Project: Blade **PSOne LCD installed and operational**

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm using Krylon metal spraypaint for the chassis, Fusion only for the plastic. Thanks Whiteagle for the idea to warm the paint cans in water, I think I'll do that. I'll be painting tomorrow morning, we'll see how it goes.

 

Wellll eeeerrmm NO Chrome looks good on anything (think they will get me a coffin with a chrome edge when i die ?? )

 

Maybe (dus toch onder Resetter )

 

looks nice and clean

 

Awsome job keep up the great work. loking forward to an update.

 

Hi everyone,

I'm afraid that I wasn't able to get a digital camera so there won't be any pics today That's what happens when you don't own one yourself and you have to try and borrow one when you need it!

The good news is that the chassis and power supply are now a beautiful shiny black! Despite what I said earlier, I did decide on black and I'm glad I did. It looks fantastic with the rest of the case. I still have to give it a couple more coats tomorrow then clear coat it on Saturday. Once that's done, it'll be time to start moving hardware in. I'm starting with the power supply and fans, and I'll be spending quite a bit of time wiring it up before anything else goes in; I want the wiring to be as perfect as can be in this box. I'll definitely be able to get a digital camera next week, and hopefully sooner. Sorry again for the lack of pics, I know that words are pretty useless when describing a project, you have to see it!

Thanks to everyone for their comments and suggestions!

 

Wow great work there man looking very sweet

 

I'll be waitign. Keep up the Awsome work youve done.

 

BUMP

NICE!

 

I was gonna put a window kit on my coffin, and underclock the coffin fans to 7v to make them quieter.. Maybe add some cathodes.

 

Thanks again for the nice comments guys! Here's a small update. Unfortunately it's picture free again, but I PROMISE I'll have a digital camera this week to take a TON of pics. I know I promised that last week as well, but I swear it will happen this week.

I'm not rushing anything at this point, and how the case looks on the inside is just as important as the outside to me. I'm glad I'm at the point now where anything I do can't permanently damage the case

I painted the chassis and PSU black, and they look great! I've started to move the hardware into the chassis. All 7 case fans and grills are in place, and the front 2 intake fans are sleeved and wired into the Vantec fanbus. All wires will run behind the motherboard tray and drive bays so no unsleeved wires will be visible. The wires that run to the motherboard for power, reset, HD access etc are all sleeved. As I mentioned in a previous update, the fans I am using can be wired into the HD header on the motherboard to show HD access, so I wired and sleeved the front 2 fans up with the regular HD LED. If it works, I'll have the HD LED and both front fans flashing red with HD access.

Today I'll be picking up a couple chrome fan grills for my PSU. It came with gold grills that just don't match the silver theme I have going on. Once I put those on, I'll move the PSU in and then I'll really be able to get going.

As a test, I wired all the fans and the cold cathodes into the fanbus and hooked it up to the PSU in my other case just to test the lighting. It looks great! I'm confident this is going to look really good when all is said and done.

I should have some really nice pics up within the next few days, so hang in there! With any luck I'll be able to get some lighted pics up at that time. Thanks again for the support and encouragement! You guys rock!

 

Finally, new pics!

First off, I must apologize for the crappy picture quality, they were taken with a digital camcorder, and the built in cameras always suck on those.

Since the last photos, I've done the following:

-hand filed all the cuts to near perfect smoothness
-blacked out the edges of the cuts on the side panels and top panel
-painted the power supply, chassis, and PCI covers
-painted the fronts of the CD drives and floppy drive, then painted the entire drive (both CD's and the floppy drive)
-installed the fans, fanbus and power supply in the chassis
-sleeved all visible wiring, and routed all extra wiring behind the motherboard tray

Basically, it's all ready to have my hardware moved into it now. I'm hoping to do that today and get it up and running. Onto the pics:

From the front and back with all panels off, showing off the black chassis:





Nice black drives. The pictures don't do them justice, they look fantastic.



From all sides, with panels on.





Close up of the top, you can see the chrome sleeved wiring running from the fanbus:



One last shot:



I have ordered silver rounded IDE cables and a blue 92mm LED fan for the CPU. It's probably hard to tell from the pics, but the grills on the PSU are gold, so I've ordered chrome ones to match. This case has front cables for USB, firewire and sound, but my board only supports USB. I'll be black sleeving those wires and hiding the firewire and sound ones, and running the USB ones to my motherboard. The back USB ports cables running to the PCI slots will be sleeved black as well. I didn't want those ones to stand out so much, so I decided on black rather than chrome. They should blend in nicely with the black bottom of the case. I still have to decide where to mount the two cold cathodes, but that's farther down my priority list at this point. Once it's fully up and running and lit up, I'll get some good quality pics to post. Thanks for all your support!

 

I moved all my hardware into the case last night. It felt damn good to see it light up for the first time! I've never had a fanbus before so I had fun playing around with it. After I moved all the hardware in, I sleeved all the internal USB and cold cathode cables with black sleeving and heatshrink. It all looks fantastic. I'll make sure to post a bunch of pics once I get my IDE cables and CPU fan next week.

I have one question that I'm hoping I can get some help on. When I first got my fanbus (the Nexus with 3 channels and the cold cathode hookup), I tested it by hooking up all the fans and the two cold cathodes and they were nice and bright, almost too bright to look at. Now that I've moved it into the case and hooked everything up, I'm having some strange issues. Both of the cold cathodes are very dim, and sections of the tube are totally dark. Then, the bottom one lit up fully and was just as bright as before, but the top one stayed dim. Today, both are dim again. I'm not sure what the issue is, and I've never had cold cathodes before so I don't know what might be going on. The fans are lit up and running just fine. I hope the fanbus is OK, I don't want to have to RMA it. Any ideas? I haven't had much time to play around with it so I'll do that later, but any advice would be appreciated.

 

Try moving the wires around right next to the CCFL bulb. You probably just have a wire bent to much.

 

Yeah isisfreak is probably right. When the wires are bent in wierd ways the cathodes tend to dim and sometimes go out its most likely just the cables.

Kickass work btw. I love it.

 

I'm sure you guys are right about that. I'm at work right now so I'll check that when I get home. I had routed the wires as neatly as I could to hide the cables, so they likely are bent. Looks like I'll have to rethink my wiring plan for the cathodes. Thanks a lot for the replies! You all get a

 

looking very nice


take the sticker off the fan

 

Thanks for reminding me TekMonkey. I was actually planning on covering the center of the fans with some silver sticker or foil or something but I had totally forgotten about it. I'll have to get on that!

If you all like it now, just wait until I get the finished pictures up next week. Those pics will be taken with a proper camera (the same one used for the initial pics). I can't wait to get my IDE cables and CPU fan to finish the job. It already looks amazing even with my crap fan and cables. Stay tuned!

 

It turns out my cold cathodes had dimmed because I sleeved the wires. As soon as I took the sleeving off them, they lit right back up. I don't really want these to be the only unsleeved wires in my entire case, but it's looking like they'll have to be if I want them to work. Has anyone had any luck sleeving cold cathode wires, or doing something else to cover them? Even if I wrap my hands around the wires they dim, so it looks like I can't really cover them with anything. I could black them with a felt marker but I don't know if that'll kill the brightness as well. Any ideas out there? Any help would be appreciated!

 

hi great case I know that you can change the wires with blacks one (I already seen this) but I dont know where you could buy these, be carefull you must use special wire for cold cathode; I will make some search and if I get some result I will edit this post