Case Mod - In Progress RIVALRY - BitFenix Phenom - GIGABYTE GIVE AWAY

A small update.

I murdered the plate I teased above here accidentally. It was my own fault. I was being hasty and grumpy and I should have let it untill someone could help me. :facepalm:
New plexi is on the way and the lasercutter has been informed. This week a new one will be made and I hope I won't kill that one xD
All in the game of modding I guess.

On a brighter note. Last time I ordered a bigger piece of the more dark smoked grey plexiglass to also make the side windows from it.
Here is the testfit of one side. I am REALLY happy how it turned out. It is really dark when it is dark inside the case. But when a light on inside of it I am 100% sure you can see everything. Exactly how I hoped it would be.

Here are some photos.

 

Nice work, I really like something about this build. Can't put my finger on it. Got my MOTM vote

 

Thanks a lot Justin! That really means a lot coming from you. I hope you like the next update as well when I put it up in a few days.

 

Time for a big photo update.
I had the front and top cover I showed earlier lasered again. Since I broke the first one.

This time I didn't break it and actually managed to bend it ok. It isn't as perfect round as I wanted, but I still think it is good enough to not having to redo it.

I also mirrored the first doorpanel to the second one. I wanted two of the same doorpanels and windows.

I managed to forget to take photos of the repainted doorpanels. I painted them mat black and the finish is much more like the front and top than the original colour of the doorpanels. It is actually a really nice finish.















Here is a fitting of all the panels. I am quite happy with the outcome.
It is very hard to take photos of. I will have to ask for assistance on that later on as I have no photographing skills at all. In real life the contrast between een mat black finish of the case and doorpanels vs the shiney smoked plexiglass is very nice. Also from some angles you can see the fans through the plexi and other angles you can't. I also like the agressive look of the case.

You can still see some white lines I drew on the case for the hole allignment, drilling, etc. I will need to take them off anyway to do some final stuff on the outside.

Next up is to create a clean inside as well, hide all wires, sleeve wires, sleeve PSU etc. Enough to do.



































What do you people think about the stand-offs? Should I paint them mat black as well?

 

Amazing work Tim! Always great to see a drawing/concept come to life, and it sure does look agressive >

About the standoffs, I think you should keep them like this since one of the other colors will be white or gray'ish. It gives a nice contrast and a more industrial look.

 

I thought it looked a bit weird with the side panels only.. But now you have that front/top panel added.. It looks great!

 

Thanks Ian, I was thinking about that as well. The industrial look. Others have said to me that I should defenitely make them black xD

What a few people advised was to try it with a piece of antracite heatshrink. Maybe that is an idea, it can be removed quite easily if it is not the look I want.

Thanks a lot
I was affraid with only the side windows fitted it would look odd. I always had this in my mind so to me it was just work in progress.

 

That front/top cover looks great!

 

Love the stood off plexi!

 

Thanks a lot Mr X!

Thanks man.

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Another few work in progress photos. I will create two covers on the inside that should hide all wiring from the eye except for the parts that go into the motherboard and into the GFX card.

This is the first piece. I took a piece of smoked plexi. Drew gfx on it to let the air through into the case. Then used the Jiggsaw to get it out. Bent the edges using a heatgun and testfitted it here. The plastic foil is still on the cover. The GPU wiring will go under it, behind it and then enter at the top to go into the connectors with a nice flow.
I made it so the gfx card will fit exactly.

The second cover will go from front to back to cover the sides of the PSU up to the mobo and all the way forward to this cover. I am not 100% sure on the shape of it. Somehow it must fit the cables and also fit the quad SSD setup AND look good at the same time.

















Untill next update.

 

I now have 2 weeks off so in between spending this time with my family I can actually get some modding done

Today I worked on the placement of the on/off switch and usb ports etc. There is not really a need for reusing them, but in the spirit of the Ncase I wanted to have them down in the front. In the photo's the covers still need a final layer of paint.
Also the plexi cover is off for the fitting etc so in the final photos the knobs and ports will be a bit further in the back/deeper into the case.

Since I was using my Dremel I also cut of the left and right flaps attached to the motherboard tray. I have plans for a cover and they were "in my way" to get that done ^^

 

I went to work on another piece today. The cover for the PSU area.
Again I used a piece of smoked plexi and attacked it with a saw, then some hot air and a tad filing. And to finish it off 4 holes with my drill.
This was probably the easiest cover but it fits like a glove.

I am still not sure wether I will keep it shiny and smoky like this or paint it matt black.

 

Jup, approved! The ports at the front came out really good

 

Thanks Ian!

 

Nice progress Hukkel! Keep it up

 

Thanks a lot bro!

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So I wanted to also make a cover for the rear fan but the gfx card is dangerously close in the way. Knowing I would make a backplate for the gfx card as well I needed to make that first in order to know how much room I had for the fan-cover.
I have made one using the same smoked acrylic and wanted to try and retail some of the WIndforce 3 cooler shape in it. In my opinion it would look odd with the cooler sticking out the side of the backplate on all sides.
Also I like the Gigabyte new "eye" logo a lot, but I rather do things a tad different. My good friend Ian helped me out (as he always does) and we created a bit more of an evil dragon/snake/cat eye. Something a bit more sinister fitting the theme without using skulls and bones and stuff. The reason why the gfx are in the left 12 cm of the backplate is because this way the gfx are visible when the gfx card is inside the build. The big aircooler is blocking the rest of the rear of the card. I didn't want only the tip of the gfx sticking out. I have just painted the IO shield of the gfx card matt black. That is drying currently. Tomorrow hopefully I can show a picture of how it looks inside the build with the cpu cooler partly in front of it.

 

Again a small update.
I painted the IO slot for the gfx card matt black. Now the entire gfx card has this dark theme to it. I could paint the fans as well but I kinda want them to stick out a bit.







Here you can see that the backplate gets covered by the CPU cooler for quite a bit.
But the eye doesn't get covered this way.

Pls note that 2 of the inside covers still have the ugly foil on them for protection.





I bought this used fancontroller by NZXT. I wanted this because it actually gives some decent wattage per channel and it has slides which is what I wanted for this build.
I will take the front end off and fit it directly to the plexiglass middle cover.
I was actually doing that this evening and then I cracked it so I need to make a new middle section cover now :facepalm:





And 2 more photos of the gfx card on it's back. I think it makes the card look very smooth.

 

I created a plexi cover for the middle part and incorporated the fancontroller in it. I originally wanted to put it on the side but there seems not to be enough space for it sadly.

The slides don't stick out above the plexiglass. I specifically didn't want that.
This fancontroller has 30W per channel if I am correct. So I can make one or two channels free for LED strips as well.

I still want to have some kind of foam behind the standing frontcover. The hole is too open for my liking.

Anyway here are again some work in progress photos.

 

Very nice solution for the fan controler. And the backplate turned out very cool! Now I get why the logo had to be placed there haha

 

Thanks Ian! Yeah otherwise it would have been blocked off completely

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I have come to the point where I am getting closer to getting this system ready. I still have some things I need to think about. But I can't judge it untill it is completely done.
Wether it needs some kind of decal or if I should keep it completely black.

Anyway I am going to start on the creating cables, shortening cables, sleeving cables, cablemanagement etc.
Started with creating a few holes for cables to run through. First off are the 24 pin, the PCI-E cable and the front buttons etc.

I will file them in a more perfect square later on, I need to buy me some precision files for that.