killnine

!!!SEE POST #2 and #3 for UPDATES!!!

8-12-2007

Well I am here to start my P180B build log. I have seen a lot of good mods on this case and thought that I could do a lot more with it than I have. Most of my inspiration comes from this mod at XS, fantastic job. Given that I have purchased a number of upgrades recently, I figured it was high time to dive into modding while my system was down anyway.

My specs are as follows:

• Intel Q6600 Quad Core
• Crucial Ballistix DDR2 - 800 (4 x 1024)
• ASUS P5W-DH (2206 Bios)
• Seagate 160Gb Hard Drive
• X-fi Fatal1ty Sound Card
• Vista Ultimate (x64)
• G15 Keyboard
• Logitech G18 Optical Mouse
• Logitech Z-5300s & Sennheiser 595s
• PowerColor X1900XT (690/790)

My Watercooling Specs are as follows:

• TDX CPU Waterblock (#1 Nozzle)
• Tyee GPU Block
• Dangerden D5 (Variable Control)
• DangerDen Black Ice Pro (2 x 120)
• Vantec Stealth 120mm Fans

My mod ideas are as follows

• Painting the interior black
• Creating a watercooling loop that fits in the case
• Routing the cables much better (sleeve them, too)
• Insert CCFL and make it look ... classy
• Cut side panel window (for LAN parties)

My apartment living room. As a college student you have to have the futon! Typically I am a neat FREAK, just ask anyone that knows me personally.







My PC before any modding. It has the water cooling installed. Don’t mind the dust, the camera flash really accentuates that.







Gross radiator. Notice that the tubing is going through cuts in the case. Too much movement would DEFINITELY cut those lines. I need to get grommets on them ASAP. I also plan on making my radiator a 3-fan setup (adding one to the bottom, if it doesn’t interfere with any cables).







Here is the inside of my current system. You really have a mess. The pump is just thrown on there with some Velcro and ZIP ties. I really tried to route cables but without any modding its pretty much impossible to get the look I want. Furthermore, my ram seems pretty warm with those 4 DIMMS populated. I am removing the northbridge fan in lieu of an OCZ XTC memory cooler.







Apartment update, not too bad….yet.







Here is the machine with just about everything removed. Notice the bottom right compartment. There is a yucky plate that prevents mounting a 120mm fan in front. I will prep to get rid of that RIGHT AWAY!








Here is a view of the machine with the front cover off. I am going to drill out the rivets to remove that obstructive bottom plate.







Here is a better view of the plate. Its JUST too small for a 120mm fan.







Simplest mod ever. The rivets came out really easy, and I still have the plate if I (God only knows why) wanted to put it back (I have a rivet gun).







Here is a dremmel toolbox my friend lent me. Awesome eh? Gonna do some more modding with this baby.







This panel drops into the 3.5” bay. I don’t have a 3.5” drive and don’t expect to ever use it. I have a USB floppy drive, should I need it. Furthermore, I would rather remove the 3.5” access than remove a 5.25” bay above it. I REALLY need to mod some clearance into the pump region. It’s a mess right now.







Shot with CYBERSHOT at 2007-08-12

Ding, All done.







But the clearance still isn’t where I want it. I chose to cut a little bit into the upper bay because removing it would be a hassle, and prevent me from getting a (4th) drive. Right now I have 2 Optical drives, and my X-fi. If I ever get another LCD panel or something, I want this bay to be accessible. This will allow such expandability.







Awesome. Luckily, Petra’s tech shop is sending out some “C” tubing to make sure those edges get covered up nicely.








Some tape to keep the nice plastic top from being primed.







Coat one of the priming. Got the PCI covers, the PSU “holster”….(unfortunately I forgot the hard drive cage, d’oh). Luckily I painted the hard drive cage later.




8-18-07



I forgot to actually cut out a part of the case after doing a coat of primer, so here is the place I cut out. It should allow me to route some cables better, and also hide some cables from the highly-congested area where the upper hard drive cage is.







Look at that! That’s only after a single coat! Well I chose semi-gloss over gloss. I don’t want to have an issue with dust appearing (something that often happens when you have a mirror-like clearcoat finish). So I opted for some RUSTOLEUM (spelling?) PAINTERS TOUCH. I couldn’t recommend this stuff more. I ended up doing 3 coats.







So here you can see the full case. Let me explain a few things. The white at the PSU cage is the rubber pieces that dampen sound from the PSU. I didn’t want to paint those so I put tape over them. Furthermore, right at the very top, across the length of the case, is some primer leaking through. This is from when I masked the top plastic part. However, I am not wasting time to cover it in black because I am not going to have the side panels off, and you cant see the primer with the panels on.







Here are my goodies from Petra’s Tech Shop! I love these guys, they sent me everything fast, wrote me a personal note with my order, and gave me a free pen. You can also see the Windows Vista Ultimate in the background that I got from Club.Live.Com. Awesome!







Using some of the “C”-Molding I got from Petras, I put it around the cuts I had made. Actually, they looked pretty decent anyway with the paint over them, but the gives me piece of mind that my tubing wont get any stray cuts.







This took so long. I sheathed the fans that would have cables running around the motherboard. It was definitely a pain to do, and I understand why the likes of FrozenCPU and Performance-PCs charge so much more to get your fans sheathed.







Here is some more sleeving I did. This time its for the USB ports and the Firewire port. The camera flash always makes the black colors look different, but the case and the cables actually blend very well.







I have two holes cut out for the 7/16” tubing. Because the cuts are made just in the steel, I wanted grommets to protect the tubing from getting sliced. The grommets I got were 7/16” ID, but they were still a little tight on the tubing. Therefore, I dremmeled them out to just shy of ¾”. The tubing fits much nicer now.






WARNING! DISASTER AREA!







Here is what my CCFL setup looked like before. But I didn’t want to have to hook up the PCI slot cables.







So I just hotwired the CCFLs to be on all the time. Works for me.







When I was putting my front lower fan in , I couldn’t get the hard drive cage in as well. That’s a MAJOR bummer for me. I tried every single thing I could, but there is just no way to fit a 120mm fan down there. I will probably have to pick up a 92mm fan from a local place.

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killnine

Here is just a straight shot of the front, not much has changed







This is another front picture of my 2 Optical drives and my X-fi bay. Not much special about this. My CCFL controller is behind the empty panel.







Here you can see that I even painted the CCFL control box. Since my CCFLs are always on, I didn't worry about painting over the holes in the top (I remove the top case so I just painted the case)







Here is a shot of the back end. You can see the sleeved fan cables. I may tie those down in a day or so, but I kinda like them how they are...







Here you can see the little grommets (5/8" ID) that I used. I had to even drill them out a little bit for the tubing to fit without any inward bending. I didn't want any restriction from them going through the grommets.

My last case revision had the tubing going through the bare metal. That was way too dangerous. The steel was still sharp enough to draw blood.







I decided to sleeve my X-fi cable. Came out pretty nice and definitely improved the case interior's final appearance.







Here is the back side of the cable. What a ton of cables! I was so happy when the back door went on. moving these cables back around the case really de-clutters the main motherboard section though.







Here is a picture of the interior without any lighting. I really like having memory cooling, but I wish the cooler was a copper color. However, with the lights on, you really can't tell the difference, especially because the fans on the RAM cooler glow so bright.







Here is a rearward shot of the case. I love my CPU block! I have had it for about a year and a half, and it may not be the best out there, but it looks sexy with the motherboard.

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killnine

FINAL PICTURES:




Here is a little teaser...






The only thing that isn't blue in my case is probably the X-fi. Still, that little bit of red looks awesome, in my opinion.







And the whole thing.





Conclusion:

I really had an awesome time doing this. Taking a two week break from a nice computer has really made me appreciate this machine. I am totally happy with the mod results and the increase in performance that the 4gb of ram and the Q6600 brought me. BF2142 runs like a dream now, and I am excited to get playing BioShock.

Please leave me feedback, and ask questions. I would love to help anyone and everyone that has an interest in modding, especially if the case is a P180-series.

Thanks for checking out the thread guys!

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whe3ls

nice work man

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legoman786

Oooh... Nice...

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gonX

Great stuff

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spacegoast

nice job man. is it hard to cut into the steel with a dremel? im gonna cut holes in the mobo backplate of my p180 so i can run wires back there. also what kind of dremel bits did you use?

edit: also you can put a fan down in front of the bottom drive cage, not a 120mm fan though, but a 100mm fan should fit. i fit a 92mm fan down there, so you could make it work. im guessing you need a 120mm fan though.

killnine

The steel takes some time to cut, but it isn't particularly HARD to cut. One thing, its LOUD.

I know you can put a fan in the lower cage, but I did want a 120mm fan, not 92mm. Typically, the bigger the fan, the higher the cfm you can get with lower rpm. Often times it yields lower noise levels.

More pics later today.

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Namrac

Just to let you know, your sound card should be in the PCI slot farthest away from your video card to avoid any sort of interference. Otherwise some crackling/popping can sometime occur.

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killnine

Thanks! That's good to know, I will definitely change that when I rebuild.

I am pretty much going to start from scratch when I get all my hardware in. My vista just came in from Club Live, my Q6600 is coming tomorrow, and my mod hardware should be here later today.

Its definitely time for a fresh start.

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