Well, the case is already black and the weather this time of year doesn't cooporate well with spray painting, so I'm sticking with a black case. I am going to mod the chasis of the case though as there's a LOT of space being occupied by those rails you mount the HDD to. I'm thinking of stripping the black off the chasis and re-painting it ultra flat so there's no uv reflections. I'm shooting for having ONLY what I want lit up showing - I may end up tinting the side window... EDIT:: I'm also thinking of tossing that piece of metal behind the plexi front bezel and just painting the back of the bezel instead. Would be easier to get the hole for the front blow hole lined up.
don't toss the metal peice! I don't think the bare chassis looks that good. I guess if you are going for a more industrial look it would look good. What I did to get the blow hole right was first cut the 80mm stock grill off then with black marker I traced the hole and screw locations onto the backside of that metal plate. It aligned perfectly once I found the center of the circle I traced. Not very difficult at all.
What I'm thinking is to painting the backside of the acrylic instead of screwing around with that metal piece. I'm hoping that will create enough space for me to put a piece of neon string between the acrylic and chasis.
okay, I got it now. You should not have any problem with spacing since you can just back out the front face screws a bit to allow clearance. You could also use some of that flat EL strip stuff. I beleive it comes in different colors. I was thinking of doing something like that for my server case but lighting tintes acrylic from the sides with LED's and etching text onto the acrylic. Labels mostly for Power, Reset, etc. It would be a 3 layer acrylic face like I have planed for my window.
Return of Ground Zero It has been a really long time since I worked on this project, life happens. I fixed all the broken picture links also. Anyway, I started working on the rig a couple of days ago and finally got through part of the window. Here is where I am at:
