Cato

Decided to try my hand at my first real case modding.

I picked this up for $10.

I'm considering a pretty aggressive mod, imo, for my first time modding. I'd like to have built in watercooling, the catch being I've never used watercooling either. I'll have to do a custom backpanel and mod the motherboard tray there for an atx motherboard.

I'll of course be painting it. Also picking up as big a fan as I can for the front, either a 250mm or 4x120mm should fit. Then of course a side panel as well to show it all off. Probably paint it black, inside and out. Then put in some lighting. I want to get away from the all so common blue, but haven't chosen a color yet, leaning towards green or orange/red.

Once it's all done, I'll be moving my sig rig to it, with a new motherboard that supports overclocking a little better. I'll have 8800 gt's in SLI by then, or perhaps upgrade to 4870(s) depending on how much this modding costs me.

I've been inspired by a lot of the builds on this site so I thought I'd start this build log and see what I can come up with. Naming it Ambition, because, well I think it's a pretty ambitious project for my first case mod.



Got this server case today, all I can say is it is huge (10"x18"x25.5") and weighed about 100 lbs when intact. Fired it up and it booted, but the hard drives are blank so not much to mess with other than see it worked. Promptly started taking it apart.



Here it is with the side panels off. Wasn't happy that the side is 2 pieces there, means a little extra trouble anytime I want to work on it, so I may have do a little work on that eventually.



Three 120mm fans, they are 35 mm thick however. I'll have to mod the power cord to fire it up and see how loud they are, may be worth reusing.



The dvd drive bay is probably the only other piece I'll be able to reuse without modification.



Once I got it apart I set it down and lined up the back with my cm690 so you can see how much bigger it is. Not a great shot but didn't want to have to unhook my computer for a better one.



Here's the back, gonna have to totally rework it, probalby have some questions for you pros later.



One last shot of the insides once it's gutted. The deriveting it later.

It's down to 25lbs gutted, quite a bit more manageable, but I'm feeling like I may of gotten in over my head, just gonna jump in though and see what happens.

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Current Stable 3dMark06 - 14,153

Cato

reserved

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Current Stable 3dMark06 - 14,153

Cato

one more just in case

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Current Stable 3dMark06 - 14,153

SuperBagel

Great buy for $10, you got plenty of room to work in your WC loop. There are plenty of members here that can help you out.

I'll be watching.

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Dar_T

That three fan panel is pretty sweet. Good luck.

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Acrylic Case Modhttp://www.overclock.net/case-mod-wo...lue-black.html

CattleRustler

:watching:

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[Current Project] The Intelligence (TF2 Themed mod / case from scratch)
[mod2modding] All Modding Projects by CattleRustler

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3DM06 Score:11377 11921 14933

Cato

Just rigged it up to run on hi and it's way too loud, but moved an insane amount of air at that speed. I seriously have a box fan in the house that doesn't move as much air. They were all 3 wires however, so I'll have to get a fan controller and see what it's like on lower settings. If it works out the way I'm hoping it was worth the $10 for the case alone and then some.

3 of these fans:
http://www.ayagroup.com/product.php?productid=16652

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Current Stable 3dMark06 - 14,153

Manyak

Dude that triple fan thing is awesome, that looks like the PERFECT place to stick a RAD for your water cooling. I don't think I've ever seen a case with that sort of setup already built in

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Under Construction: [Project] Wraith
On Hold: [Project] Belial

Cato

Finished deriveting. There were so many rivets that the drill bit was covered in them, I cleaned it off and then filled it up again. I decided not to remove the dvd rom panel since that far up won't be visible in any windows I make.

Now I have my first big dilemma. The case is big enough I could do the psu in one of several ways. Top Mount, bottom mount, or turn it on it's side and put it behind the motherboard, and put a spot for the fan on the right side.

Also I figure the best way to get a back panel, atx motherboard tray and a hard drive enclosure is to rob them off a free case, so I'm gonna get an old one from a friend, unfortunately that will be a couple days.

Also looking into the side panel options. At first I was kinda disapointed when I found out that there was an L shaped panel overlapping the side and going up to the top. I figured out I could basically glue the top on and slide it on as one piece, which wouldn't be so bad. Then it hit me I could turn that into a feature and possibly extend the window up to the top, and cut a window out there. Is that possible for all you plexiglass experts? Can I get an L shaped panel? Are there glues that aren't visible if I go that route and glue two pieces together? I've never worked with plexiglass so I'm not sure what my options are.

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Current Stable 3dMark06 - 14,153

Manyak

Plexiglass? Unless you have a special reason to, you should just use acrylic.

You can then just use a jigsaw to cut the both the metal and acrylic to whatever shape you like.

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Under Construction: [Project] Wraith
On Hold: [Project] Belial