[Amatuer] - Maple - A very refined and silenced Antec 900 case mod (Lots of pics)

Hi everybody, thanks for taking a look at my entry which is my third case mod ever. I decided to use my trusty ol' Antec 900 for my entry as it is a popular and potentially great case that I have wanted to improve for a long time.

The case being modded is a second revision of the original 900 model, it's the one that Antec slapped a couple of cable ties and punched two nearly useless holes in near the edge of the motherboard tray.

The primary goal of this mod is to turn an OK gamers case into a professional looking workstation, that is silent and efficient while still providing plenty of cooling for overclocking headroom. And if you were wondering: yes, I will be removing all of the colored LED fans and replacing them with something more functional.

The mods will entail:

• The exterior of the case will have a complete makeover
• All the blue LED fans will be replaced in order to render the machine subtle and silent
• Custom front mounted 140mm air intakes for lots of airflow
• Both stock hard drive chassis will be replaced as to isolate the drives from the case and dampen drive noise
• The entire inside of the case will be given a nice paint job
• A real cable management solution will be implemented
• I will indirectly light the interior of the case tastefully and efficiently using white LEDs
• And finally: The fan controller though functional (Sunbeam Rheobus Extreme) is far too bright and needs a mod to make the LEDs more subtle in keeping with the projects theme

As for a few upgrades to go along with the mod:

• Upgrade the processor from a Q6600 to a Q9550
• A new Modular High Efficiency PSU
• A Corsair H50 CPU Cooler
• A RAM cooler
• The Video card (it was a GTX 260 core 192) will be replaced with two more efficient passive cards while still retaining some substantial graphical horsepower.

Yes, I am asking a lot of this mod, but I like to aim high.


Here is the starting point; A Blue LED-Fan monster in it's original/standard cable management disaster configuration:















A look inside the starting point for the case:





Dis-assembly starting:






So with introductions out of the way, lets get to work.
Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:59pm

Part One: Metal cutting time

I am sure by now that everyone has seen lots of Antec 900 mods with rough or poorly cut holes, this is not one of them. I went out and bought a few metal working tools to ensure that I can do as good a job as possible.

Tools Purchased

• Metal Door Holesaw kit (1" and 2-1/4")
• 24tpi Metal Jigsaw Blades
• Reinforced heavy duty cutoff wheels
• 1x12" Bastard file
• An adjustable square (my old one wandered off)
• A Titanium Nitride Drill Bit Set
• Pop Rivet Gun
• And a laser level (Damn awesome tool for lining things up)

A total of 16 holes were drilled or cut in order to provide better airflow for the PSU, and an ample supply of cabling options.

I also wanted to make sure that the Motherboard tray remained sturdy, as one of the primary purposes of this mod is to silence this case. So I opted to forgo a single large CPU Heatsink Backplate access hole as the steel on this case is quite thin and I won't be needing to frequently reseat the cooler when I am done.

Synopsis of the 16 Holes made:

• Four 2-1/4" holes were made underneath the Motherboard Tray
• Three 1" cable routing holes were added to the drive bay area
• One 2-1/4" hole was made for the PSU cables in the bottom area of the case
• Four 1" Cable routing holes were made just under the top of the Motherboard tray
• Three additional Cable routing holes were placed in line with the previously useless holes provided by Antec
• And one 150mm x 150mm hole was cut in the bottom of the cast to allow the PSU to be properly oriented and intake cool air from outside of the case

Measuring twice...so I don't have to buy another case.






Cutting time:


And the resulting holes after a day's work:

Edited by Photograph - 2/9/10 at 10:27am

The case took two coats of Tremclad flat black to get everything covered nicely:



The Optical drive was also masked and painted:



All of the large holes were provided with some vinyl automotive U-Channel, cuts had to be added in order to make it flexible enough to conform to the hole dimensions.





The smaller holes were fully de-burred and are ready for routing cables.

And the PSU area gets some new foam standoffs.
Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:07pm

For memory this machine uses 8Gb of GSkill Redline DDR2-1066, it stays nice and cool at stock temperatures but I like having lots of headroom so I will be adding a customized cooler to the memory.

I started with your run of the mill OCZ cooler, I wasn't a fan of the wimpy 60x10mm blue LED fans that came stock it also didn't help that they moved very little air and were noisy even on the low setting. So I replaced them with. A pair of SilenX 60x25mm non-LED equipped fans that provided much more airflow and much less noise. Also keeping with the custom theme of the build I decided to polish the aluminum body of the cooler, I almost wished I didn't as it took much longer than anticipated to accomplish. However in the end it turned out great, I have another one of these coolers to work with on an upcoming build that I may do something a little different with.









And the final result:



As for the rest of the fans (except for the 200mm Big Boy at the top of the case), I went with a full set of nice quiet Noctua NFP-12 and FLX-14 fans.




Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:33pm

I like the look of some wood cases and I could use it to do almost anything so I decided to use maple plywood as my material of choice.

Lots of measuring to ensure that multiple layers of wood line up in the end, secondary front panel being laid out:


The general idea for this panel:


Hole-cutter in action:


Resulting holes:


All of the external wood panels some router love in order to eliminate and square edges, the routing was the easy part as I must have spent four hours sanding over a few days as maple plywood is pretty tough stuff.

How the side panels are attached:


And yes here's an obligatory sparks shot as I needed to make room for the new window:


Cutting the top 200mm hole:


All of the maple panels were clear coated with water based Verathane, much nicer than old fashioned Urethane as there is almost no smell and cleans up easily and isn't toxic.



Drying:

Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:49pm

As for the cabels I took my first step into the wold of sleeving, I have a whole new appreciation of how much work it is to sleeve a whole PC worth of cables.

I sleeved almost every cable except for the PSU (for now) as I want to keep the Corsair HX650s seven year warranty intact (this is my work machine so I couldn't risk killing it).

SATA Cables ready for some heat:


Plenty of material in case I make a few mistakes along the way:


Due to the increased size of the case I had to make a lot of cable extensions just to get all of the fans to connect to the fan controller.



Power, Reset and LED before sleeving:


And a pile of ready to go cables

Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:40pm

The easiest way to make a PC quieter is to get rid of as many fans as possible, I started with the obvious culprit: the video card.

This PC is used solely for work purposes now and a gaming GPU like the GTX260 just isn't needed and it only supports two monitors (I have three that I want to use) so I opted to grab a pair of passive radeons. I started with a HD4550 seen below and an older PCI radeon 7000 but it really sucked even for basic 3D or anything beyond text editing. So I went back to the parts bin and found an Arctic Accellero 1 passive radiator and bought a radeon HD 4850 that was on clearance, put the two together and ended up with a dead silent but still fairly potent video system that could run 4 displays if needed.

Passive Radeon 4850 With modded Accellero 1 cooler:


Passive Radeon 4550


The original PSU (a Corsair TX750) was really overkill for this system and proved to be a real pain in terms of cable management options as it is non-modular, so I opted to grab a Corsair Professional Series HX650 that gave me less noise, modular flat cables and better power consumption.



The stock Antec 900 drive bays are one of the sources of noise and vibration I am aiming to eliminate, the simplest solution was to mount each drive on some homemade wood or rubber plugs. Then I found these nice products from Nexus and saved myself some trouble.



And here with drives mounted to illustrate:


And mounted in 5 1/2" bays:


I also wanted to try out a Corsair H50, and wanted to make the case as roomy as possible so I did a little cutting to the case to allow me to use the reservoir externally:


The Sunbeam Rheobus Extreme fan controller is a great little device, however the biggest gripe I have with it is those blindingly bright blue LEDs that really don't go with the whole theme of this mod. So I opted to swap them out for white ones:

Stock:


Half way to done (looks better now):

Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:58pm

And now came time to put all of this stuff into the case:








The floor of the case is also the mount for the cooling fan for the video cards, I made it out of acrylic and shaped it with a heat gun and a pair of phone books.




H50 Rad fan shroud:

Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:55pm

And after five months of work here is the end result of all my work, thanks for looking:




















Edited by Photograph - 7/1/10 at 8:55pm