Alright, here is how this one comes about...
Meshie was sitting here Chillen when she seen Da Plane Da Plane. Well she took a nice ride on Da Plane and decided to Pop a Cap! The sad thing, she Popped the Cap in her own ass. One of the legs on one of the capacitors on the mb broke. So she sat in the big ol place called Vegas for a few days DOA. She then took a road trip to the other end of the good ol USA. Literally from one end to the other. She received her new mb and Chilled there for a few days. The Green man picked her up and sent her on her way. To bad the Green man was mean to her and abused her.
Ok I know, enough of that shit... LOL getting hard to think like that and type like that. Meshie made it from IN to Vegas with no cosmetic damage what so ever. She then went from Vegas to Florida and again received no cosmetic damage. Well when the UPS guy brings her home. The box literally looked like SHIT. My first comment was WTF, and then OMG what am I going to find wrong.
The box.
The DVD Burner and Chill TEC controller.
Rear top of the case.
The Chill TEC itself.
At this point I seen enough, I immediately hit up the shipper and informed him of the damage that I had seen to this point. It was already obvious that the case was toast. 5 of the 6 panels that make up the chassis had been tweaked. Right out of the box you could tell everything had been tweaked enough to show a significant lean to the case. So out comes the hardware. I start pulling things and stacking them in piles, prepping them to do a quick build so I could test everything.
Damaged parts:
Right panel
Left panel
Rear panel
Bottom of case
Top of case
Drive rail locks on both the DVD Burner and the Chill TEC controller had the ends snapped off.
The Chill TEC cooler itself had been twisted.
Motherboard tray had only 1 tab holding it in place. 5 tabs where bent and the 2 thumb screws had their threads pulled out.
Hardware wise everything looked to be in working order (besides the Chill TEC being twisted).
Once everything was out, the two supports that go from the front to the back and support the PSU are both bowed out about .5" each. At this point I had only one panel that made it through without cosmetic damge. The front panel, door, and mesh all came throug hit fine. I put all the chassis parts back in the box and through the hardware into another case I was fixing to review. Thankfully everything worked, I was able to bend the Chill TEC back to where it should be.
I have made the decision since this mod has met early death twice, I doubt I will be going for a third. Dont get me wrong, I do want to rebuild it one more time. It was my favorite mod to date. So if I do rebuild it, it will not be leaving the house again.
Meshie was slated to go back to QuakeCon this year seeing that it had been modified since its last trip. Well now that she is dead I need another one to take her place.
This is where the "TO BE NAMED" mod comes in to play. Now keep in mind I prefer my computes to look like computers with a bit of my taste added to them. Not really gotten into the 100% custom modding yet for many reasons. I have roughly 4 months to build this mod. This wouldn't be a problem normally but I have been staying pretty busy with site stuff. Not really had much time to post to threads let alone mod. So if you think I am being a snob cause I rarely post, don't. I am just busy!
So I popped an image up the other day of the frame that I am starting with.
This one.
So I figured I might as well slip in some pictures of what that originally looked like.
With Plexi panels.
With Carbon Fiber panels.
Drive cage.
PCI slot area.
PSU mount.
I do realize mine looks a tad rougher that these shots. The one I have has been through a few builds and so forth. It came to me with two panels intact and two panels in pieces. I did not get any Carbon Fiber panels with it
(its all good, I would have pulled them off anyways).
So here are some more shots of the chassis as I got it.
The main chassis can be broken down in to 7 pieces, the drive cage can be broken down into 3 or 4 I forget.
To start things off with this I have been doing some thinking over the last couple of weeks. I will be running plexi panels of some sort, not decided 100% yet. I picked up some supplies today and started making a template for the new front panel. This will have some extra polished aluminum parts added to it as well.
Stock Front panel.
Its pretty narrow and kind of plain I think.
One of the panels I got that was still in but does have damage.
5.25" Drive bay area without the front panel.
Lower section without front panel.
All exterior panels are going to be plexi (either Red or 2-Way mirror). For right now I am playing. I want to build a set of clear panels for it as well so thats where we are starting off. Once I have the clear panels made I will use them as templates to make the final panels. So to start things off, I want to make a stencil of the front bay areas and mark the fans center so I can add a front blowhole. I plan to play off the polished aluminum as much as possible on this mod. So as I stated, there will be more aluminum pieces being added as the build moves forward.
So I start out with a couple of sheets of thick paper tapped together. I lay them down on the desk and flip up the case on its front side. I then trace the main outline of the case leaving a little area for adjustments after I cut the rough shape. So once I have my outline done I flip the case back up and lay the stencil on the chassis. I then run my fingers around the ridges that are on the bay sections. This will show me roughly where to make my cuts. I trim things off and work my way out till I get a nice fit over the lips.
While I am starting on the stencil, I pulled out one of the billet parts that are going on it. The front blowhole is from MNPCTech.com.
I will have a review coming shortly on this, once I get the panels made for this mod so I can show the installation and so on.
So here we have the upper areas cut out and ready to go. Time to move down to the blowhole and mark it out.
I centered it up using the 4 mounting holes to line up with my fan mounting holes. I then traced the inside and outside of the blowhole so I had an idea of the size.
Once I have the lower section marked up it was time to cut out the center of it.
Above we have the final stencil I will use to mark up the plexi. While I was out today I picked up a couple of 24" X 48" sheets of plexi, had them cut into 4 24" x 24" sheets. This should give me more than enough to take care of everything. The sides are roughly 19" x 19", and the front and back come in about 8" x 21", the top and bottom are the smallest panels measuring in at 6.5" x 19". I will also use a piece thats left over to make the motherboard tray.
here we have 3 of the panels marked up (front, top, and bottom). The next piece will take care of the back and motherboard tray leaving the last two for the sides.
More to come.
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