thickness of the grill, roughly 6mm.



Well, now i have some headphone/mic jacks to hook up to the motherboard, and those can't go there without some sleeve! Unfortunatly the connector has to go before i can sleeve, so i took pictures for reference.



Somehow i can't get the camera to focus right, but in this case it was not that important...



And now it focusses right... It's time to buy me a good camera...



Also marked the jackplug headers, because i didn't know which one was what anymore. H for Headphone, and M for Microphone. I'd prefer icons, but those i didnt have in rubbing letters.



Small idea i had, and the result looked pretty awesome. But i'll show that lateron. Btw Highflow is not a sponsor, but since i got most of my cooling kit there, this will be my way of saying thanks to Freddy from Highflow.



Also dug up some doming stickers and added them to another Highflow badge, and the Asus one. The EVGA one was allready domed. Not sure yet if i will use them, but we'll see.

Well, that's it for today... Thanks for watching!

 

shweet modding!! the cables and tubing looked a bit like wild vines for a while but its a very impressive mod, copper tubing is pretty hardcore MOD ON!!

 

I have heard of that field and checked the vids...and I REALLY want to go play there, but have not yet had the chance too....but it looks really awesome...

The rest of the case is looking sweet...good luck with that side panel