[Intermediate] melanie - the rebirth - Page 2

forward facing ~

Time to get started on the part of this build I've been dreading the most. The front bezel. Heres the stock one.





Though after much thought I decided to mod the bezel from my old Thermaltake V9 to fit instead. I like the shape and overall look of it much more. Its also roughly the same size.













First up are a few quick cuts. I want 2 fans in the front so that plastic center bit must go. Also cut off some plastic at the sides so the bezel would sit flush with the case better.









This new bezel was designed to clip onto the case where as the old one was screwed on. Wasn't quite sure weather I should cut holes for it to clip into or find another way. In the end I decided its better to find another way to screw it on. With that said, I cut the clips short so they would also sit flush with the case.





Before I attached it to the case, I had to redo the top of the bezel as there is a missing chunk from it that used to be part of the roof on the V9. Heres how I went about filling in the chunk.











I used super glue to hold the pieces together. Now with the front back in one piece, I then had to deal with the height. As this now includes part of a roof that my case doesn't have, I had to shorten it a bit.







Easy done. I just cut off the top and finished it with a nice sheet metal cutout which I also glued on.



Now to fill the gaps to make it nice and sexy.



Sanded it first so the plasti-bond would hold. Now sorry but I didn't get any shots of when I first put the plasti-bond on but I did get one of where I touched up one side to give it a slightly higher rise.





Theres the plasti-bond and for you aussies, its availible at Mitre 10 and many other home hardware stores I'm sure. I love this stuff! Its easy to use and even easier to file/sand off to exactly how you want it. Best of all it sets rock hard.

Now heres the finished product.





Next up is to get the bezel to screw to the case. For that I found some big screws that would tightly screw into whats left of the old clips.





I used a big pair of bolt cutters to easily cut the screws to size. With that done I held the panel up to the case with some tape and marked out roughly where the holes needed to go for the screws.



Then even more roughly bored them out with a circle of holes from a small drill bit.



Lastly, heres a shot of the bezel screwed to the case for the first time.



Glad thats over but the jobs still only half done.

The rest of this mod can be found in forward facing part two ~
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/16/10 at 12:02am

black box ~

Every LAN box needs a DVD drive and for this build I'll be using my old LG GH22NS50 internal drive taken from April. Its already been painted but I've been treating it a bit rough lately so it definately needs a fresh coat. Best way to do that is to strip off the old stuff and start again.





Ready to strip and paint. Really got lazy with the tape for this as you can see.





Easy work with the drill and that black thing. The little bit of paint left can stay there.

Now remember the photos of the peach tree and peaches all over the ground I showed before? That was summer, heres autumn!



And back to what matters.



It was as it was drying in the sun that I discovered this with a similar DVD drive.





There is no way its gonna fit!



Finished it up anyway. Now to combat the size issue, I bought a nice slim drive and adapter.







As I now have a smaller DVD drive, I can put it with my builds hard drive to save on space. Also the sata ports will be right on top of each other this way too.







The plan is to mount both drives in the modded shell of an old DVD drive.









Fits like a glove.





Shortened it so it doesn't stick out to far and cut the hole in one side for the cables to come through the side of the drive bay. (Keep an eye out for that mod in the next update).









Used double sided tape to hold it all in place and again on the front of the drive to hold the faceplate on. No pics of it on but you saw the finished pics so you know what it looks like. Its a bit of guess work locating the button to open the drive but once you push it in the right spot, out it pops.





Sleeved sata cables round off this update... well almost.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 8:45pm

forward facing part 2 ~

The first thing I need to do now is to shorten the drive bay cage as it takes up space where I want to put a fan. It also has 4 bays and I only need 3 so shortening it isn't a problem. Aswell as that I have to mod it slightly so that it fits with the new front bezel. Heres the problem.



Stock cage obviously.





Theres the first mark.





And theres the second. Now sorry I didn't get any pics of this process but it was pretty straight forward. Used tin snips to trim the top of the bay and then again on the bottom. I Just cut a section out of the bottom, bent the sides straight and then bent them again at right angles. Heres how it ended up.





Used pre existing holes to screw the bottom together.



New holes in the top and were done.



Now plz plz plz forgive me but the next little (well more like big) part of this update is very messy as it was rushed due to bad weather and rain so I forgot to take alot of pics.

The idea now is to make up a front faceplate type of thing to attach to the front of the chasis to give it more strength as the fans and H50 rad will be mounted onto this.

Because I forgot to take some pics through out this part of the mod, heres a pic of how it ends up just to help you follow whats going on.



After I cut the plate, I had to cut holes around where the front bezel screws onto the case. I did this very rough as you can see. I was working outside and it started to rain so I blame that for this rushed job. I then bored 6 holes in the new faceplate to attach it to the case.



Next job is to drill the fan holes. As I've never done this before, I wasn't quite sure of how to go about it. I tried it by making a template out of paper by tracing a fan onto it and marking out the holes with that. Worked well enough.



I also left enough room to mount the rad as shown If I so choose too.



I then used a standard fan grill to trace the circle to cut out for each fan. As its for a fan it was the prefect size for the job. Then I used my jigsaw to cut them out and filed them smooth. Turned out pretty good for my first try.





Now seeing as the fans fit and all I decided to do some more filing to tidy it up a bit more.



Now to fill the front bazel. I was gonna use some fine mesh like it originaly had but I couldn't find any localy so I made a second faceplate instead. I think it was my last resort idea but I'm happy with it anyway. Probably came out better looking too!



Cut to size and marked out.







This time I cut out the circle first and then drilled the holes to mount the fan.

Unfortunately the update gets messy once again and theres no pics of the process of attaching this faceplate to the front bezel but all I did was use alot more plasti-bond on the back to hold it on and filled the cracks in the front to make it pretty. Heres how it ended up.





I noticed the screws arn't in a very straight line so I filed the holes so that they were wider. The screws still hold tight and are now in line but guess what... No pics of that either (sigh). Really sorry guys but you've no doubt seen the finished pics so you no how it turned out anyway.

With the front bezel finished, I checked to see if the 2 faceplates lined up and sucess, they did. Since I now have a front bezel that isn't mesh, I decided to shorten the original faceplate on the case.



This just made it easier to attach it.



I then riveted this faceplate in place. It is now permanently attached to the front chassis.

Now a quick note on the front 10cm ccfl placement.



As you can just see there is enough room for it without removing it from its tube. Only mod to be done here is to cut a hole in the bottom of the chassis to pass the wire through.



Done! On one last note about this mod, the two faceplates are just far enough apart that I can fit the fans between them if I want. Still not sure weather I will or not aswell as what I'm doing for the grills if any but as for now, I'm calling this mod finished! Thank the Lord for that!!!
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/23/10 at 10:55pm

you ain't seen nothin ~

So with the case finaly coming together I think its about time for some cable management. Problem is this case has zero cable management and with the extra fans now in front, it has even less than that.













As you can no doubt see after all those pics, its pretty damn tight in there and theres no room what so ever behind the mobo tray so all the cables must run down the front left hand side. I still want to hide them all so the solution is to obviously make a false wall and so I did.



I wanted it to screw to the bottom of the drive bays and the floor so I bent down some tabs so that it could.





Used dads big vice and put a fat square piece of metal behind it to give it a straight edge to bend over. Then hit it down with a hammer.







Not bad but I decided that I wanted to hide the whole section and not just the cables so out came the ruler again and I made a fatter L, then bent the top and bottom as before.





Much better. Now I needed to make a cutout for the 24 pin. I thought about cutting a hole but instead just cut a square into the wall.



First used the tin snips to cut down each side and bent it at a right angle. Then trimmed it a bit again with the tin snips and bent the rest right over to sofen the edge.















Did the same with the bottom right of the L as the modular cables will run through as shown. Of course they will be sleeved by then too.



Heres a rough idea of what the cables will look like.



And this shot shows that the ccfl inverters fit behind the wall too so long as I can fit them in with all the cables I guess!

Next I drilled 6 evenly spaced holes in the top and bottom of the false wall and then used that to mark out where I need to make the holes for the wall to attach to.







Did the same to the bottom of the drive bay cage aswell.



I then drilled some shallow holes in the wood under the floor so the rivets each have a crevice to hide in.

Lastly I made a few cutouts in the side of the drive bay cage to put the PCIe and sata/molex cables through.




Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/23/10 at 11:18pm

loose ends ~

At last the most part of the modifications are done. Now its time for all the little things.



This was the last time the case was in one piece before painting.



Now I wanted to fill some holes and smooth some cracks so out came the plasti-bond again.

First up though were a few quick cuts.







Just got rid of those few tabs arond the PSU.

Now theres no set order of pics in the next part of this update. This is just a sample of what happened.













Dammit Ringo! He had the whole lawn to go around me.



Guess he just wanted to play. I don't know how many times I'd be outside working on this project and he'd show up and grab a ball... then I can't help it but abandon my work to go play with him. Didn't even want to include that picture of him in this post but couldn't help it. Anyway, back to it.





Also filed any of the holes bigger if needed and got rid of all the jaggard edges.

Another thing I did was mod the old power switch. I changed it from connecting to a button to being able to plug into a switch.



Then sleeved it aswell.



That'll do it for this one.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 6:00am

the shade of dark ~

Must be time for the window mod. This is pretty straight forward so its not a long update which is nice. Its so straight forward in fact that I'll let the pics do the talking.















If your still yet to work it out, thats a tinted piece of acrylic. I'll be attaching it with some form of glue after the panels been painted. Told you this was a short update. Easy too. Thats why its one of my favourites.

Might also one day add a fan to the side panel but only if temps are too high for my liking. As for now I don't see the need to make such a nice simple mod complicated so it staying pretty the way it is.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/28/10 at 6:39am

fresh coat ~

Round one!



Finaly time for some painting but what a day to start with. Solution, start painting in the garage.





Didn't want to go to the effort of completely stripping the previous paint so I roughly sanded it and just sprayed over the top of that!



Thanks to mitchbowman who gave me the 4 clear standoffs. (Don't worry, I didn't give anything about this project away when I asked around for them). With my 3 and the 2 that screw into the mobo tray, I have 9 out of the 10 needed standoffs. Good enough for me.



Nice easy way to paint them.



Plenty of screws to paint here. Also the little cutouts that go in the melanie letters on the back panel. Put a layer of primer on and that was the first round of painting.

Round two!

Get ready for repetition! You'll see what I mean as you wear out your scroll wheel.

To paint I think used 2 or 3 coats of primer and then around 4 of black. More if needed.









Decided to paint the 2 standoffs that screw in while they were screwed in. Makes sense...





Theres a shot of all the plasti-bond I used to hold the faceplate on. Didn't see the need to make it look pretty so I left it as it is.





2 plates that will cover a couple drive bays. Make it look neat and tidy.





Round Three!

So interesting story. I had less than a can of the black paint I needed so I went to town to get more about 2 weeks before the end of this comp. They had none in stock and because its an american brand of paint so I couldn't get it anywhere else.

They finaly got some in from another shop a few hours away 5 days before the end of the comp. To save time as the sun goes down early in winter, I sprayed the 1 can of black I had and raced into town which is a 30 minute trip. 5 mins down the road it started pouring rain! Man I was praying the rain didn't get to my house before I got back!! Got to town and picked up my 3, only 3, cans of paint and sped home.

Got out of the car and the sun was shining. Phew!



This is the paint I used.









Decided to paint a few parts green just to break up all the black. Hope it turns out nice!





Next few pics just show where I painted the screws. Better the lawn gets a coat of paint then mums outdoor table.







Round four!

Last round of painting and isn't it a much nicer day then the first one!





















As you can see it was a little windy at times so I painted myself a bit... all good.



Finaly as I've said, sadly down under we have a winter sun this time of year and its pretty pathetic at cooking paint. I found a nice alternative though for when that poxy sun goes down.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 7/1/10 at 2:27am

can't reach ~

I wanted to put a front IO panel on this case somewhere as its always a handy thing to have. At the same time I didn't want to see it. I decided to mount it inside a drive bay and have a cover on a bracket in front of it. Sadly this is the one mod I couldn't finish due to the IO panel I wanted being out of stock. I'll have to finish this one later on sometime but as its not that important to this project, its ok if I leave it off.

Heres what I had so far.







The 3.5" bay rafter from my old HAF 932. I trimmed the back off it so it wasn't too long like the DVD drive. Then it was on to repainting.





Very roughly stripped the paint then repainted it with the rest of the case.



That is how it ended up and this is what it looks like with an IO panel in it. (Borrowed from my TJ07).





This is the part I wanted. I ordered it but found out it was on backorder until june 30th. Hmmm, don't think that gives me enough time to mod it into the case hey. Oh well. I can do without it.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 4:27am

control center ~

So heres my switch panel. It will control everything in this PC from lights to fans and even powering it on. Its a Lamptron Hummer and each channel can control up to 100w which is so overkill for this build but I just liked the look of it so...









Wanted to paint it to match the black in the rest of the case so pulled it apart to do so. It was a biatch to get it apart but as you can see I got it done and with only a few marks, sigh.





Just painted straight into it after scuffing it up a bit... more. Heres how it turned out.





Beautiful! Next up I wanted to sleeve the cables that came with it. That was pretty straight forward.





Not sure if I'll need them all but done nonetheless.
Edited by FalloutBoy - 6/30/10 at 8:33pm

final run ~

Yeah baby! Almost done. All thats left is to put it all together. Lets get cracking.

Sorry if some of these pics are a bit crappy, some are slightly blury, some taken with very low light and a few were taken at night.





Theres the most part of the case. Now to put it back together.



Put a fair amount of painters tape on the end of the rivet gun to hopefully stop the paint chipping off the rivets.











Used blu-tack to hold the ccfls in place.







Theres part of the tree that fell down outside my window a few nights back. Totally relevent!







You may be able to tell that I half gave up on painting these things half way through.

Got a little excited here and missed a few pics. The case is rebuilt and now the hardware goes in.





This foam will just help protect the PSU from scuff marks.



Lian Li expansion slot covers.







I slid the fans down from the top.





















Now while putting the acrylic on the back panel, I knocked it before it set and it spred glue everywhere. All I could do was scrape it off and start again with another peice of acrylic. Oh and yes I'd like some epic with that fail!!





Green paper is behind the acrylic.



I decided not to use the LEDs in the end as they didn't provide enough light to make this mod work properly. I'll do some experimenting to fix this in my own time.



Used painters tape to mark where I wanted the window to sit.





And thats about it. Now I finally get to see what I've been building for the last 6 months!
Edited by FalloutBoy - 7/1/10 at 7:52pm