Right, I have wanted to do this for a while and have finally started.
I have been building PC's for about a year now and feel that I have amassed a fair bit of knowledge over that time. The first PC that I built was quite stressful as I had never done anything like it before. Regardless, I put the order in for my AMD 965 CPU, G.Skill RipJaw 4GB RAM, ASUS Crosshair III motherboard, corsair 650HX PSU and an antec 300 case. I already had a few HDD's an optical drive and an old GPU (I don't really do much gaming) so saved a bit of money and used them.
The first time it booted up and I installed windows 7 ultimate 64, I was so pleased with myself it was all I would talk about for weeks.
Well, its been about a year since I did that and lately I have been getting that upgrade bug so, after reading loads of reviews of hardware that I could upgrade to I decided to wait for Bulldozer (the new AMD CPU that will be coming out soon). That left me with one problem, I needed to upgrade something.
So, I started to look at cases instead as I had been thinking about getting in to water cooling and would never fit it in my antec 300. After about a week of looking at different cases I decided to go for the NZXT Phanton case. Why, I dont really know, just like the look of it really. So the case arrived and I started to look at it for hours trying to work out where everything was going to go (and there is a lot of stuff to fit in). Finally I decided where I was going to fit everything and started to slowly take it apart to modify it.
I wanted to fit a 120.2 rad in the front (there is no where in the front for a rad of that size) and a 140.2 rad on the roof (would also be an issue as there is already two 200mm holes there for some fans). That is all I will say at the moment for what hardware is going in as I want to keep it a surprise.
So I started with this.
The bit that you can see is very tough plastic but that is just a decorative cover for the top and front, after that is taken off you end up with this.
I know that I will need to do something about the top so I took that off first.
All the holes marked in red need to be filled in and I cant just rivet some metal to the top or bottom as there are too many other things that would then need to be adjusted if I did that (it is going to a metal fabricator in the morning anyway).
So, I thought I would start on how I was going to fit the front rad in.
The green square is where I want the rad to go and the red box needs to be removed so it is not in the way of the rad. So I took the front off and started to cut away at the case with my dremel. Once that bit was removed I needed to cut out a section of my 5.25" drive bays.
With that all done the next job was to relocate the 3.5" drive bays as there was now a rad with space for two fans in push pull where the drive bays used to be. It was actually quite easy to just move them over though (I did have to lose the small cage though).
So, after all that cutting I realised that I had no rivets and could not put it back together to take a pic so you guys will have to wait till tomorrow to see how far it has got.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of "I bet it will fit"
I have been building PC's for about a year now and feel that I have amassed a fair bit of knowledge over that time. The first PC that I built was quite stressful as I had never done anything like it before. Regardless, I put the order in for my AMD 965 CPU, G.Skill RipJaw 4GB RAM, ASUS Crosshair III motherboard, corsair 650HX PSU and an antec 300 case. I already had a few HDD's an optical drive and an old GPU (I don't really do much gaming) so saved a bit of money and used them.
The first time it booted up and I installed windows 7 ultimate 64, I was so pleased with myself it was all I would talk about for weeks.
Well, its been about a year since I did that and lately I have been getting that upgrade bug so, after reading loads of reviews of hardware that I could upgrade to I decided to wait for Bulldozer (the new AMD CPU that will be coming out soon). That left me with one problem, I needed to upgrade something.
So, I started to look at cases instead as I had been thinking about getting in to water cooling and would never fit it in my antec 300. After about a week of looking at different cases I decided to go for the NZXT Phanton case. Why, I dont really know, just like the look of it really. So the case arrived and I started to look at it for hours trying to work out where everything was going to go (and there is a lot of stuff to fit in). Finally I decided where I was going to fit everything and started to slowly take it apart to modify it.
I wanted to fit a 120.2 rad in the front (there is no where in the front for a rad of that size) and a 140.2 rad on the roof (would also be an issue as there is already two 200mm holes there for some fans). That is all I will say at the moment for what hardware is going in as I want to keep it a surprise.
So I started with this.
The bit that you can see is very tough plastic but that is just a decorative cover for the top and front, after that is taken off you end up with this.
I know that I will need to do something about the top so I took that off first.
All the holes marked in red need to be filled in and I cant just rivet some metal to the top or bottom as there are too many other things that would then need to be adjusted if I did that (it is going to a metal fabricator in the morning anyway).
So, I thought I would start on how I was going to fit the front rad in.
The green square is where I want the rad to go and the red box needs to be removed so it is not in the way of the rad. So I took the front off and started to cut away at the case with my dremel. Once that bit was removed I needed to cut out a section of my 5.25" drive bays.
With that all done the next job was to relocate the 3.5" drive bays as there was now a rad with space for two fans in push pull where the drive bays used to be. It was actually quite easy to just move them over though (I did have to lose the small cage though).
So, after all that cutting I realised that I had no rivets and could not put it back together to take a pic so you guys will have to wait till tomorrow to see how far it has got.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of "I bet it will fit"
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