Aaannnnddd, back at it again. I'm feeling that it's time for a new case to house my personal system. My Fusion build was fun and interesting with a different look and materials, but it's just not doing it for me. I don't catch myself staring at it from time to time like I used to with Shinai, thinking how crazy it was that I had something this nice on my desk. So time for another try. I'm starting off with a BeQuiet! Dark Base 700 that I picked up for my second place finish at QuakeCon. Now lets see what all is involved in this case, since it's the first time using one. Holy crap! You almost need an engineering degree to tear this thing down. I had plans for a build that I wanted to try this winter, but this thing is way too complicated for that idea, so what now? I kept coming back to this look of old grand touring cars. Leather, chrome, wood, and for some strange reason green metallic paint. I don't know, I think I'm in a green phase? So lets start with the leather. After a successful trip to Hobby Lobby, I picked up a yard of nice faux leather. This would be perfect for accenting the interior so with some Super 77 adhesive, I started laying it out. Now I just want accents so I'm not going crazy and covering everything in leather, just some broad swaths. The last time I did leather on a tray, it was a flat custom panel, this one has some details that make it a bit more of a pain to keep clean. Luckily, most of this will be covered with other parts. After trimming and wrapping the edges around. I did go back after this picture and re-do the MB tray. I had cut it straight at the top and bottom edges and realized that it looked horrible, so I went back and wrapped the leather around the edges the second time. Next up the chrome!
That MB tray screams for an underlay of 1/4" foam. This is pretty much why it exists. Also, Don't use that can of contact cement on vinyl, it melts. I should know.
I wanted to try the cement cause I thought it might stick a little better than the Super 77. It didn't. Luckily, it didn't melt anything for me.
Now for the chrome. Like on GT cars, I just wanted some accent parts, not a ton of it. So naturally I'm going to paint the biggest plastic trim part on the case chrome. I went with Molotow chrome, and although it is amazing, over large parts, it's difficult to get a good chrome look with the small tip I'm running on my air brush. There was a lot of playing around with technique. I also hit the back case feet with the chrome. I was trying for some chrome on some interior trim parts, but they didn't come out so well. Too large of an area to get the effect to come out and they were just overboard. Next I started piecing it all together. I wanted to make sure I wasn't screwing myself over somewhere and have to go back and do some more modifications after the fact. And also, this is a pretty simple mod, so it didn't take much to get it ready. Some color change and leather is enough to really class it up. I went with InWin's Polaris fans. Partly because I have a bunch of them, partly because I like the look, and partly cause they daisy chain. You mean I can have fans that I don't have to buy, that work, look good, and fit the case, and there's only one fan wire to deal with, sign me up. Then I started putting the chrome parts on, the front panel and the back feet. The grilling covers most of the chrome so not much actually shows. The holes to the right of the pass throughs are drive bay mounts and they come with little trim covers to block them off. Originally I was going to chrome these and then put some veneer in the center to make it look like a wood accent with a chrome ring. But like I mentioned before, the chrome didn't want to play nice on these parts and in the end, it just didn't look right. So I covered them in the leather as well. I think they fit perfectly. Next up... Thanks for following along!
This could have been an option for just about anything late 60's-early 70's. Honestly, it's a Chevy truck color from the early 2000's that I've never seen on a truck.
And now for the paint. As you could tell from the last post, I was going with a green. Med. Cypress Green to be exact, that was available on Chevy trucks around the early 2000's. It wasn't exactly what I had in my head, but I couldn't really walk into the paint shop and check out their Aston Martin color sheets. So I went with a green I liked that they could mix in a single stage in the brand I use. I'm painting the 'brushed' aluminum looking parts and the PSU shroud cover. That amounts to the cover, the top panel, front panel, and a lower front panel. I didn't spray the off side door for a couple of reasons. First being that I was sticking to the panels that they decided needed special finishing, the brushed effect, and also, I'm never gonna look at that side, so why paint it? It looked a bit weird to me at first but it grew on me after I considered the symmetry of it with the dark glass on the other side. While that was drying, I decided that I needed to touch up part of the front panel. I had painted the whole thing chrome, but a sliver of it sits under the glass/off side door, so I taped it off and hit it with some black from an airbrush. That left a thin chrome strip between the grilling and the side panel. Much nicer. With that done, it was time to start transplanting from fusion. I went with a standard GPU, which is a bit weird for me, but I'm not looking for crazy. Custom cables of course, in a super dark charcoal with aluminum combs really fit the car aesthetic. Unfortunately I ran out of sleeving material when I got to the GPU. No more charcoal, the black sleeve I had was crap, and no other color that went with the build, so I'm bare wiring it till I get some more in. But I had to get everything back up and running because this is my main rig and I was doing this the first or second weekend of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep being out. Had to get my grind on. The last pic doesn't really do it justice since I have horrible lighting in my computer room, but you get the gist. For the CPU cooler, I'm running a Noctua C-14S, which you can barely see through the glass, but more on that later. Thanks for following along!
Meh, It's just a quick pic with my phone, I'm not that concerned about it I've still got a little more to add
So I got some parts in to finish up the build. The first one being a Noctua NF-A14 Redux. I like the gray color of this versus the brown of the standard Noctua fans. This will replace the stock A14 on the C14S Noctua cooler. The Redux doesn't come with the isolation pads so I stole them off the stock A14 and they actually look pretty good with the Redux and the leather trim in the case. You can also see I got my paracord for the GPU cables. I went with gold for a bit of contrast and it goes well with the green. And that's it. Pretty simple mods but I really like the way it gives the case a nice classy look. Just what you'd expect in a refined touring car. And now some final shots. Thanks for following along!
