Case Mod - In Progress 2024 TT CaseMOD Invitational Season 1 - The Tower 600 (ITALY)

Aaah, feels good to be back...

Hey everyone! This is Alessandro from Explore Modding, some of you may remember me as the last face of Bit-tech's Youtube channel right before its downfall.

After that happened, I disappeared from the forum as I no longer had much keeping me attached to it, and I also stopped modding for a while as I graduated, went looking for a new job and stuff. But then I slowly brought it back into my life and I've been invitated by Thermaltake to represent my country into their seasonal case mod competition, involving The Tower 600 case!



The sponsors for this event are Intel, Asrock, Palit and Seagate, so let me show you guys some of their goodies to get things started!

 

Let's now take a look at the protagonist of this project, The Tower 600 in its white dress!











Let's get to some brainstorming on the 3D model. Removed the parts that I'm going to replace/remove for sure, like most of the external panels and all of the internals.

I might delete the vertical brackets connecting top and bottom as well, but depends what concept I follow through with

 

Doing some brainstorming...

Tilting the top and bottom panel like this was the very first idea I had when I discovered I was going to work on this case. Let's see how it unfolds

 

Good to see you back.

 

Just finalized the design a week ago, deadline is March 31st. This'll be fun!





Now we can get grinding! Let's start with most of the 8mm aluminum brackets that will do the majority of the work holding everything together! They will require quite some additional holes to the edges which will be done later on the drill press





Next up, all the 5mm alu panels that will be assembled to form the centerpiece, where all the hardware will be installed! Air vents are a clear tribute to the bottom front section of the Tower 600, since this unique angled design didn't allow me to use the original panels





Meanwhile I completed the modifications on the pedestal from the Tower 600 Stand Kit: a 3mm alu covered was added, together with a little 3D printed piece on the front which will serve as a stop for the case to rest. Here you can also have a glimpse of the abstract finish I will use on the alu panels, just to stir things up a bit



More 8mm brackets!



Now let's prep all of the 8mm brackets for edge drilling and tapping. Measure, mark, punch, drill and tap... countless times!









Hah! Most boring part done

 

Niice!
I would have nuked the TT mesh pattern and copied the Palit one instead.

 

I mostly did it to keep as much resemblance of the original case as possible, since I'm not using a whole bunch of it they will act as kind of a "reimagined" Tower 600 air vent design.

 

The grind continues! Now we'll be taking a look at probably the most sensible parts, because it required very tight tolerances to perfectly fit the original case. These will replace the top and bottom structural panels. The main challenge here was getting the attachment points for the plastic covers just right so that they would clamp in place securely and be detached just as well!





Turned out great so I doubled down! Only thing I had to add after machining was just some chamfering on both sides of the clamp holes.



Continuing with the structural parts, I moved to the 15mm clear acrylic for the centerpiece connecting brackets as well as the pedestal.



Quick fit test!





Once the clear acrylic was done, I took out the smoked one to cut the two top and bottom panels which will hold passthrough fittings and also those little grey brackets that you'll see more of soon enough!



Also went ahead and printed the side air vent connecting parts and cut the brass strips. I decided to go with white 3D printing filament as it perfectly matches the white of the original case parts.

This is pure metal shine heaven!

 

Awesome work, like always. Wax that brass FAST!
I'm guessing that beautiful blue tint on the smoked 'glass is the masking? They would never manufacture such an awesomely subtle color.

 

Thanks! Correct, they give you the best looking protective films as if life wasn't already enough of a disappointment

If you watched my ONDA V2 Youtube series on Bit-tech, you'll see it was the same there, only there the smoked acrylic was the main feature so having this kind of blue color would have been AMAZING!

 

I've been playing with fiber optics because of you, by the way.

 

Nice! My A.R.E.S. left its mark what are you doing with it?

 

Tiny pinhole lights behind the fins on GwassGween's GPU cover. 2 months for 12 dots of light so far. I have so little free time.

 

Damn that build is insane, just went looking for the worklog!

 

Alu parts finished, acrylic polished, and everything washed up and ready to be assemble! Just need to print some more brackets and stuff now, as well as figure something out for the GPU mod. Final rush

 

Cutting things close.
(and GG's pic links were broken twice and I never got around to re-re fixing them, and probably won't till they finish upgrading Bit again.)

 

It's time to start the final assembly while I finish off some remaining parts and modifications! This whole structure is pretty complex and requires careful assembly because of tolerance and the use of angles. If I don't tigthen up all the screws in the right order, the rigidity of the structure may be compromised.













Meanwhile, I designed and printed a new bracket for the front I/O panel of the Tower 600 to be mounted directly onto the top cover rather than to the case itself.





Then I cut and polished the red acrylic side pieces which really bring the whole thing together. This got me very excited to see the final result!



I also started putting together the cooling portion of the build, with radiators and fans. Still need to design and produce a custom bracket for mounting the res/pump.



And also a quick test fit of the main components



Both the top and bottom Tower 600 cover are getting custom passthrough ports to support my custom loop madness. The bottom one also received a passthrough power port for a clean and unique power chord routing.

 

Awesome!

 

I finally attached both of the Tower 600 with all the required tubing and wiring. I also put red acrylic behind the honeycomb grid to go along with the theme. This meant I could finally mount the little acrylic stand and put it on the base from the Tower 600 Chassis kit. Looking good!

Now time for a really fun part of this project imho: corrugated pipes to route the front I/O cables and the passthrough power cord

I'm using corrugated pipe with custom 3D printed clamps to securely attach it to the panels. This gives the whole thing kind of an industrial Sci-Fi vibe while cleanly routing cables that would otherwise be in the way. It also preserves the floating look of the centerpiece, because of course the easy way would have been to just route them directly from the top and bottom, but the clear acrylic braces would have lost their purpose!







PSU mounted too, now time to start sorting out all the cable management! This is no easy task since this design doesn't leave much space for cables. Could be way worse though considering how compact that compartment is, especially with the PSU inside! Looking forward to the "where is the PSU?" questions

 

Suspicious box with all the computer stuff outside it.
-Nah, I'm pretty sure we knew where the PSU was going.