Moding my case AKA drilling holes into a case and messing it up question!

[adamknox]

Hi,
I have the NZXT lexa case which has an 80mmHole at the bottom for a fan.. only problem is though id much rather it be a 120mm hole as my gpu cooler (4870x2 cooler) pushs the air downwards. I dont have room for a 80mm to 120mm convertor. Anyway this is my question!
Does any one know of any tips for doing this? Im pretty handy with a drill lol but never drilled/cut a hole out of metal before :/ As its on the bottom it dosnt have to be exact as i wont really be seeing the hole thanks for ANY help you can give this nooby! thanks

 

[jak731]

The quickest and neatest method will be quite difficult if there is not material in the centre of the fan guard area. This because the best method is to use a 114mm hole saw mounted on an arbour in a drill, which requires sturdy material for the arbour drill bit to guide the hole saw. If it was a case side panel it would be easier although you may still be able to do this: g-clamp some scrap wood underneath where you want to drill (making sure their is some paper or wood where the g-clamps contact the case to prevent scratching). This will allow the wood to act as a guide for the arbour.

Another option is to use a dremel to slowly cut the hole, this is time consuming and doesn't give a particularly neat result in my experience. Neither option is cheap.

 

[adamknox]

Ok what about this.. The 80MM hole at the mo isnt a FULL hole its a circle with loads of cut out circles cut into it.. what if i kept this 80mm hole but further down the case i recreated the same! (not cutting out a full hole) drawing a circle just say a 120mm (well smaller) then drilling large holes into the steel then 4 smaller holes to screw it in.. would be a lot easier wouldnt it? think that should be ok?
I know this may look the best but as i say, its on the bottom and i wont be able to see it throughthe side panle as the 120mm fan will be right over it also coverd with a filter

 

[jak731]

It's best to remove all the material possible as it improves airflow. Making another 80mm hole with the same grill pattern might have an equal effect to simply removing all the material from the current fan hole.

If you need to mount a new filter you will need to drill 8 mounting holes, 4 for the fan and 4 for the filter. I've done exactly what you are thinking of with a side panel on my current case, i can upload a couple of pics tomorrow if you want to get a good idea of what it might look like. I'm off to bed now.

 

[adamknox]

Oo yeah if you wouldnt mind?

heres a picture of the hole at the top (its the same design exsept its flat not poked out)


its a very bad picture as i had to lighten it quiet a bit lol
I didnt think it would matter as long as there were a lot of holes? Same with filters (loads of little holes)

 

[pastymuncher]

If you really want to enlarge that hole you could place a piece of wood under it by using some screws through the fan mounting holes. You could then use a holesaw to enlarge the hole as the drill bit would have something to bite into then. It would ba a good idea to mask the area off first because holesaws can make a bit of a mess.

 

[jak731]

I modded a thermaltake xaser 3 that i bought about five years ago for £21, so it didn't really matter if i made a mess of it on my first attempt at modding. On the side panel I removed an 80mm fan and replaced it with a 120mm, did the same on the back panel (now has 120 and 80). At first i tried drilling holes but because it was 1mm steel the hss bit i was using got blunt quite quickly and i couldn't drill as many as i would have liked. Eventually I borrowed a dremel from a friend and removed all of the material, temps on the cpu and gpu dropped by about 8 degrees after that.

This was the piece I removed which i drilled holes in:

I chopped of the corners from the old 80mm fan to use to screw the fan guard down so i could use rubber mounts for the fan, which you can see on the left of this image:

The hole is quite rough and not amazingly circular, even though I drew an accurate circle on before hand. Cutting took between half an hour to an hour, mainly because it takes ages to cut the steel, an aluminium job might be a lot quicker. The quickest method will still be the hole saw though.

 

[jak731]

Oh yeah it's worth getting a centre punch for drilling the holes to stop the bit from drifting before it digs in. If you can't find one you can use masking tape instead but it's not as effective.

 

[adamknox]

very nice Thank you i ended up leaving it as a 80mm! im not confident enough to use a dremel -_- I just brought an extra strong fan thanks anyway! nice case btw!