(Mach 23rd, 2010)
Tonight, I went after the flat black pieces I painted yesterday... and wanted to make them a bit more durable. So, I broke out the flat "clearcoat".



2-3 coats on all of the important parts, and everything is looking good! I may dump a few more cans onto the parts.... we'll see how some test scratches go later this week. One thing that I learned using this spray, is that it sometimes leaves a fine dust as it cures. Much like the residue left from Duplicolor Metalcast. Dont freak when you see it, just let the clear cure, then take a damp, soft cotton towel, and wipe the surface clean... easy cheesy!

Also, some new "paint" product came in today, and I just had to try it out... This was a test panel that I was using during prototype phases on the side panel for Deuce. This was sprayed on without primer, without scuffing the paint surface. Easy, easy to use! Very impressed with how easy it is.




The bottom corner was my intentional roughing up the surface to see how durable the stuff is....
This is a quick, single pass. not 2-3 coats yet, so I don't even know yet how well this will work.... but it is cool right now!
This "stuff"..... is spray on Plasti-Dip! If the tests work out, I hope to have the entire outside of the case ruggedized with this ruberized paint! The sensation moving my hand from a painted surface to the flat black rubber paint is not like I have ever felt. It "almost" feels like the paint is still tacky.... like it is not dry. It is, it's just kinda tacky!

Too cool for school!

(March 30, 2010)

Hehehehe... the snow on the ground was the 21st.... my frikken birthday! "YAY ME!"

20th was stunning.... 21st was a blizzard, go figure!

Hey there all!
Ok, first off, I want to share a neat trick that I did this weekend. Some of you may have done this, but I did not know about this. I was talking to my neighbor across the alley, and was explaining my plight of needing to go into all of those small holes that I drilled for the LEDs, and file them all down. He just looked at me and very matter of factly said, "You need a 1/2" drill bit or something significantly larger than the hole, then just use that and deburr those edges off."

*blink.... blink*



Two or three turns was all it took! I had ALL of the holes on the panel deburred in less than 5 minutes!!!! If you are drilling a lot of holes, save yourself filing time, and cut those edges down using a larger drill bit! Wow! Saved me a TON of time and frustration!

Now... on with the updates!

Back panel. It had this massive, extruded metal grate that was pushed out about a 1/4 inch from the back of the frame... that had to go!


My trusty Craftsman rotary with the flexi-shaft attachment.... just waiting to bring tha' pain!



Cutting this off was blissfully easy. Simple little straight cuts....



After filing it down and removing the slight humps left over from the cut steel



I primed it (scuffed this piece prior to priming for a little extra durability):


2-3 coats of flat enamel later...



Went to work on the top and bottom pieces the next morning. A couple of different looks of the masking that I put in place. The inside of the case will be a matte black enamel. The outside will be a matte black, but it will be rubberized.... so it will have a different appearance. And we ALL know, *nothing* stands out worse than 2 shades of black side by side! So, this was my attempt at keeping the inside black separate from the outside black:





Painting on the tops with the aerosol Plasti-Dip... ooooooo!


The case has 2 major plastic pieces, the front bezel frame and the top sculpted "hood" that covers the fans. Ths fan covers are plastic reinforced across the fan holes... with a speaker type metal mesh grille that is overlayed. Well.... anyone that knows me knows for a fact that those crosses of plastic are outta here!







The speaker grille type metal was tabbed in place, with through tabs that were bent to secure the grilles. Bend up the tabs, and slide out the mesh.... tadaa!





Here you can see the mesh removed, and the vacated holes that the mesh tabs would have fit through.



After the preliminary cutting work on the center cross supports, you can see the 4 corner parts that need to be filed down on each circle.



Break out the wide, rounded hand file. Right one was done for comparison purposes.



Closeups of the non finished hole:


and the finished hole:



The front bezel needed disassembly and I brought it inside while I made a glass of tea. In the pic, you can see all of the front bay covers removed. each bay cover has a foam filter insert.



I then started masking out the bezel. Here I am using line tape. This thin masking tape can be found at autobody paint shops or online. It just so happened to fit almost perfectly, the narrow width of the light rod space. There was no way to remove the light rods without possibly breaking them, so I needed to mask them:



This picture likely better shows why I am doing what I am doing. I lit the LED's to show you what I am trying to cover up and keep from getting any kind of paint on.



After getting this piece all masked off, I went to work on the window frame panel. The window needed to come out in order to allow for the Plasti-Dip to be sprayed. This window was tab locked in place:





Bending the tabs up, allows for the removal of the installed window:





A lot of painting later:




And I let everything start drying.

On Sunday I came out and started putting the frame together and here is where I stopped:



and



I am not putting the top on yet so that I can have unfettered access into the case while I work on the component placement later!


I had painted the front bezel with the masking, and I knew it was going to be tricky. Remember, effectively, I am painting with rubber paint. I cannot let this stuff sit too long, else the rubber will start forming and the masking pull will be wrecked. Well... I waited too long on the first attempt! I have not had a chance to reshoot the front bezel, but I will this weekend hopefully!! I also need to cut the slots out of the top to allow for the light pipes to protrude.

I also came up with a really cool idea for a hard drive cage... but will need to sketch it out to show you the plans!

More as I have it!

-=TD

(April 1, 2010)

So.... I have been pondering for the last few days, the layout of the inside of the case. I think I finally hit upon the right mix of component purchase vs "custom fabrication" that I needed... ordered one more part today, and went out tonight and thought about the hard drive location. I had an idea a few nights ago that was going to be amazing, but I feared it would take up too much room in the case.

Tonight, I came up with a solution! *MUCH* more elegant, and should be much easier to fabricate!

I'm going to take some pics tonight and see if I can get my idea across!

Soooo stoaked about this, can't believe it took me this long to think of it!

-=TD

(April 1, 2010)

Ok, so now I am happy that I kept all of those old drives! Even if they are non functional, I can use them to prototype an idea quickly!

Looking in the case, there is just not much space! If I put the hard drives in the middle of the drive bay in front of the fans, I am taking up critical floor space that will be needed for the water pump. And in a mid tower, there is just not much there. Add in the PSU, and then it really gets crazy....








My plan, build a side wall bracket that will cover the hard drives, but allow me to mount the SSD drive on the top of the cover to be fabricated over the hard drives. The cover will blank the drive tops into a consistent black, but leave their back sides exposed for easy cable attachment and routing. The cover will allow me to put the SSD drive on the top of this wall mounted assembly and displayed for all to see!






I am also contemplating a flared end of the cover on the side that faces the front of the case. On of the rad that will be there mounted to the front using a custom bracket, and 2 fans pushing air into the case through the rad. Since the rad will be the second rad in the loop, I am not expecting it to be pushing a lot of radiated heat into the case. I am thinking the first rad will handle most of that task. That said, the three 3.5 inch "spinning disk" hard drives will create heat. If I sandwich them without giving them some supply, I'll shorten the life of these drives. *Buuut*, if I put an intake flare/air funnel on the "to be fabricated" cover for the drives... and have that facing the exhaust side of the fans, I should be able to redirect some of the air onto the hard drives and keep them happily cooled!



-=TD

(April 4th, 2010)

So.... today I am in the garage working on the drive bay/hard drive mount.... and this thing is FRU-STRA-TING!

12 holes (3 sets of 4) need to be drilled out so that the piece can be tested. So far, I have only been able to create a prototype mount. Which worked successfully, but it did not include all 4 holes per drive, only 2.

BUT.... I now have a reproducible template that I just need to tweak a bit to get it so that is spans all 3 drives accurately.

Almost there...
"stay on target...."



-+CT

(April 5th, 2010)

Ok, so I wanted to see what my space was looking like inside the case *before* I put the top on this thing. Grab the front rad Tech, and let's see how that works!





Looking good! That will let me estimate the placement that I need to have for the hard drives. I still have to attach the fans, and that will give me my final placement for the hard drives. But this plus a tape measure give me some good estimates. So, I need to create a prototype plate to hold 3 hard drives side by side...

So... you start with a scrap sheet of metal (in this case, aluminum)


Cut it to size and shape and try to create a template that will let you accurately drill holes... (hint: this one was not accurate)


But it was accurate enough to do a proof of concept:


Only got one row of screw holes lined up.... DOH!


Sooooo, this time I have a brighter idea than the first time, put tape over the bottom of the drives, and poke the holes in the tape to represent where the screws need to feed into the hard drives.


Then lay the tape on the next piece of scrap metal:



Bolt the drives on to make sure the holes work as expected and properly line up:





Prepare to shape down the metal. Bet you are wondering how I am shaping this stuff out? It is a drill mounted nibbler, and here is how I mount it to the bench!


Here I am eyeballing the basic shape I am wanting to cut:


Then I lay the pathway with drops of oil (for the nibbler)


After a couple of passes and a hole ton of these little aluminium splinters later:


you end up with something like this:


that you promptly take over to the belt sander to flatten out the edges of:


Which leaves you with *all* this tiny particulate aluminum dust! Here is an interesting point of trivia.... if you sneeze on this stuff, it is heaver than normal dust and (if you are wearing shorts and socks) will quickly drift down to your legs and ankels... making you ITCH LIKE CRAZY!!!! ARRRGH!!!! Just thought you should know....



Ok, looking better, but now I realize that my holes are angled in comparison to my straight edge sides... DOH!


Back over to the itchy dust maker for a couple more passes and you end up here! Still needs a little more tweaking...


More as I have it....

(April 7th, 2010)

Woot!



My new cross flow rad came in today!

More in a bit!
-=TD

(April 10, 2010)

*RANT*
I now remember why every machine up until this point has been an AMD rig. They stick to a socket type!

Because I have been out of the mix on the intel side of the equation, I did not realize that the *new* i7 processors are actually across 2 different socket types!!! 1156 and 1366!!! WTF??!?! This frustration stems from the fact that I was all excited! I won an i7-975EE processor and was looking forward to dropping it into my *new* (as in recently released) Asus P7P55D Premium http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=k ... templete=2 . Guess what? 1156 don't work!!! ARGH!!!
One processor, 2 different socket styles that have no compatibility crossover...

Add into that, the CPU cooler that I purchased that is 1156/1366 compatible... *only* came with a 1366 back bracket! Oh yeah, the top CPU bracket can adjust to either of the hole sizes, but it only came with a 1366 bracket! The advertisement said the block was i7 mounting compatible. My AMD thinking said... "Good, I'm buying the right part!" .... DENIED!!!!!!!

Grrrr..... now I have to locate a 1156 back plate or build one myself. How frikken confusing!

To add insult to injury, the only place I have found the 1156 back plate was going to charge me almost twice as much as the MSRP from Swiftech *and* add in $10 shipping!!! DAMN IT!!!

*end rant*

Alright.... so, storming through my frustration in dealing with the non proper back plate and my CPU socket issues... I needed to mock everything up to see how it was all fitting together. See if I have any gotcha's that I have not thought of.


Mount the top rad (my new cross flow) into the top of the case:




This shot will show you precisely how much fan coverage the rad will get from above:


So then, knowing that I do not have a back plate for my cpu cooler, I lay the case back at an angle so that the parts will stay put.















The blue of the rads works well with the onboard blue of the heatsinks and the slots. I'm liking the look.

Oh, and one other thing... that trick with the larger drill bit de-burring the edges of the smaller drilled holes...

Say "WHADDUP!" to the inspiration for the idea...
"WHADDUP, JOE?!"

haha this is just... EXCELLENT! thanks for sharing with us and for took the time to transfert all your worklog here.


peace!

omg, i was impressed of this worklog
The blue and dark colors was the better colours for your mod
I hope you finish your mod because it was a very beautiful work !

Ps: Alonzo, could you correct my english fault please if they have because my english is very bad

Leproengame a écrit :omg, i was impressed of this worklog
The blue and dark colors was the better colours for your mod
I hope you finish your mod because it was a very beautiful work !

Ps: Alonzo, could you correct my english fault please if they have because my english is very bad

too hard to correct, everything needs to be rewrited..
But I'm sure Tech-Daddy can understand what you mean...

I understood what was written, and I thank you! Work continues on the mod.... and as I make updates, this log will also be updated. Thanks for stopping in!


-=TD

Thanks you tech-daddy for the updates

Leproengame a écrit :OMG, I am really impressed by your worklog
Both blue and dark colors were the best choice for the mod
I hope you 'll finish it 'cause I'm a true fan !


Ps: Alonzo,would you mind correcting my mistakes ? please

thanks Cr30s

Hello thanks to post on our forum and you have do a great job in this work blog

i know a wonderfull paintworker in the orange countie (nub GraphiXx )

http://www.nubgrafix.com/

if you want to have the most beautiful pc (after me of course ^^" ).

Good job !

Thank you everyone!

So.... I got my fans in this last week, *annnnd* I got my 1566 back bracket for my Swiftech Apogee GTZ water block... YAY!


Not happy with this pic... will need to work on some better pics of this mount...

Mounted everything up to see how the cables would fall.
Here are the Coolermaster R4's on the rad:




Here are the top exhaust fans, viewed from the top:




I flipped the top panel over, and these are Coolermaster R4's exhausting up into the 140mm Aerocool fans:



Side shot of the Aerocool 140mm fans:


Ambient light cast down into the case from the fans. Pretty neat effect, but not going to be enough by a long shot...


I have hit upon an idea for an alternate hard drive and storage mounting method that I learned from another forum. Instead of trying to cram the 3 3.5" hard drives into that space, I am replacing 2 of them with 2.5" laptop hard drives and mounting them in a special 2.5" adapter bracket! The bracket holds 3 of the drives, and the 3rd one will be the SSD that came in this contest! So, I will have the SSD as the primary bootable, a 320GB 7200rpm drive for games that need some performance, a 1TB 5200rpm 2.5" for primary file archival and storage (for files and music), and I will mount my 80GB Raptor. That will be the only 3.5" drive in the unit.

The 2.5" drives will be mounted using this sweet little device:
(UN)Designs X Bracket

I have ordered the bracket, and the 320GB drive, I will order the 1TB drive later, but have an old 2.5" SATA drive at work that I can used for a place holder to work on the cabling.

I'm also starting to experiment with my power cabling options.... but no pics there yet...

More as I have it!

-=TD

Yeah.... that's better....

The blue is very performant

this WB is wonderful .

And the bracket for the 2"5 is a good idea, first time I see this thing, great for clean mounting!

It's very beautiful !!

Merci!

So, today, I started working on the awesome Antec 800 power supply, but the 1st issue to pass is the heavy grade industrial cable management! Those are not chokes, those are plastic cylinders that are reinforced with a metal band at the cable level, and are then either glued or heated so that they become one with the mesh....


Awesomely thorough job that Antec did here. Unfortunately I need to pull it all off....


I use a pair of dikes to cut a channel down through the plastic... Like so...


That glimmer you see inside the plastic is the metal strap included in some of these packages...



Going after the main motherboard 24pin header:


Working in the standard head screwdriver to pry the sides apart:



Use the dikes to cut the attached mesh:


The PSU is now free of management, and ready to be taken to a new level in coolness...

-=TD

Good luck to release the cables !

I got 2 of those fans, the airflow is really impressive . Nice shots, the MB looks great. Can't wait for more updates.

Not a big update, but just a little something to let you know I'm not comatose somewhere...
While I am waiting on other parts to come in, so that I can make my final placements and start actively working the tubing and the cabling, I started working on the top bezel.

Plastic is one of those materials that stresses me out severely, because it is not nearly as forgiving as metal. You get after it with a rotary tool, you have to know *every* place you are going to put that tool. One small mis-step, and the plastic just burns away... GAWD! I hate that feeling. So, that is probably why I have been having a bit of a delay working on the slots for the light pipes on the top sides...

I believe it was Cortes that, after landing his troops, burned his boats in an effort to motivate his army.... well...
Time for me to take a dose of that medicine and suck it up!

Beginning....



After first pass with the cutting wheel:



After about 20 minutes with various files and brush wheels on the rotary tool:


Much better! I still have the other side to go, and then after that, I need to size the slots for the acrylic pipes that will be inserted. Get some LED's attached to some test pipes and figure out if I need to scuff up the pipes or leave them clear... we'll see soon enough!
-=TD

well done! can't wait to see more

Thanks alonzo!

Well, I'm about done filing on the top bezel:






And to assist with the load of fans that I will have in there, I have enlisted the help of a Kaze Master PRO 6 channel fan controller.





There is going to be some cable management obviously required in order to get all 6 fans on the rads connected (2 on the front rad, and 4 on the top rad), but I'm not going to talk about that vision just yet.... too early in the vision of implementation for that... but it should lend itself well to this build.


more later
-=TD

So.... after much gnashing of teeth and pursuit worth of a cheetah with its prey... I landed the UN bracket that I was looking for, and had to go back straight to the builder/manufacturer to get it! Dave W. over @ http://www.undesignsbrackets.com came through in a big way, after attempting to purchase one of his rev 1 kits. 1st vendor, did not even know they had the old pics up. 2nd vendor was out of stock and did not know it! They had referred my order directly back to the man who had referred me to them!!! LOL!!! So, in true service spirit, he found me what I was looking for, and assisted in achieving, what I think, is going to be a REALLY nice hard drive mounting scenario!







I will take the little brace pieces and bolt those onto the side holes that are on the opposite side of the X bracket, and those cross braces will give me one more set of holes to mount the third drive! After that, it is building the final bracket for the Raptor drive and getting it mounted to the side, so that I can properly route my cables!

Also... you know what this is?



That... my dear friends... is microsleeving PAIN!

I've got one or two more purchases to make, but with what I have the updates should start coming a bit more regularly!

-=TD

I want one !!!!

Here is more for you Alonzo!

So, it's going to be a little bit before I get my 1TB drive, so I employed a dead laptop drive and put it in as a place holder, seeing as the SATA connectors are all I really need in order to gauge cable placement and such.... so, I put the 3 drive kit together:



And bolted it into place:






How much clearance between the drives and the fans? About 5 mm, With this air flowing over them, I wonder if I could cool a Raptor that was not in a heatsink? That is not in the works, it is just me thinking out loud...



More as the weekend allows! Everyone, do not forget, Mothers Day this weekend! (If your country celebrates it, I know for a fact that Mom's Day is tomorrow, Sunday, May 9th here in the USA).

Everyone have a good one!
-=TD