Case Mod - In Progress Project: Fluttershy - Almost Finished!

everything goes very well in there

 

@Ziip I was thinking of doing that, but after looking at the position of the screws, it looks like you have to remove the entire cooler unit from the pcb to take the shroud off. I have a way round it though, I'm going to make a backplate with a 90 degree bend that covers the whole pcb and front of the gfx card then paint it. That way I get the shroud and the pcb covered! When I get my other cpu fan painted that will also help to break up the block of black.

@spigs Thanks! The only thing I haven't modded to fit the theme so far are the hard drives but they are on the list of things to be done.

 

Fluttershy is closer to my personality but every time pinkie pie comes on the screen I can't help but smile

 

Update 27th January

Philosophical thought of the day...



I wonder if Fluttershy tastes of lemons? Oh well, on with the update!

@FlooterDex That's good to hear! Feel free to ask if you need help with anything, just send me a PM.

This weather has been playing havoc with all the painting I need to do but I have got a couple of things done. It's taken me 4 days just to try and get the paint on the cathode inverter to work out right, let alone all the rest of the things that need painting! While waiting for the paint to try and sort itself out I've managed to complete a few more bits and pieces though.



The keyboard I got for this project has a detachable cable so here's that along with the power cable for the cathode inverter sleeved and the plug for the power cable painted pink.

CPU cooler fan painted and sleeved. Pink plug again and another sticker of Fluttershy's cutie mark to replace the standard one.





Another item totally changed to fit the theme is the white cathode I'm going to install along the bottom of the case. I painted the cubes at each end of the cathode and the power plug pink along with more yellow sleeving. I've even put thin black heatshrink over the individual wires at the plug end to remove all traces of the original white.

Finally I've managed to get the mouse painted too!





Mostly yellow and black but I've painted the buttons on the side and top pink. I thought this was for the best as the keyboard will have a lot of pink on it so it sort of balances things out.

I've realised that the HDD LED is totally invisible in the current position so I'm going to rewire the front fan LEDs to show HDD activity. I've also just received some rocker switches with yellow LEDs for the cathode, ceiling exhaust fan LEDs and I'm also going to wire one so I can totally turn off the rear exhaust fan if I want to when the PC is idling or I'm just doing simple stuff like browsing the internet. It's a 256 colour fan that runs off that controller box in the lowest PCI slot position and even though it has it's own fan controller I can't turn it off completely at the minute.

Still a lot to do but at least I'm getting there slowly

 

Its not Fluttershy from what i can see and it does say pinkie pie, but you should totally set this as your boot screen!
And awseomly different project btw!!

 

Thanks Sarakon! It'll definitely be more Fluttershy when I get my vinyls printed, just about to order them
I've actually got Fluttershy as my boot logo thing. I just looped the desktop pony trot animation in Photoshop. It now says 'Loading ponies' instead of Windows and Hoofsoft instead of Microsoft. I just need to get round to sorting the welcome screen and a picture for Fox Logo.

 

Nice I saw the pinkie pie one while looking for a bootscreen of my own and though i should at least mention it!

 

omg omg idea! You know the logon sound for Windows? Change it to the Fluttershy "yay" .

 

Lol I've done all that too. The logoff sound is Fluttershy's lullaby

 

May I request some video coverage of this machine when you're done ?

 

Sure, I was thinking of making a video of the boot up process

 

I was thinking the same! Looking forward to it

 

Update 6th February

Here we go with another small update, I've been having issues with painting and stuff due to the temperature but I'm making slow progress. Only one more item to fabricate and paint then the interior will be complete, vinyls to put on when they arrive, a small amount of re-wiring and the keyboard to finish then I'll finally be done!

Here is what I've managed to get done recently though...



The front panel blanking plates before I decided to drill holes in one for some switches. I had a slight problem here though with the switches looking out of place being all black... Easy enough to sort though, seeing as how almost every single item in this build has been painted or modded to fit the theme so time to break out the spray paint (again)



I painted the cathode inverter too, no way that was going to stay black!



Close up of the switches. I only painted the edges to break up the black, there's a few places where this build has black as a detail colour, just too much wouldn't fit in. The LEDs are yellow too!



And the inverter. I also had to do something about the unused white socket that is on the visible side, this time hand painted with yellow paint and a small paint brush.

Here's where the inverter has been mounted.



Right on top of the 3.5" bay with plenty of cool airflow. I also said that I was doing something with the hard drives and this shows that too. I'm very pleased with this, it covers the hard drives and also breaks up the block of black from the HDDs themselves and the shadows between. I still have the black from the mounting mechanisms as a small black highlight. After taking this photo I coloured in the last bit of white on the cathode cable. After the amount of work I've put in to theming this build, every single little detail has to be taken care of if possible.

Finally, one more item for this update.



My hybrid CPU cooler Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro cooler, AC Freezer 7 Pro fan painted with yellow sleeving/heatshrink and pink painted plug. Also finished my cover for the top, painted pink with Fluttershy's element added.

I should have the graphics card cover finished and painted soon so I'll include some overall pictures soon. As well as being a PITA, my camera has decided to eat a couple of the photos I took so I'll take some more with the final cover installed. The whole colour scheme is looking a lot more balanced now with the added pink items.

 

Small update 24th February

No comments on my last update but just wanted to post a small teaser and let you all know that work hasn't stopped on this project. Far from it!! Just that things are taking a lot longer than expected...

This is one of the main culprits



I bet it isn't hard for someone to work out what it is, but this has taken three days of work so far and it's not even ready for painting! Plus it's the third design I've made, one from metal and one from acrylic but I didn't like either So it was back to the drawing board and break out some more sheet styrene. The main structure is 4mm thick, made from two 2mm sheets laminated so lots of time needed for gluing, drying, shaping, filing, sanding... You get the picture. Then I still have to paint it and finish the assembly

Hopefully a major update coming in the next few days as I'm working on another couple of parts and if my vinyls and clear acrylic arrive soon I can post some photos of the case completed

 

crazy color scheme, dude! say, how did you manage to paint the fan blades on the cpu cooler? I've got the same fan but couldn't find a way to detach the blades from the fan case (there doesn't seem to be a way of opening the back of the fan and getting to the little clips that holds the shaft). how did you do it?

 

Don't be disheartened, friend! It's hard to repeat and reiterate just how outstanding this mod is without sounding desperate or disingenuous. I for one eagerly check this thread daily for updates in hopes that there has been progress. So let me assure you, silence is not a bad thing, merely the anticipation of something great!

 

There's usually a circlip under the sticky label on the fan hub.

 

@Snowcrash Thanks! I'm not sure about the Freezer 64 fan but the Freezer 7 one I used you just have to give it a hard yank There's no circlip on this model that I could find but it does come off if you pull it hard enough!

@Malvolio Hey, it's worth it to get that Fluttershy inspirational poster in my worklog! There's daily progress all right but most of it is painting, then waiting, then painting... Or cock-ups like with my latest mystery object. This mod is at that stage now where I only have a few more jobs to do but I'm not giving up on the ethic of modding every last bit so it fits the theme or I'm 100% happy with it. I'm also wanting to do some more unique and interesting things with the last couple of bits. Plus problems with printing suppliers etc... Case should be finished soon once I've got three more jobs done (I hope). Then I still have 104 keys to spray for my keyboard

@IanW No circlip on this particular model. The fan shaft just has a groove to locate it and it appears to be a press fit inside the mechanism. Well, either that or I'm blind and resorted to brute force when it isn't needed but everything seems to be fine...

 

thanks a lot, man you were absolutly right - just needed some force and poped right out (I thought about trying that before but didn't dare use much force in case I break it )

keep up the good work

 

Big update with lots of pictures! March 6th

Well it's about time I posted an update, seeing as how I'm getting close to the finishing line. Well, close as in only having the graphics and keyboard to do...

I left the last update with the mystery item I was making. This damn thing explains the delays, over a week of work went into this making sure it was right After much sanding, more glue, swearing, filing and sanding I got a finish like this on the join after primer. Sorry for the blurriness, macro=epic fail on my camera



Not a drop of filler on this and the join is so smooth it looks like bent acrylic rather than sheet styrene joined to make a right angle. *happy dance*

Then there was eevn more cutting of different bits, lots of painting and some more Photoshop design work to end up with this lot



And assembled



Then finally installed



I've also got a tax refund from many moons ago so I just had to get some upgrades





The spec has changed so much since I started building this! Only common items are the CPU, DVD drive, sound card and one HDD!

Before ASUS M4N68T LE
AM3 Phenom II 840
4GB RAM
7600GT
250GB HDD
1TB HDD
Creative Soundblaster sound card

After Foxconn A9DA-S
AM3 Phenom II 840
8GB RAM
GTX560Ti
2 x1TB HDD
120GB SSD
Sound card

Well, I couldn't just do something simple like paint the SSD mounting cage so time!



Cage painted



Cover constructed, again from sheet styrene



Assembled



And yet another cover made from sheet styrene and fitted to the front. You can also see the wires here, I've added a 2mm piece of clear acrylic between the cage and main cover and it's illuminated by four 3mm yellow LEDs. I'll take some more shots of the full interior tomorrow to show it lit up, damn digicam has run out of batteries and I need to get some more...

I also had some issues with the original front panel switches for the fan LEDs and cathode. I've done electronics for over 25 years but no matter how I connected them I couldn't get the LEDs on them to light up. The switches themselves worked fine but not the LEDs... So, I got some more and decided to alter the design a bit.



Styrene 'washers' to add a bit more pink to the bay cover rather than re-painting the surrounds. This also had the benefits of covering the edges of the holes and made it easy to mark the pink sheet behind the main perforated plate.



Yay! All working fine Not much more to do now, the interior is just about complete. Nothing else I need to do in there thankfully. I've been having some trouble getting a decent quote for the exterior graphics so I'm going to do it myself using gloss labels and just print them myself This will also mean that I will have done every single part of this mod myself which I'm quite proud of!