My new Shinobi XL!

Soldato
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My Shinobi XL arrived today! I am very very happy with it, never done a build log for a desktop before.

Here's my old case, an Antec 300, heavily modified with the HDD bays removed, an old PSU gutted and use to store cables in, lots of cable routing holes, a Lian Li hard drive caddy + fan mount thingy, and far too much hardware really. It was getting way too hot I was tired of the styling:

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So in came the Shinobi XL.

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Here they are together, small difference in volume!

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Started by stripping the case down to the bare chassis.

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The small pile of stuff I removed from the case that won't be going back in.

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That's as far as I got really. Built my rig into it for the weekend but not made any mods to it, so nothing really to show...
 
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Soldato
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Cheers, it is lovely!

Playing around with the front, it's going to look roughly like this:

2012-06-29195842.jpg


Just need to order the Lian Li bezels so the mesh all matches up properly.

My plan for it is to keep the basic chassis white, but all the cables, fans, mesh etc will be black. I'm really liking the black/white contrast!
 
Soldato
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I can't, it's part of the mesh bit. :( Similar to this:

CA-167-LL_23571_400.jpg


Considering removing the front mesh strips and painting the slot they fit in black, I'm not keen on the white showing through, what do we think?
 
Caporegime
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Does the lian li bezel/hdd bay fit without any issues Muel? Thinking off adding one to my xl, that or some lian li 5.25 mesh bay bezels, this would allow me to mount an extra intake fan that could help with my high cpu temps. Gotta say, the xl looks very nice in white.
 
Soldato
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It "fits" without any issues yes, but it's not completely flush, it sticks out by about 1mm, could easily be sorted by some gentle sanding/filing of the front panel though, just needed the shoulder taking off that DVD drives slide up to. If you can be bothered that is! (I'd recommend it as then the panel will lift off over the Lian Li stuff, but I haven't got round to it yet).

I'm getting some mesh bezels too, I used the ones from my Antec 300 to do the mockup shot above.
 
Caporegime
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Yep, i have a set of the LL bezels, (though cant remember where they are) that i used on my A70F. On that case they just slid into place, i suspect on the xl theyll need to be screwed in. Thanks for the info.
 
Soldato
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First stage in the built is done at last! Still waiting on my new cooler but should arrive soon.

Anyway, pics.

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Proud of this. Bought a Bitfenix extender and shortened it so it fed power to my two HDDs and my SSD without having loops of ugly cabling everywhere.

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Apart from a new cooler and maybe a few small mods, it'll be staying mostly like this for a good while now. At some point though I want to change the graphics cards for a single one, and the motherboard, CPU and Ram for good ones, so will decide on a proper colour scheme next time... The blue/red clash doesn't really do it for me...
 
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Soldato
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Cheers guys, still not finished because I'm waiting on my new CPU cooler.

There's a couple more things I want to do, like track down some black mesh for the top. The original prototype pics were black, this one is white. I was not happy.

I didn't even trying building it without the HDD cages, I've never liked them, always end up removing them and mounting the HDDs in the optical bays somehow. Just wish this Lian Li caddy would let me reverse mount them! They slipped up there when designing it IMO.
 
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Soldato
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Plans are set, going to spray it black this weekend. Going to just shotblast the white paint off and spray the black straight on, can't be bothered messing with primer. Be finneee.
 
Soldato
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Got itchy fingers! I was all set to take it to my Dad's work and shotblast the original paint off and spray it properly. Then I decided to spray it anyway to get a test spray done. Then I finished it. :p Personally I think it's a big improvement. Better than the mis-matched white it was before!

Old:

2012-07-05090711.jpg


New:

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Soldato
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Had a couple of spare Lian Li bezels, so decided to play with one. Considering having just these in the 5.25" bays sprayed white instead of the current black ones, which would also do away with the one with the logo. Opinions?

2012-07-28124031.jpg
 
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