New look on a budget

GAM8LE · 4 Jul 2015 at 17:27

Hi All,

This will be short and sweet as this is just a mini project in preparation for a larger on.

So I have a corsair carbide 500r which I love. I think it looks good, has lots of space, lots of options and good air cooling but I have always hated the mesh at the side so decided to do the following:

Window mod
Remove SSD/HDD cages and remount HDD/SSD's
Mount HDD on floor of case and SSD's are mounted on the back of the CD drive enclosure out of sight
Shroud for PSU which will eventually turn into a light box
Remove CD drive and place a fan in its place

What I bought:
A3 white acrylic sheet
A3 clear acrylic sheet
Dremel and metal cutting accessories
Heat gun was on loan

Before picture:

Bending white acrylic - very basic...marked a line, heat it up, bent it over the edge of the bench lol

New fan on front(still needs a surround(

Finished product:

What I still need to do is buy some white strip lights for under the white acrylic so its actually a lightbox. And also make a surround for the new 140mm fan at the front. Just so you just see the fan blades and nothing behind it.

Also need to sand the edges of the case where I cut so it looks a bit cleaner but I might just order another side panel and cut a larger window or get it machined.

Finally need to get braided cables, as even though that's a bit more of an expense on a build I wont have for much longer, they are transferrable so will be fine

Now what this was really in preparation for....is watercooling. Towards the end of this year im going to do an x99 build and put it all under water so I wanted to see how much room I had, as well as make it a little prettier in preparation.

As I said - this whole thing cost about......£35 so is very basic

Bensons · 4 Jul 2015 at 20:19

Looks a lot classier, gj.

skaif · 4 Jul 2015 at 20:23

Nicely done! Looks much fresher

GAM8LE · 9 Aug 2015 at 16:58

Little update.

So I finished the first attempt on the side and I have made some mistakes. Basically, the acrylic is slightly scratched and the black trim isn't 100% even but Im going to be buying another side panel and redoing the whole thing when I upgrader and watercool

then it will be done as perfect as I possibly can considering I know where I went wrong. Im not very good at DIY stuff lol

Braided cables in white added
Black trim around window

.:SAmSuNG:. · 9 Aug 2015 at 17:06

How come you fit the black trim around it? Would look better with white trim if you have to use it.

GAM8LE · 9 Aug 2015 at 17:11

.:SAmSuNG:. said:
How come you fit the black trim around it? Would look better with white trim if you have to use it.

I considered white but I wasn't sure.

The whole case is black and white so I thought black would fit.

I will be redoing and luckily if I bought white and black - I could do a trial run to see what it will look like

AND its cheap!

.:SAmSuNG:. · 9 Aug 2015 at 18:18

I personally think the white would look better.

Do you have a cut edge from removing the mesh?

GAM8LE · 9 Aug 2015 at 18:54

.:SAmSuNG:. said:
I personally think the white would look better.

Do you have a cut edge from removing the mesh?

Yeah, that's the reason why I added the edging, because I didn't do the cutting very well.

I think on my second try I will try and do the cutting as perfect as possible to enable me to have the clear window without any edging whatsoever

.:SAmSuNG:. · 9 Aug 2015 at 19:07

Well the window looks a lot better than the mesh. Have temps increased at all?

GAM8LE · 9 Aug 2015 at 19:28

.:SAmSuNG:. said:
Well the window looks a lot better than the mesh. Have temps increased at all?

They have gone down a bit to be honest but this might be due to other factors.

I replaced the bottom two fans at the front with better ones, and also removed my dvd drive and put a 140mm fan in there.

colinmcr · 9 Aug 2015 at 23:30

Looks much better with the edging

TechMinerUK · 10 Aug 2015 at 10:23

Looks very nice and clean, excellent job

ED209 · 10 Aug 2015 at 10:51

do like the clear side rather than the mesh, looks a lot better.

good job on the work

should post up my build log of my PC but not sure if I am going to wait till its finished completely or post it now then update it lol

Brian18741 · 10 Aug 2015 at 17:43

Nice job on the window mod!

Cyanide · 12 Aug 2015 at 21:18

Did you have to cut the acrylic to get the window in? You've inspired me to do the same but I'm struggling to find somewhere that'll cut a 230x320mm sheet of acrylic without charging a "minimum order topup" or huge postage

GAM8LE · 13 Aug 2015 at 01:12

Cyanide said:
Did you have to cut the acrylic to get the window in? You've inspired me to do the same but I'm struggling to find somewhere that'll cut a 230x320mm sheet of acrylic without charging a "minimum order topup" or huge postage

I bought an a3 sized piece of clear acrylic off amazon and cut it down a bit. I couldn't fond anywhere bigger than a3 for decent money.

Did the same for the white acrylic inside also.

.:SAmSuNG:. · 13 Aug 2015 at 07:52

Cyanide said:
Did you have to cut the acrylic to get the window in? You've inspired me to do the same but I'm struggling to find somewhere that'll cut a 230x320mm sheet of acrylic without charging a "minimum order topup" or huge postage

Have you looked on eBay?