[Project] Hollow (CM Mystique 632S)

So here it is.. My brand new (refurbished) Cooler Master 632S. At first I was a little turned off by the front doors, but they have definitely grown on me. They seem much less flimsy than my Raidmax Smilodon's door was.

As you saw in the first image, and should be fully aware of now-- This case has no window. At some point I would like to fix this and add my own. Sooner or later I'll make a sketch of what kind of cut I want.. but to be honest, I'm not completely sure yet. I may cut it for maximum window space (or at least close to), as this case is heavy. Aside from the front (which is aluminum), this case is steel. UPS claims the box weighed in at 25 pounds... Maybe this case will be my excuse to get a little more built (i'm a very slim guy, and I go to LAN parties on occasion. weight is definitely a concern of mine).

I love this. Buttons are on top, ports are on top. My desk has a glass top, and I've already got two monitors on it. I'm a little paranoid about adding more weight to be honest, so for me it's very important my ports/buttons are on top and not on the front.

Beautiful. I've wanted to get a case with a mesh front for a while now. This should probably make air cooling a little more efficient.

Here's the extra box of goodies Cooler Master provided. An assortment of screws, a filter ring, standoffs, and toolless drive install wedges.

Here's the side door latch. As you can see, i have to slide that little tab in to release the side panel....

...and the side panel opens just like a door.

Before we dive into the guts of the case, I'll take this time to point out the imperfections I'll be attempting to fix up in this refurb case (i'm a tease, I know)... To be honest, I was a little disappointed to see those dents. On the bright side, I have a wonderful case.. I'm more than happy to work out a few flaws for a discounted quality case.

Here's another imperfection. I don't mean to bash Cooler Master at all, so please do not take it that way.. But the Thermaltake Lanbox refurb case I bought was flawless. It looked like it wasn't a refurb at all. Seeing stuff like this caught me off guard, but I knew the risks when I purchased. It'll all smooth over in the end.

Here's another flaw, but i've delt with this before. If you look carefully, the hole for the PSU isn't exactly straight on the bottom. I think it'll be fine.

Small scratch on the top.

A few scratches by the video card vent.

A minor scratch on the side panel.

Tasty. I'm liking the position of the HDD bays. Hoping I can still feed a power cord to my video card w/o it blocking the port... but if it is blocking, I can always desolder the PCIe power socket and extend it onto a few wires. Problem solved. On a different note, I don't think there's a whole lot of space behind the mobo tray for cable management. I think i'll still attempt it though.

Like some other cases I've seen, here's one of those tunnel things that's supposed to provide the CPU fan with fresh air. For one thing, I hate these. Another thing: I don't think a San Ace 1011 + a Thermalright SI-128SE would fit in my case with that on. I plan on putting a red 80mm fan here in it's place.

Shot of the drive bays from the PSU hole. I'm thinking I'll install my HDDs going SATA ports in. I'll have some right angle cables coming to me fairly soon.

This is in the HDD bay area. That hole in the bottom and the green/white wire goes to the front door LEDs. Speaking of which.. We'll check that out next.

The front panel comes off from pulling at the bottom. You can sort of see my fingertips from where I grabbed.

Beautiful. The front mesh is fully filtered. In the event i need to clean the filters, they are washable and easily removed.

I challenge you to a sword fight.

There we are, much better.

Here's a shot of the blue piece of the door. As you can see, two blue LEDs are wired up to it. I would like to replace these with some bright Red/Yellow bicolor LEDs and wire a switch to it. I'll probably just leave the blue piece itself as is.

What's that? Is that another flaw I see? Looks like it's sticking up a bit.

Yep.. Earlier I was wondering why the gap was bigger on this end... Now I know why.

As you can see, the steel was warped enough that they didn't bother to knock a rivet in here. Sorry about the fuzzy quality. It was a little difficult to press the top down while taking a pic with my other hand.


* This Worklog post was generated using WorklogCreator - Version: 1.0.1.0
* Free Download: http://www.mod2software.com/worklogc...logcreator.zip

Thanks awdrifter. I will do my best not to disappoint.

Small update for the time being. I took the time to attach the San Ace 1011 I received from alex to the SI-128SE cooler I have. At the moment I don't want to go for water cooling. Instead all my spare funds will be focused on getting parts for this project.

Speaking of, I've also been browsing Performance PCs and planning out cost of parts. I'm actually considering getting some SilenX 120mm fans to replace the two red Tricools I still need to get. ~20DBa and only 7cfm lower if i remember correctly. They're a bit pricier, but they've got really low noise and high cfm.. Anyway, on to the CPU Cooler.

Since I couldn't mount the fan with the SI-128SE's fan clips (San Ace is too thick), I had to strap it on with zip ties. The fan grill is also mounted with the zipties as well, because there wasn't any cleaner way to do it. I may change the zipties to black or red later, but I only had white ones for the time being. Not a whole lot to say, but as usual for the logs I make, lots of pictures.















Yes, that thing is freaking massive. I compared it to the inside of the Mystique, and it should fit with room to spare for an 80mm LED on the case window to be. Thanks to advice from Syrillian, I am going with Bronze acrylic due to how black is opaque and "smoke" seems to be too light of a color for what I want.

I've been looking at fan controllers recently, and it seems like everyone is really fond of the Sunbeam Rhoebus Extreme. I have to admit, it's very nice. But I want to know for SURE that I can modify it without breaking it for red LEDs.. Otherwise I may just buy a fan controller with reds preinstalled. Chances are I'll go with the rhoebus though.

Another thing: I recieved the 80mm Logisys fan from Verrater yesterday. Here it is attached to the HR-05. Fits just fine, but I worry about my video card being in the way. If my video card does become a problem, I can always use zip ties to mount the fan to the backside of the HR-05.. That way, I should have no problems.



I did some poking around with my Merc Stealth Keyboard yesterday as well. I'm wanting to modify it to be within my color scheme for Hollow, but so far I could only change the "Lock LEDs", as the backlighting is surface mount... I'll be sure to fix that later with red and yellow.

Lastly, considering my PC has given me scares every so often about it frying, I've also thought about changing the name to "Hollow: Necro-Rised". If you don't catch the reference, Necro-Rise is an experimental drug from the anime Gungrave. Essentially, Necro-Rise is an immortality formula of some sort. Necro-Rise was a fluid if I remember correctly, so maybe I'll just add that to the title when I add water cooling. The main name will still be Hollow (part of my design has a lot to do with the name).. Just think of "Necro-Rised" as a tagline of some sort when I eventually do add water cooling. I may get a few custom appliques done for the window stuff.

Cheers,
timxirish

I'm totally due for an update, and actually have been holding on to this for a while.. So instead of getting two seperate updates with 10 photos each, you get one with nearly 25.

I decided dremeling the honeycomb on the back of the case would be a good first step. I started out coloring in what I wanted to remove.. I like having options, so I thought "Hey, maybe I'll just trim enough so I can still install an 80mm fan.."


Then I started thinking "...Why the hell would I even want to install an 80mm fan there?"... So I masked off the outside area of where I was cutting (in case of slipping and causing a scuff) and went to work.

And yes, that is a garbage bag the case is sitting in. I don't have much room to work on my projects here, so I have to find something to catch the dust.


As most will tell you, always be sure to wear eye protection and some sort of mask. I couldn't find my beanie/mask thing, so I decided I would be a ninja. You can be a ninja too. Just follow these easy steps.


As mentioned earlier, I debated on leaving room for an 80mm fan (with some of the grill left intact for the sides), so cutting out the honeycomb was a way of compromising between having 80mm as an option and full 120mm. I decided I'd go the full distance and make that fan hole exclusive for a 120mm fan.


Was trying to be careful with the dremel (which actually isn't a "Dremel" but rather a rotary tool by Kawasaki.. it does the job just fine), so I had to flip the case on it's side a few times.


Ahhh... That's the stuff. Honeycomb be gone! Now all that's left is cleaning it up a bit with some files. Something I saved for later, due to having only one crappy one in my posession.


Went on to do sanding for the main case side panel. Picked up a low power mouse sander for $15 clearance at my local hardware store.


Yeah, that's a lot of dust. At one point I thought the painted "Black & Decker" logo had worn off after about a half hour of sanding.


In reality, there was so much black dust from the paint that it only LOOKED like the logo had worn off. Wiped the logo with my thumb, and it was nice and clean again.. Haha...


Here I've got just over half the (easy) sanding done. Cool to see some nice progress.


And here it is, mostly complete. Just need to sand the edges and repair the bent steel on said edges.


Originally, this was the damage on one end of it. Kinda bent in and such.


Using a combination of the tools seen two images ago, I was able to flatten it out reasonably well.


As for the back edge... Well.. We don't talk about back edge.


Honestly that back edge did get repaired for the most part, but there's still a little bit of a pit there. It's small enough that a bit of primer could cover up no problem. This is the first coat of primer. Sometime I need to sand it and apply another coat. By the time the second coat is done, that little ding will probably be unnoticible.


Ripping off the head of the beast.


The two gears at the top are held in by two screws on the top, then DEEZ NUTS and washers. Fairly easy to remove.


On the other hand, the bottom side was REALLY annoying. See that little black peg near that green/white wire?.. Not only are there five screws holding the bottom piece in place, there's that peg too. There's another one just under the 120mm fan.

Since it felt rock solid stuck on there, I decided to take the drill to that peg and rip off half of it. It worked, and apparently it was just that bottom one that was a problem. I was able to pry the second one out using a chisel w/o damaging anything.


And now comes the part I had been putting off doing for a long while now.. Drilling out the rivets. This is the point of no return folks. Now that I've drilled out the rivets, I will NOT put this case back together until it's beautiful. I want to do a damn good job on this, and am a bit of a perfectionist... Just hoping the work ahead of me won't be too stressful.


Ahh.. Makes sense why this case is damaged in awkward places.. See those black pads? One of them wasnt installed on top there. I'll have to find a replacement.


As you can see, very minor mistakes can definitely mess with the integrity of the case itself. That bent piece there is another part I'm going to have to fix. That bent piece is probably why the front left corner of the case sticks up so much.


All rivets drilled out up to this point.. Working my way down a bit more and I'll be finished drillling.


Nice, now I have a pile of steel. I've been waiting my whole life for a pile of steel and now I finally have it.

Yeah that's totally a kiddie basketball hoop it's resting on. The top piece is resting on the hoop itself. Did I mention I have limited workspace?


Bleh, what a mess. Thankfully we have a pushbroom. Swept it up nicely, but I should have worn shoes while drilling and such.. Wore socks and got a few metal bits stuck in them. No holes, thankfully.


That's all I have now for you guys, but thank you very much for taking a look. Means a great deal to me.

If any of you have questions, comments or suggestions, do not hesitate to ask, criticize, or comment.

What do I want to do next? Well I'm going to have to do more sanding of course! . As for the internal chunks of steel go, I've decided I'm going to paint them in chrome and spray translucent red over it... Blame soldam cases for the idea. . First I'll have to repair the case parts, sand, then I can paint and piece everything together.

Now would also be a good time to plan out my designs for the windows. The main one will be your standard average case window using bronze acryllic (thanks to Syrillian for the tip), and the "art" window on the other side may either be just something small.. or it could be large. To elaborate a little more, it could even be small pieces formed into something large.. I guess I'll have to see what I can come up with .

Rest assured, I'm going to be removing a lot of steel. That's one secondary goal I have for this project, because less steel is less weight.. And as you guys saw earlier up, I'm a small dood. I need to make this something I can carry without worry.

-timx

* This Worklog post was generated using WorklogCreator - Version: 1.0.1.0
* Free Download: http://www.mod2software.com/worklogc...logcreator.zip

coolness, keep up the good work
and cool on using WorklogCreator for your worklogs, cheers

Haha, you're telling me, Thedark1337. The thing's huge!

And CattleRustler, what else can I say, it's a really simple way to put things together. I definitely could do it all the manual way, but when it comes to large posts with multiple images, I loathe manually putting everything in.

...Unfortunately, when I'm on my macbook I don't have a choice. .. Oh well.

Thanks for the encouragement guys! Still steadily progressing with it at the moment. Currently it's a lot of sanding and hammering out flaws, but after that I get to move on with the FUN stuff.

I've decided (as mentioned earlier) that chrome with a translucent red coat or two over it will be my internal paint color of choice. The outside will be pretty dark, but the inside is what I REALLY want to shine.

Now to unveil an idea for the case's right side (ie., not main) panel. I've talked about it being artistic, thinking maybe a shattered look would be nice. I had a recent idea that I liked as well: Spraypainting a logo in UV reactive red paint and lighting that side with UV cathodes.

As my pictures should make somewhat obvious, there's really next to no room for cable management or anything behind the tray... Unless worked really carefully. I'll show you what I mean.



I did that about three years ago for an Xbox because of how there's nearly no space to internally mount cathodes otherwise. Option A: I use UV cathodes on the right side and hacksaw them out of their cases, or of course Option B: Wire up some LEDs. When it comes to UV, I'll probaby go cathodes before anything else.

So what am I thinking about spraypainting on my "art" window? Either the symbol seen in this eye...



Or the one seen here...



Everything is still up in the air though.

All Hail timxrish!

While the eye Geass looks good like that (in the eye), I think the Black Knights symbol will look better on a case.

Ehehe, I take it you're familiar with Code Geass then? I hear you though. The thing is, if I do the black knights logo, I would be tempted to engrave it.. But at the very least, use blue UV reactive paint.

If I did the Geass logo, It would most definitely be in uv red. Either route I go, this logo will be on the backside of a "bronze" acryllic window. Bronze acryllic is similar to a smoke color, except it's much darker. I anticipate that because of this, either logo would only be visible with the computer on.

Once I have the acryllic, I will definitely test the logos on scrap pieces.

Sub'd I like where this is going . Keep up the good work.

Quote:
If you have the time and extra acryllic, definitely test out both logos. If you did the blue Black Knights logo, it'll match the front LED's blue theme. If you did the red Geass symbol though, the red might not complement the blue?

Thanks nategr8ns, cs_maan, zhevra.

Quote:
Well, the thing is, I plan on replacing the LEDs in the front piece with a pair of yellow and a pair of red ones (and a switch to set it to red, yellow or orange). So blue wouldn't be too much of a problem when on, but when off it would appear blue. When off, the side window in question would appear a dark translucent black, with probably a shadow of the logo showing.. So no color problems there.

The thing I do worry about though is what if the yellow LEDs just make the front piece look green? I suspect that with bright enough LEDs, that'll be the least of my worries, as the blue plastic is thinner than most translucents i've worked with, and the color is less intense as the others.

I do have 5000mcd reds, but if possible, I would really like to get brighter. We'll see how things go I guess.

theres something for mac that will let you run .NET apps (Wine iirc, or am I thinking linux?) anyway, if you find it then you can run wlc on your mac. either way, nice work

and you reminded me to release the new version (1.0.1.1) Ill do that now

I use crossover on Mac. I'm not very happy with it.
It's worst with graphics based stuff, especially games. The GUI will be "shifted" so if you want to click on something, you have to position the mouse down and left, for example, of where you're clicking.
Quite annoying.
(Crossover Games isn't very good either )