Project: Need your thoughts/ideas

mishima · 18 Mar 2007 at 23:19

Hi there,

I was originally going to just sell on this old case of mine but now that I have all the components out of it I've had the urge to do a project on it. It currently only has two rear 80mm fan mounts. There are also quite a few holes around the PCI section and of course the front of it has missing bay panels.

So what do you think? Should I paint it black? Any ideas for the holes that need patching? Any thoughts and ideas here would be much appreciated.

mishima · 19 Mar 2007 at 11:52

Good idea, I could cover up two of the holes with DVDRW and Fan controller but that would leave another 3 spaces left to cover. I could make a sheet of metal to fit in there perhaps to cover up the existing space.

Not too keen on the green idea!! lol

mishima · 19 Mar 2007 at 12:38

Sounds very nice!!

Removing the front though and replacing it might be tricky? My dad is great at this sort of stuff and has tools but I would have to ask for his assistance. Would love to do a complete mod of this case, would be great. Should I convert the panel to a window or not?

mishima · 19 Mar 2007 at 12:58

So you think a silver colour would look nice? Most of the components I have/will be using are black you see. Very nice ideas so far

mishima · 19 Mar 2007 at 23:59

DeeJay-Mo said:
Populate the drive bays with hot-swapable mini-itx pcs and turn it into a cluster.
I think black and red would be a good colour scheme.

What are they?? I'm currently looking into getting a caddy and moving HDD to the optical drive bay take up some space and make space below!

I like the perspex idea, my dad has on quite a few occasions offered to do something with the panel to creat something similar. I might though just paint panels and see how it looks and sort out the perspex if/when the project is near the end etc.

mishima · 20 Mar 2007 at 09:43

Wow, just been checking this thing out, superb solution just what I was looking for that. Thanks for spotting it. Cheap as too

mishima · 20 Mar 2007 at 10:46

What shall I do with the input/output plate on the back of the case? Just checked and I can't fit a 120mm fan around there so I'm going to be stuck with using either one or two 80mm fans, as you can see from the image temporarly I had bored some holes in there to fit another fan but it needs tidying up. Would you replace that plate?

mishima · 21 Mar 2007 at 17:35

I have been thinking seriously about the project and drawn up some very rough plans for the front of the case which I will be implementing very soon. So here is an update:

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 11:55

Email on your trust address waiting for you

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 12:00

messiah khan said:
Scrap the case speaker and see if you can fit 2x120mm fans there instead?

Isn't it a good practise to have the case speaker for POST beeps etc? I could mount that anywhere I guess. 2x120mm fans will definately fit in there just had a measure. Fantastic idea hadn't even considered that, looks like I'm going to have to order some more 120mm's

Quietness is going to be absolutely essential now I feel especially with 6/7 fans in there.

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 12:01

Fisha said:
cheers buddy =]

got it.

would i be able to swap that black plain fan for my 120mm red one?

Yeah as far as I know you can switch out the fan in it and customise it to what you want, even put in an LED to mimic that Antec nine hundred look.

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 12:22

Cool stuff, should look nice that! Those Sycthe Kama's are just a great idea. Really innovative.

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 12:45

O'er definately going into something that I know nothing about now (Water cooling). I don't even know the basics of it.

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 13:05

My dad's been encouraging me to get into it and he's not even a hardware enthusiast haha. He said it would be a good case to install some sort of alternative cooling, water, refridgaration. Are there any guides out there that can assist me in this? Although I didn't really want to spend hundreds of pounds on this project at the moment, just want to modify for air cooling I think at the current time.

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 13:20

Bookmarked!

Great stuff thanks for those links.

mishima · 22 Mar 2007 at 22:50

Yeah very impressed with the idea of tha Kama bay can't wait to order. Meanwhile I'm going to start work on the case very soon. Don't really want to mod it for watercooling as I don't have any intention at the moment of going into watercooling. Just spent quite a lot of my cash on a new air cooler so that will have to last me a while. Would you suggest dual 120mm fans where that speaker is then?

mishima · 31 Mar 2007 at 14:15

I'm going to finally start some work on this project today. I thought about working on the front panel first. What I have in mind is to drill holes through the front panel where the little indented circles are on the right hand side. I could then put some sort of LED behind this.

I'd like to fit 1 or 2 120mm fans behind the section with the indented stripes on the left hand side (on the inside of the case). So I would need some kind of mesh on the outside here for cool air to come in. Any ideas:

What do you think?

mishima · 31 Mar 2007 at 15:08

gr1mey said:
nah make a new front bezel out of some aluminium plate.

How am I going to do that?! I'm not an engineer. I also prefer the matte look over the glossy sort of look.

mishima · 31 Mar 2007 at 16:47

Hadn't realised but the front panel dismantles so it looks like below. So what I can do is use that on the left as a frame and get some sheets on metal for the spaces and that will allow me to play around a bit with the design of the front panel:

mishima · 31 Mar 2007 at 17:33

I'm going to be putting in a Kama-Bay in the top section and obviously an optical drive etc. I may as I have said put some sort of lighting feature on the front panel lower section.