[Sponsored] Project BMW Mpower Level 10 - update

My latest Project – Project BMW M-Power was born from the day Thermaltake released the Level 10 Case onto the world, as soon as I saw the tie in with BMW design works (even though they are a design house and not BMW themselves). For quite I few years I have always had in the back of my mind a Mod in dedication to one of my old rides, A 1998 BMW M3. Ok the car is long gone and is a bit out dated, but still I thought why the hell not, A M3 case Mod on a Level 10 from Thermaltake would still look nice, especially if I kept to my old cars paint scheme, white body work, red and black interior.

My plan was to do the case white, with some airbrush work with Mpower logo and BMW logo as well as a M3 airbrushed into the case, as my old ride was from the 90s and the case from the 10s I decided to go with a theme based on the modern M3.

So my plan was born and yes it was finally time to get it onto action, before I move on anymore I must first give Kudos to all the companies involved for making this possible the sponsors, who without which this mod would not be possible. Despite it taking me since the release of the Level 10 case for me to get it altogether went above and beyond the call of duty.









First Up – The hardware involved and what I am planning


Yes that is indeed a lot of Thermaltake product and I have to thank them a lot for supporting this mod, anyway here is a rundown of the specs and pieces of this mod.

Specs

• CPU - AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
  
• Mobo – Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7
  
• Memory – Patriot G series 1600mhz 4 gig AMD kit
  
• GPU – Ati Radeon HD 5850
  
• Main HDD – Patriot 120GB Inferno SSD
  
• Secondary HDD - 2 X WD RE3 Greens 1TB
  
• PSU – Thermaltake Tough Power Grand 750W
  
• Case - Thermaltake Level 10

That is basically the System specs of the rig, also in the picture is the Thermaltake Esports products this includes.

• Thermaltake Esports Black Gaming mouse
  
• Thermaltake Esports Challenger Pro Keyboard
  
• Thermaltake Esports Shock Gaming headset
  
• Thermaltake Esports Dasher Mouse Pad

I will show some more pictures of these products as and when I get to taking apart and them, well that just about sums up the specs and hardware of what I currently have (a few little tid bits and stuff is on route and I will add accordingly to log once products are here).

Next up my rough plans via photoshop airbrushing.
Edited by Richie123 - 6/30/11 at 3:05am

I will not never claim I am a expert when it comes to photoshop, so please don’t flame me, these are rough mock ups what I plan to do with this mod and just to give a rough idea to those who are reading this of what my plans are.


With the mouse I want it to match the theme and colours of the case, I don’t want to go overboard with it, but a nice airbrush on the mouse, with the TT glowing logo on the rear coming through the paint rather than being visible.


The same with the keyboard, which I want to keep tied in with the rest of the theme


The graphics card I also want to tie in with the white theme of the case, I especially want this done as the insides of the case will be white too.

I was also planning to do the headset white, and mocked up one of them in white, but when it came for it to be sent out it I noticed a press release for the shock headset and it came in white as well... phew, that saved some time already what about the case? Well here is the plan for that.


My plan is to get the whole case in white with a little BMW logo down the bottom of the front, on the HDD slots I plan to leave these white to break up the case a bit.

The motherboard section, I plan to remove the stock metal plates (areas in red) and replace these with some red UV acrylic with some etchings, then covered by black tinted acrylic (2 layers of acrylic) with the black on the outer, the reason for this is so that with the lights of, the windows will just look plain black, but with the lights on, the etchings Edges will pop out.

I am in 2 minds on the mobo section on either a clear just tinted section on the top (to give a nice view of the inside as UV acrylic sort of blurs the view) and AMD game logo actually airbrushed onto the mobo section in to right corner, or as picture with logo etched in the CPU area window. I have not decided on that yet.

On the rear of the case the plan is to do a nice M power logo, with the actual M3 car airbrushed there...

Ill post some more soon.

yeh read that waiting for PM back... in the middle of taking most of the parts apart at the moment will post some pics tomorrow

Just a quick update, not much really, but taking a few bits apart, first up was the graphics card.




The Graphics card I just had to separate the top cover from the block itself, I decided to just re attach the main block and plate after doing this to insure the board was not just left lying around bare. The next item was the keyboard.





Striping the keyboard down was a pretty straight forward apart from having to make sure I had enough separate bags for the 25+ screws, especially the really tiny ones. now the main face plate is separated I can put that in the pile with the Graphic cards cooler cover, on to the mouse now.



I am 100% sure Thermaltake mad this mouse so it should never come apart as it took me an hour or so to get the side sections off without breaking the clip, the main problem was the final screw was under the weight tray, which was glued or just solidly in, so I had to play and pull and twist (eww that don’t sound right ;P) for a while just to get these off.



Taking the top layer off (palm rest section) was a lot easier and only took 5 minutes with gentle pulling, one bad thing though, was the centre section I had done red in photoshop was part of the main body, so I will be looking at something else to get that red.

That is all I have for today I will hopefully get down to stripping down and making a few mounts (for radiators) this weekend.

The White, is alpine white, but I will be using a hardened varnish for the finish to protect it better than the laquer. so it might have a slightly different look to the car on the white.. I am adding the tricolor lines with the M on keyboard in corner, and on the back of the case and on the bottom of the stand part (component side) I am also hoping to find a nice CGI image of a modern M3 to get airbrushed on the back side and etched into the graphics card window...