Case Mod - In Progress Dell Precision Overhaul

Well I don't have a fancy name, I don't have a load of tools, and I don't have a load of parts but I have a case and some enthusiasm!

Backstory
Everyone seems to love the XPS 720 but that's not my kind of case. The new Dell Precision machines on the other hand, I approve of that design!
When they came out I fruitlessly searched around for a replacement case and got nowhere (I know ebay has them now). I then forgot about it for a while until a friend of mine told me he had one.
I couldn't have it because he needed it as a PC but he had one.
...but I kept pestering him and he finally decided the airflow wasn't good enough, moved to a new case and gave the Dell to me.

The Plan
People would normally list all the fancy parts they're going to use here but until I get the cash to buy some nice new kit, I'll finish the case the rest might have to wait a little while.
If you like water cooling and high powered hardware this might not be your kind of build. Yes it will have a case window, yes it will have sleeved/braided cables, but I'm afraid it's going to be a server.


The case as I got it (minus the front ports and power button). It's a bit scratched up but mostly superficial.




Can you see the potential?


I've started modelling. That grill's going to be a PITA to do so I might leave it for a while


Next post, some initial fixing up work and some ideas.

 

Sadly, the power switch is still hanging out with the motherboard (damn Dell with all their custom headers) but that doesn't worry me, I'm not sure I want it anyway.

First job, sanding down, fixing up and getting a very light coat of primer on. Now I'm not anywhere near painting (I've only just started) but the black was making things difficult - white's much easier to work with.

The plastic was cracked up near the power button hole so the Araldite came out and it's good as new now.



Now some ideas:



Imagine those top 2.5s are another 3.5 (I don't have enough dead/working drives that aren't in computers).
The SSD will also no doubt end up somewhere else.

The original front panel. USB 3.0 and audio on the left (top) and USB 2.0 on the right (bottom).
The thing at the bottom left is the HDD LED - that will be going elsewhere.


Some modification required to the not-quite-standard Dell USB 3.0 header.
I think I'm going to have problems with this as the cable's not very long. I might have to hack up a longer one to transplant, or use an extension if I can find somewhere to hide it.

And the USB 2.0, audio and HDD LED are all on one connector so that had to be chopped.

To be soldered to:



Next post will be in a few days as I need to get some bits ordered, get some more Solidworks time in and jump on the laser cutter

 

Minor update time.

Front Panel

I haven't yet decided which ports I'm going to keep on the front or even if the power button's going to stay in the same place but I did decide how to proceed with the drive bays.
I don't like disk drives, but as this machine's likely to be the only one I own with the space for one in future, I thought I'd better keep one.
Besides, how else will I illegally rip my CDs! (For those who don't know, UK law is stupid and format shifting is now illegal again).

The screen (which will not be that nasty black on green one) will show system stats as well as being always on, with GSM connectivity so I can get realtime stats via text. Web interfaces on a phone are so overrated - sometimes you just want to quickly send:
Stats
and get back:
CPU load: 60%, Free Mem: 2.6/16GB, Free Storage: 3.5/7.6TB, Uptime: 2d12h36m
or:
System is off, 2h36min, following user shutdown. Reply "ON" to power on




A quick spray of white and it becomes obvious that I'm going to have to try much harder to get this to blend in.


I'm going to be borrowing a few tools so the real fun can start next week.

 

Interesting to see a Dell case being modded. They've always looked a bit ugly to me, that and the proprietary nature of their layouts always bugged me. I've got one of the SFF XPS systems knocking around, though it is an old Pentium 4 one. Maybe that could be worked with after all..

 

I'm lucky in that this is one of the less proprietary ones - the power supply mounting and dimensions are standard, and the motherboard mounting is already micro-ATX. It's only really the Dell parts inside it that are the problem.

 

That's helpful at least last one I attempted to hack had the motherboard layout reversed and weirdly sized/shaped psu.

Though it does make sense for them to ditch being proprietary for such parts on a cost basis.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

All the parts they put in the case are custom made by them with proprietary headers and connectors so really, I don't know why they did make this one standard ATX.

 

Update Time!

Apologies for the delay, things have been busy, and it's been raining whenever I've had the time or the energy to break out the power tools (I have no shed )

First things first, some new parts.

So, I've got two 120mm Bitfenix Spectre fans for up front, a 92mm Noctua Redux for the rear (so glad you can get them in grey), a Corsair CX430M and some cable bits.
I know the power supply's not the greatest but I got it for a pretty good price and it'll do for my needs.

The motherboard is still TBD. I'd like to get an ASRock Avaton board (planning for 8 mechanical drives, 1 SSD and a DVD drive means I'll need 10 SATA ports) but it's a little out of budget at present.

Without further ado, the modding progress:



Warranties, who needs warranties?





I do not know what this bit of plastic is meant to be for (perhaps to try and divert the air so it can't go straight out of the PSU?) but as far as I'm concerned it just restricts airflow and makes the fan slightly noisier so it had to go.



Nicely, the modular cables for the power supply can be easily split (they will be being sleeved) so I can re-use these rather than starting afresh.
The non-modular cables will also be sleeved and I'll just tuck the ends into the power supply casing (but you probably won't see that part anyway).







I was not impressed by the quality of the moulding on this. The Noctuas I've had in the past have been much better. It cleaned up fine with a file though.



Despite my best efforts, the new bay cover was not quite perfectly fitting and not perfectly flush so required a bit of filler (just wood filler - seems to work fine).



Sanding by hand was far too slow so I had to break out the mouse sander. This thing feels insanely bad for your wrist but it gets the job done.



Angle grinder time!
(apologies, no photos, but we've all seen those sparks before)


I was still a little unsure how well these fans would fit as the HDD cage had always been in the way but I've got a good 2mm or so clearance - phew.




This picture shows how unrestricted the airflow really is; the front panel is really well designed, it just diverts the air by about 45deg.





Everybody breath in! The spacing in the photo is a smidge over 6mm - I'll probably knock it down to 5mm to ensure there's a bit of room at the top.



I love a nice neat power cable stack - this is going to be lovely.




And then I realised that two cylindrical magnets in a stack are the perfect size to hold the case side on with science. Which is good, as the standard handle assembly is being replaced by a window.




Final progress picture:




At the moment it all feels like a lot of work for not much in the way of results but it'll all be worth it in the end right?

 

This is a great looking case. Keep it up