So I've been looking at this forum for over a year now, drooling at my monitor, wishing that I were able to mod as skillfully as the people on here. And now, I have a little bit of money, and have decided to try my hand at this. This being my first mod, I didn't even bother to find a sponsor, so this will be fully self-financed. At the start of this year I did a personal project for school, and decided to build a computer for it. During this build I bought a Thermaltake Level 10 GT case, but now I've decided to throw my current PC components into my old Antec DF-30 case, and mod the GT. Being so enthusiastic about my first mod, I started on it before I remembered to take photos for the log, so please excuse the cut in the side panel and fan cover. I know that this is my first mod, and I'm obviously not overly experienced, but I was never good at planning, nor drawing anything, so with a few ideas in my mind I decided to simply pull the case apart and see what comes to mind in terms of modding it. Original case: The case in pieces on my bed: My plan so far is to replace the fan on the side with an acrylic cover to showcase the hardware inside the case, so I needed to cut out the mesh on the fan cover, and extend the hole on the metal panel. The mesh was cut out okay, but the edges still need to be touched up with a file. Only problem I had with it, was cutting the panel with my dremel. The panel being 1mm SECC is extremely hard to cut using a dremel cut-off piece. I ground 3 1.5" pieces down to 1/4" and broke 2 mandrels. I need to wait until next week to buy a jig-saw to finish the job. This is what the panel looks like after 3 cut-offs: The fan cover so far: That's it for now. Should have more on Thursday, since I get paid on Wednesday.
Other ides that I have so far: • Remake the HDD hot-swap bays. • Rebuild the top of the case to support a 120x240 radiator rather than a 200mm fan. • Replace mesh on the top of the case at the front to show off the radiator that's going to sit in the top 2 5.25" bays. • Paint the case white. I'm also going to build my first water cooling rig (project full of firsts, isn't it?) into the case. The parts I have in mind so far are: • Koolance CPU-370 CPU Waterblock • Koolance GPU-210 Chipset Waterblock • EK-D5 Dual TOP G1/4 Pump/Reservoir combo • EK-CoolStream RAD XT (240) • 2x Zalman ZM-SF3 Fan (White) Any ideas for the mod, guys? =]
