First time poster here... I am new to the forums, but not so much to the modding scene, although most of my work has been your basic OE upgrades and Overclocking. I had been looking for a new case design to solve some issues I have had with cooling in my last couple of builds. It seems ever since Nvidia came out with the 9800 series and up, the GPU's have gotten exponentially hotter. Anyway, I have been looking around and other than a couple I don't see a lot of builds based on the Silverstone Fortress FT02. I happen to have taken delivery of one recently and am planning my build as we speak. With inspirations from the guys at Murderbox and others, I am hoping to do an Air/water Hybrid system based on my existing components (below) and a few new ones. The main build points for me will be that the case will sit side-facing, instead of the traditional front and it will be at eye level. Due to the cool orientation of the FT02, I felt it was perfect for my ideas. At this point I am planning on having two VFD's on the side panel, one for CPU temps the other for GPU and am debating on really hacking things up and side mounting a shallow optical drive, although I have a really nice aluminum external drive bay I had planned on migrating my DVD drive to. I am curious if anyone has seen any really custom builds using the FT02, or am I and the two or three others here the first? System components: Evga 780Sli Motherboard Intel Q9550 Quad CPU OCZ 8gb DDR2 Ram Evga 9800GX2 GPU Zalman 1000W PSU CPU Cooler (TBA) I will post up some photos as I start mocking things up this week.
Planning Silverstone FT02 Aircooled/ Hybrid Last night I totally disassembled the FT02, I removed the aluminum shell (front/back) and am left with simply the frame. While I was working on sleeving the stock fans, I was laying things out in my mind and started thinking about possibly remaking the entire peice which makes up the front, back and bottom of the case. I took measurments and one would need roughly a 64inch x 8.5inch peice of aluminum to make a single continous peice. WHile I am still playing with the idea, the part that has me stumped or rather I see a challenge is recreating the rear PSU vent with the limitations I currently have in my own tools. If I didn't say it before, this whole project will be done with hand tools and a few small powertools, unfortunately I don't have access to an CNC type machines.
Re creating the rear PSU hole: Paper and cardboard are your friend. The only bit that really matters is the mounting holes. The rest you can cut to fit your own specs. It would be easier for you to overlay a new faceplate over the existing one. The way you will orient the case means you could slap a Mo ra 2 on the back and fix your cooling problems for the next 20 years.
While I have found a supplier for the aluminum that it would take to redo the whole outer fasade, I am on the fence as to whether I want to go to that trouble; it would be a lot of work. For the time being I am concentrating on the interior. I have a lot of wires to sleeve..... I should have my displays tomorrow and can play around somemore with the design, but I took sometime tonight playing with poster board and some sticky notes...lol. Here are a couple shots of my first mockup... I am trying to figure out how to keep access to the hotswap drive bays while making everything look nice and clean with the side-panel off. I am sort of proud of this one. Sort of looks like a Rad for a water cooler system..... I'd kind of like to recreate the same lines on the top part of the case as well..... As it will sit in the bookcase.
Time for suggestions: Silverstone FT02 build OK time to ask for some opinions; "is that really wise?" -- We all know what happens when we open things up for comment... Anyway, spent the evening mostly working on my wiring and ordered the parts I need to make sure I can do things the right way, but I did play around a little with my design. My question is, what do you guys think looks best? How do you think I should try and cleanup the right side of the case? While I will do a complete resleeve job, the main 24-pin ATX, 8-pin CPU plus a couple other wires are hardwired into the PSU and will hang down a few inches below the supply, so I would like to hide that -- should I go angled as in picture 1, or cut it off like in picture 2, or are there any other bright ideas out there. Keeping in mind my PSU is a Zalman ZM1000-HD and with the exception of a tiny vent above the modular panel there are no ventilation (intakes) on the bottom half of the PSU, so ventilation is not a big issue, although if I did the angled version (picture 1) I could cut vent slots. The other version would be open. (Picture 2 is not my latest mockup, the piece shown actually now hangs down another 2-inchs and is rounded back up underneath the PSU with about a 2.5" open space above the fan. The part that looks awkward to me is the transition to the bottom of the case, with the big'ol fan at the bottom, I don't want to have a piece of Alum. right down the middle of the grill and the opening in the second version looks off. I like thigs symetrical, not to mention with everything else in the case at nice right angles, that angled piece looks out of place... maybe in a Ravon 02 case, but not this one. The other option is to leave this whole panel off and let the PSU be visible, although the black chrome finish is nice, it doesn't exactly fit into my design.
Nope, I wish... it is an old 9800GX2. Still hanging on to it for a while longer..... will eventually go with either a pair 470GTX or 480's, assuming we don't see the 475/485 within next 6 months.
I finally got someone to help me out on the project.... He keeps getting into my coffee though. His name is funky monkey...
UPDATE: I will post photos later, but I am at the final mock-up stage and should be finalizing my design later this week (hopefully today) and can post it for general consumption and comment. Once I get the layout down I can go to the machine shop and start making the parts.
Ok, I am getting to the point that I can't do any more with out my raw materials. Unfortunately here in the states we just had a long holiday weekend and UPS and Fedex actually took a couple days off, either that or my vendors fudged on their shipping dates b/c they did.... Anyway, I can't do any more until my Aluminum arrives or the rest of my hardware (screws, standoff's, etc). So here is the last shots I have. Starting with some special effects work - ...and me painting the mobo I/O plate ...LCD mounting ...and final mock-up before the machine shop Enjoy... more I hope in the next 4-5 days and I can also maybe fire this baby up.
I am still waiting on my raw materials but went back and started hitting on some other points of my mod. The next stages found me starting to sleeve my cables and paint various odds and ends I would need for the install. Unfortunately, I have had a number of issues with shipping on my parts so the whole project has been delayed on a number of occasions, but finally the important stuff started arriving. On to my sleeving… the design itself will be all black, so I chose a simply black sleeve with black shrink wrap. I went through the 24-pin connector, cpu connector, fans and others one by one. Some turned out better than others. I next moved out to my workshop and continued the painting of various parts. And finally, I decided to start test fitting stuff and to finalize my templates made earlier. I also at this point made my first big change in the design, but going to a liquid CPU cooler from straight air. At this stage I have my motherboard and GPU mounted, all my wires sleeved and a pretty good idea of what my design will look like. While I wish I could be slightly farther along, this is all I have for now.
When I had the case around I thought about modifying so that the 5,25" bays would face down and the bottom would make the new front bezel. Kinda turn it back into more traditional layout. It would have required close to zero work and been kinda funny IMO But yeah this one is going to be so much better, keep up the good work.
Silverstone FT02: Evolution 8.0 Well, I finally got some time to work on my project. I decided to tackle the fan shroud this past weekend, however the bending brake I use to bend my metal for the 90 degree angle was too short 18-brake, and the shroud was 22-inches. so I had to start all over again (bent and mangled my first attempt) and ended up getting a machine shop to bend it for me for only $5.00 US. I then cut and working on filing everything down. In the end I got it painted and think it looks pretty good, although I drilled my screw holes slighly off and am unsure how to remedy without starting over, I guess I could fill them in and repaint. ... But I am really proud of how things are progressing... while not on par with the build quality of some of you guys builds and honestly my ideas almost always out paces my actualy skill level, but do think it at least has some potential, and being modular in design, I can always go back and redo parts as I have time and my skill improves. ...another couple of days and I should be able to fire her up.... and that will be scary, since I am still second guessing myself on my PSU re-wiring, although I know I triple checked everything.
First Fire!! Well I fired her up yestarday and all works as advertised. I am having some issues getting both the displays to scroll at the same time. One keeps freezing, while the other keeps going, but I will work through it. Here ya go.... still more to come. I still have to cut aluminum for the cover over the displays, that is still card-board if you're wondering.
To me your skill level is very good. The individually sleeving looks great, was each wire done all the way to the PSU or just what is visible? Definitely watching this one and love to see the finished product!
