Since completing my wife's new computer (project dolphin) I had a old but nice rig to deal with, I originally wanted to use it for an upgrade to my 2008 garage computer ... but situations and furloughs meant I would be better off selling her old computer. All I had to do is slap an age appropriate graphics card into it, post it on ebay and call it a 2013 "gaming pc" As I was putting the finishing touches on its clean up I got a text, from a buddy at work saying "hey man my son's birthday is coming up and he really wants a gaming pc, he is all into fortnite and all his cousins have PC's and he has a xbox"... proceeded by a fairly low number well gee golly great timing have I got the fortnite PC for you at that low ass number. Chatting with him the following Monday I mentioned yea he will be ok for what he wants right now, future upgrade would be a graphics card, maybe a xmass gift but fortnite would run fine on this computer ... too bad its not in a "gamer" computer case that would top things off. In response I heard, "well I got this old ratty ass PC in the basement that is in a gamer case, its got a window and giant fan's". I cant say no to making something cooler so I said yea sure it would take 15 min to swap cases. It took much longer but still knocked it out in 1 weekend. So lets go form this... To oh ****
The original computer inside the case was OG core 2 duo on an Intel essentials board and 2 gigs of ram, that crap needed removal asap. Next up is the umpteen gallons of dust accumulated on every part of the machine as a it was ran forever with just a wipe down every once in a while. After that it got the garden hose to remove the fine stuck dust in the case. The case was broken down to subsections and prepped for paint. This case, though originating from the early / mid 2000's got a face lift with fine front mesh metal, though committing the sin of having fine mesh over fine mesh for the front intake. The 120 mm intake fan mesh was replaced with much more breathable expanded aluminium, and it and the front mesh was painted blue with krylon fusion paint. Why krylon fusion? cause I had it, why blue, cause the motherboard in my wife's old computer was a gigabyte UD board with blue solder mask, and the PSU was a corsair model with blue labels and a blue fan lite ... what was I suposta do for a boy ... make it pink? Also the ULTRA brand name plate was painted with the same blue and once dry had its face sanded so it was silver again, so silver on blue vs the stock silver on black
All the exterior panels got a good sanding (cause alligator skinned glossy black is soo 2004) and painted with fusion satin black. The passivated steel interior got painted the same blue as the front mesh. Front panel connectors were sleeved, hard plastic feetz were replaced with vibration dampening rubber bumpers of the same size, and all features on the side panel were drilled and tapped to replace the split wedge plastic fasteners with chrome plated machine screws. I also masked off a blue stripe to match the front cover and painted it with the same blue used on the case framework.
I wanted to theme this case with fortnite, but did not want to over do it, so piece of 3 mm acrylic was cut to fit within the side window and cover up the drive bay's, this way if the preen ever gets tired of fortnite its a removable panel. Once cut the back was painted white and the front was masked off and painted the same blue as the rest of the case. Using the same mounting screws as the side window, the plate is secured with 3 nuts giving easy removal in the future.
Finally with a little ultra fine sanding, and a good clear coat of laquor on top the machine can come back together, just in time for a 12 year old's birthday Gigabyte z77x-ud3h Ultra Durable motherboard 16GB Patriot DDR 3 1866 Memory Intel I7 3770K Base clock 3.9GHZ boost 4.3 on stock heat sink in a hot ass garage EVGA GTX760 super clocked 2 GB DDR5 250GB SSD + 1 TB HDD 600 watt Corsair GS series PSU Fortnite running at 1080p on a 75hz screen in game, average FPS 72
