last week i embarked on my first modding project. bill (aka mnpctech) was a big part in inspiring me -- one look at his turbine cases was enough to make me want to hack up my own box. a couple weeks of checking out others' cases helped me figure what i wanted for my own. i'm going to mod my enlight 7237 case. i bought a spare off of ebay for cheap (shipping was twice as much as the case...bleh) to make it easier. i was already familiar with the case and i felt comfortable modding it. stock config: i just built a new system. amd barton 2500+, abit nf7-s, corsair twinx pc3200 1gb, ati radeon 9700 pro. i've got two western digital 40gb drives in raid 0, and a western digital 200 gb as my media/storage drive. optical drives are a pioneer 116 dvd-rom and a pioneer dvr 106d dvd+-r/rw. what a mess: plans include for a side window, 120mm blowhole (maybe two), turbine 120mm front intake, 80mm rear exhaust, 80mm cold air intake for the cpu fan/heatsink, neatly wired interior, front usb/firewire ports, fanbus, new switches for power and reset, hdd cooler turbine intake. color scheme is inspired by my car -- a 1997 chevy camaro z28. it's black with 17" chrome wheels and a red interior. nothing looks hotter than a shiny black car with chrome wheels. the case will have a black exterior, chrome fans/grills, and the interior of the case will be red. last week i started cutting the window panel and painting both panels gloss black. 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of color, wetsanded in between coats. a final wetsanding is need to get that mirror finish, but i'm going to let the paint dry/harden for a while longer before i hit it with the sandpaper one last time. windows panel was cut with a dremel. i debated on getting a jigsaw for the cut, but as it turns out i was able to get my straight cuts straight and my curved cuts, well, curved. after some grinding, filing, and sanding, i was able to achieve a "factory-look" to the cuts. very smooth, and rounded in the corners. underneath the window panel you can see the plexiglas (perspex?) i've already cut. basically a rectangle with a hole cutout for the handle in the panel. i'm going to attach it with 3m heavy duty adhesive tape strips and not use any sort of window molding. i want to show off that cut! the other thing i have been working on is the turbine hdd cooler. i bought an el cheapo 5.25" bay cooler and dismantled it. it came with 3 40mm fans which i will be salvaging. after stripping it to the plastic frame, i cut 3 sections of 1" pvc pipe to 7/8" with a hacksaw and epoxied them to the back of the frame. i'm hoping i can still make use of those 4 screwholes for mounting the fans once i'm done. i had to grind down the inner part to get the pipe to fit, but otherwise its a perfect fit. i'm going to fill those inside edges in with some bondo. the slots for mounting the stock grill were gooped up with some epoxy and will also be filled with bondo. thats it for now. yesterday i dismantled a black keyboard and painted it metalcast red (anodized look). turned out pretty good. i've been lapping some heatsinks too, but i think the blowhole cut is going to be next: used the outside of my 120mm front duct for the circle. hope it turns out ok with the dremel.
thanks. i named it after my car basically (z28), because i'll be painting it in the same color scheme (black/chrome/red).
ohhh turbine PC..will be watching with interest...GL and welcome Ohh and by the way...v.nice paint jobby
got a few more things done. mainly i've been working on the hdd cooler this week. here's a couple of shots: The first picture shows the cooler filled with Bondo Spot Filler and Putty and then sanded. I think I put another couple applications on after that picture to smooth everything out. I thought it was going to look pretty good until I primed. Notice in the top right corner, its not a perfectly smooth curve. Considering this case is going to be black, I can't have imperfections like that. So this week I used Bondo filler to help smooth things out. The putty is easy to sand and work once its dry, the filler is much harder. I just primed it again last night and I have just a few spots to fix. Definitely looks better. The other thing I've worked on is my motherboard tray. I sanded, primed, and painted it with Metalcast groundcoat and had some problems. Granted, thats not the best picture but at about the 3/4 mark vertically you can see a darker strip...when I looked closely it looked like the spray can farted out twice as much metal flake as the rest of the tray. Last night I cut a hole for power cable access and wetsanded the whole tray. I am going to get another can of Groundcoat and shoot it again. Hopefully it will be more uniform. Got my case fans this week (Stealth 120mm x2, 80mm x1) so I can start cutting up the chassis and front bezel.
real nice work so far. One tip on sanding those ducts that Linear imparted on me for sanding acrylic and should work well for you here is to cut your sandpaper in strips (maybe about around and inch or less wide) and you can use it on those edges like dental floss. It works really well for rounding edges like that. Can't wait to see more progress...
been plugging away this week. in addition to some painting, i've been working on the top of the case. first i cut the blowhole and after that i felt that the top...needed something. so i tried my hand at drawing some flames, and cut them out. and after now i will be the first to admit that it looks kinda rough. however, i am pretty much done trimming and sanding one side and they actually look pretty good. no pics of that right now, unfortunately.
Wow thats some nice dremel work, can;t wait to see it cleaned up. Ambitious design for your first project, but looks like you've pulled it off well.
That HDD cooler should look gorgeous when it's got the fans in I love the look of a bare intake fan without a grill; it breathes power.
quick update. I finished the motherboard tray. 2 coats of Metalcast Groundcoat (had to wetsand the first coat, it was really rough), 3-4 light coats of the Metalcast Red, 2 coats of lacquer clear. Turned out really nice. I am in love with how it turned out actually...a deep, rich, metallic red. It's a lot of work, but worth it in my opinion. Forgive the noise in the picture, my digital camera couldnt get a good meter reading in the room. That squarish hole I cut on the right side of the tray is going to be used to route cables.
here's another batch of updates. this was the work i completed this past weekend. first up you will see my window panel. i decided to accentuate the clean cut with a border of metalcast red. the black is dull because it has already been wetsanded...once the red cures i will do a final light wetsanding and shoot it with some clear. i cant wait to see it in all of its shiny glory... i really cant say enough about this metalcast paint. yeah, its two stage (silver base, color) and both paints are finicky to lay down, but when you dont have a problem the color is just amazing. a real rich, deep, metallic red. i will say this though -- its tough to lay down a uniform coat. which is why i think its mainly good for smaller parts and stripes/graphics/designs. i also began hacking up the front bezel. from the top: first 5.25" bay is for the sunbeam rheobus. i took a blank bay cover and drilled the appropriate holes. 2nd bay down is my modified hdd cooler. the 3rd and 4th bays will house my dvd-rom and dvd-r. the blank 3.5" bay is for my floppy, but i am debating on whether i really need one or not. and the 2nd 3.5" bay is my modified usb/firewire front ports. because of the massive 120mm front intake, i had to relocate the ports slightly. hacked up the original device and epoxied it together with a blank 3.5" cover. so far everything has been epoxied in place and i can begin filling everything in with bondo. you may notice the mesh behind the original power and reset buttons -- this will also be filled with bondo. i'm pretty happy with how things turned out so far! thanks for the comments so far guys, its neat to get feedback on the progress. considering this is my first mod job, its cool to know i am doing some quality work. i AM trying to go for a professional look here, if only because i dont want a hackjob sitting on my desk!
i forgot to add progress on the cut flames. just been working on the bottom, still a little ways to go. ignore the red paint, i was trying out a paint pen. applies crappily so it wont be used.
All looks gd, nice progress. If you are bondo'ing the original Power and Reset switches, where are they going to be reloacted too?? The inside of the top of the 120 mm blowhole, out of sight, to give a nice clean look ?? -cLoWn
a little overdue for an update...but still have been plugging away. first up is the non-window side panel. lots of real estate here so i am going to do a metalcast red flame design. here's my masking progress...the blue fineline masking tape looks kinda cool on the black. completely masked.... and then the design which will be cut out of the masking tape... the bezel has been taking alot of time, and i'm not completely happy with it yet. first coat of primer revealed some spots to fix, plus some of the contours arent doing much for me yet. here's a shot before primer: lastly, here's the top after primer. i still have some detail filing to do:
Good work fella - that massive blowhole is gonna look dead smart - looking forward to seeing it finished.
