Computer Case (and other) Mod Thread

[Photoelectric]

I've searched for a thread for computer-related mods here and failed.  If anyone's aware of one already in existence, please let me know and I'll merge!

So as a preface, we like to do various keyboard modification here, inside and out, but I know there are many creative people around here who also extend this to everything on and around their computer desks.  So if you've got some neat photographs of your modified rigs and related to share--please do!  This includes computer case mods, custom shelves, monitor mods, anything you can think of!

I'll start with my first painted case, a HAF912



It was an experiment in spray painting, and I used Krylon Fusion, which is where my dislike for that product line stems from.  It was okay, but I decided I wanted a greater transformation.  So I went with white (many many cans of DupliColor Touch Up paint... definitely not meant for large projects)



I then ended up selling that system, as it was getting outdated inside and got myself a monstrous Silverstone FT02 in silver aluminum--gorgeous case and ridiculously heavy.  Did absolutely nothing to it, as I liked it as is.  The Silverstone system was eventually sold too altogether as I opted for something smaller--a recently released BitFenix Prodigy!  Made a simple window mod and put it on my desk.  This is a photo from when it was aircooled:




It began to feel cramped when I added a dual-fan radiator along the top with 4 fans, and I wanted to add another monitor to my desk.  Plus I didn't like the slight whine of the Corsair H100i pump being close by.  So I moved everything to a Fractal Design R4 (white with window), which I still currently use and love.  The Prodigy case went on to a new home, as I have an acquaintance who builds systems out of random parts.

On to other cases!  Two Black Fridays ago, I happened to find a BitFenix Survivor in White on a $50 deal, so I got it, having some vague idea of how I would mod it.  I loved the curves and wanted to do something vintage automotive inspired, like a Vespa, or else a Cooper Mini.  The result:
Mod Log
Disassembled for painting and re-organization + window mod:


masked BitFenix logo, Painted
 

Reassembled as reverse ATX + silver automotive trim + switched to smoked tinted window
(Rust-Oleum paints in Satin Aqua, Black Night Metallic on side trims, and flat black on the front grill + top mesh grils)








(it's got RGB lights throughout.)

And here's a case I've prettified for my mother's computer (Fractal Design Arc Mini).  It's got purple LEDs, though they don't come out great in photos.  Tried to play with photoshop to make the purple appear as it does in person, as it just photographs blue
Mod Log








Your Turns!!!

[BunnyLake]

great thread and post in general as always from you

[tp4tissue]

Cool stuff..

The only thing I've done lately is cut a big hole in my case to fit a 120mm cpu tower on the graphics card.

[nubbinator]

The survivor was always such an ugly and poorly reviewed case.  Your mod is the first to make me actually like it.  For some reason, it reminds me of Warhammer 40k.

I don't really have any good pics of it, but here's the window I added to my Arc Midi:



The Archon is no longer in the case, having been swapped for a TT Water 2.0 Extreme with some Cooljag Everflows.

[Tym]

I've got the Fractal XL R2 lovely beast of a case, big brother of the R4 and I wanted to put a window and LEDs in it etc. Then Bunny explained how it was a stupid idea because the main idea of that case is the silent-ness etc. And a big ass hole would probably ruin the sound proofing. I cried for weeks .

Although it is a cracking case, I was running BF4 on a 780 this left my fans on silent mode was still below >50 on all high settings.

[nubbinator]

I've got the Fractal XL R2 lovely beast of a case, big brother of the R4 and I wanted to put a window and LEDs in it etc. Then Bunny explained how it was a stupid idea because the main idea of that case is the silent-ness etc. And a big ass hole would probably ruin the sound proofing. I cried for weeks .

Although it is a cracking case, I was running BF4 on a 780 this left my fans on silent mode was still below >50 on all high settings.

I have a Gigabyte Windforce 7950 in mine with Prolimatech Vortex 140mm fans, some Cougar Vortex fans, and the Cooljag Everflows on the radiator.  The case fans are hooked up to a fan controller and I control the Cooljags with the TT software.  Even with the big old window, it's incredibly quiet and cool running.    As long as you're not getting paper thin acrylic and/or drilling holes in it, you should be fine.

[Photoelectric]

I switched to a GTX 660 Ti at some point, because I don't really play games much anymore nowadays, so it's about as high end as I should go.  Didn't like the stock reference cooler and, having read lots of reviews, finally went with a simple Accelero Mono Plus.  The card looks tiny with it   But it really is very very quiet, so the loudest thing in my case is currently the Corsair H100i pump, which has a tonan component to the noise.  Can't muffle that effectively.



My card is voltage-unlocked, though that doesn't seem to get it much of a performance boost with increased core speed.  But memory speed increase is great <3  Anyway, never gets over 54C in games with that cooler.  The main issue with Radeon cards and custom coolers is VRM cooling.  As far as I've read, most coolers, like Accelero Xtreme, don't do a great job with the VRMs.  Can't remember about Prolimatech.

[Tym]

The case has a layer of stuff on the inside, presumably sound dampener but id still like a window

[Photoelectric]

Yeah, I have the same case but in regular size (Define R4) and mine does come with a window.  Sound dampening is still significant.  I don't think the window takes away significantly from it at all.

The survivor was always such an ugly and poorly reviewed case.  Your mod is the first to make me actually like it.  For some reason, it reminds me of Warhammer 40k.

Yeah, it has terrible ventilation in the stock configuration.  I spent a while thinking about how to improve it.  In the reverse ATX configuration, it's quite good.  I've also removed all the PCI-E covers and stuck a Noctua NF-S12B outside of the case on strong velcro (you can sort of see it on the photo with the case door open), exhausting hot air from the video card.  The video card stays chilly and everything else in the case seems to as well.

[Tym]

Yeah sorry my message cut of and sent thar, and now I forget what I was going to say Although I want to grt a premad one which I have seen somewhere in america.

[meiosis]

Reserved for when I get back next week and tear up a Caselabs S5

[demik]

i have a dust mod on my 932

[Photoelectric]

Fewer words, more photos

[IvanIvanovich]

Very old build from many years ago... was into the dieselpunk thing. компьютер is the other side panel you can't see in the first photo. The analogue front panel gauges were actually used to show power and the lower one disk activity.

It also had external optical drive I put inside an old Atari 5.25 floppy


Sorry for the terrible photos, was taken with ancient .5MP digital camera that used FLOPPIES! LOL I do still have that CRT though )

[IvanIvanovich]

My current is scratch build


I've since cleaned up a bit so the ssd is mounted properly beneath the radiator on the other side, and the cables aren't looping over the front, but passed though under the motherboard tray and into the mid cavity out to the other side.

[Photoelectric]

Now that's what I'm talking about!!!  Awesome, thanks for sharing!

Keep them coming

[Hak Foo]

Noooooo!  That 1050!

[IvanIvanovich]

When I went looking for an external floppy, I stuck to the for parts/repair category. Mostly because I wanted something cheap, and often vintage stuff is quite expensive when it's in good order. It was pretty thrashed, I really doubt anyone but the most skilled could have resurrected it with a full out rebuild. I recall I pulled a crumpled Atari DOS 2.5 diskette out of there when I was taking it apart. I swear someone must have folded it in thirds and brute forced it inside or something. It was even better than the time I found a 3" CD inside a 3.5" floppy drive.

[Elrick]

My current is scratch build

Show Image

I've since cleaned up a bit so the ssd is mounted properly beneath the radiator on the other side, and the cables aren't looping over the front, but passed though under the motherboard tray and into the mid cavity out to the other side.

Very nice Ivan, appreciate the fact you went with H2O cooling rather than relying on the oldest method.  Like the design of your case, very spartan but gets the job done.  I suspect it's very quiet compared to an equivalent air cooled beast?

I had no idea you were that stylish with your desktop.  I always considered a PC the work bench to do things, other than to make it a piece of sculpture like you did.  Nice job.

[IvanIvanovich]

Thanks. I am a big fan of form with a function. Basically I had the idea of taking something like a benching platform but using it as a permanent installation. I wanted to show off the hardware, and go way beyond just having a window in a big box on my desk. Something minimal, sleek and kind of futuristic. I had some much more elaborate plans for it when I started, that sadly didn't come to fruition. Perhaps I will do revised 2.0 version of it when I upgrade platform. I kind of built it around what I had at the time, and it was a real chore when I wanted to GPU upgrade. Making sure the card was not going to be too long, it really limited my choices. Lucky for me nVidia came though with really short cards (in comparison to some in the past) on the 600 generation.

It is really quiet. The only thing that really makes noise is the pump, and since the GPU is stock air cooler sometimes I can hear that a bit if it spins up on taxing gaming load. Being open I think helps keep other things cool since heat doesn't get trapped inside a big box like traditional PC case. Most of time everything is 5-10c over ambient idle and +15-20ish on load.

[Photoelectric]

The pump noise is what bugs me about liquid cooling.  I've heard what's considered "quiet" for custom pumps, and they are still quite audible for me.  I'm a silence enthusiast.  I would only have them in a sound proofed case under my desk in my current super quiet bedroom (which is unusual, because I live in a city!)  I stick with high end air cooling as much as possible, but did eventually switch to liquid cooling for my processor.  Now, my in previous apartment on a noisy road... Although I don't miss it

[Elrick]

It is really quiet. The only thing that really makes noise is the pump, and since the GPU is stock air cooler sometimes I can hear that a bit if it spins up on taxing gaming load. Being open I think helps keep other things cool since heat doesn't get trapped inside a big box like traditional PC case. Most of time everything is 5-10c over ambient idle and +15-20ish on load.

Do you find that dust is a problem now due to having an open pc-case structure?

I always find tons of dust on my filters and inside my case hence the aerosol gets spent pushing out all that fine dust, I hate cases in general but it's the main problem when it comes to enjoying your rig.

[IvanIvanovich]

It gets as much dust as anything else in the surrounding area. It doesn't have a concentration like many PC case which more often than not have negative pressure which just turns into a dust farm. But I also don't live in a particularly dry/dusty kind of area so I never have much problem with dust in general.

Some pumps are are lot louder than others. Mine an MCP350 with proper mounting is not too terrible, mostly a low whirring noise. It's certainly a lot quieter than old air cooling I had with panaflos back in the day that sounded like jet engines. I definitely get you on the silence. I rather enjoy using my retro gaming machine, which is an old mitx socket A system with a geforce 6000something. It's completely passive cooled, and has zero moving parts. It even has an SSD even if it is only 16GB pata. Windows 98 crashes at lightning speed on this thing!

[Elrick]

Some pumps are are lot louder than others. Mine an MCP350 with proper mounting is not too terrible, mostly a low whirring noise. It's certainly a lot quieter than old air cooling I had with panaflos back in the day that sounded like jet engines.

Now you've got me enthused about water cooling.  I always thought that having fast moving h20 near your pc components will eventually lead to misery and pain but your set-up is quite sublime.

Only problem I have is the regular 6 HDs connected to the motherboards and always wonder were to put that much in an open case design.....

[IvanIvanovich]

That is why I have a separate server that handles all the media storage )
I could easily fit 6x 2.5 drives in my design, but forget about 3.5s. Though now that you can get 4TB in a 2.5 drive, it's not so much of a problem and you probably wouldn't have to worry about accommodating so many disk, only the high costs.

[Hak Foo]

When I went looking for an external floppy, I stuck to the for parts/repair category. Mostly because I wanted something cheap, and often vintage stuff is quite expensive when it's in good order. It was pretty thrashed,

Fair enough.  Once I pulled out like four paperclips from a 3.5" drive in a 386 desktop.

Even if the mechanism is shot, the boards might have been worth a few bucks though for someone trying to fix up their own.  I was never sure if these drives were "off the shelf" mechanisms with a custom controller, so you could just swap in an old PC floppy, or not.

To return to topic, my current box is disappointingly unmodded, primarily because I don't want to disconnect the liquid kit and put any more stress than necessary on it, but I've done some work before with etching designs into side panels with penknives hat look sort of nice.



That's my old Arc SR-8100 tower.  Nice enough case for the era-- E-ATX motherboard support, fairly robust build quality, tool-free rails for all drives, and  a tool-free slot system I removed .  I did those etches, and moved the USB ports from the top centre of the case to the side of the front panel.

[HoffmanMyster]

Very cool thread.      Unfortunately, I've done more to modify broken computers and parts into other useful things than modifying working computer cases to look nice.   )

[domoaligato]

I am looking to upgrade my case to the new corsair 900D soon. my NXZT Phantom is a little bit to small for what I have in it.

[nubbinator]

I am looking to upgrade my case to the new corsair 900D soon. my NXZT Phantom is a little bit to small for what I have in it.

No Caselabs, Little Devil, or Phanteks Enthoo Primo?

[Jokrik]

Reporting for duty!







Its a switch 810 with pedestal and a lot of laser cut acrylic work
build log http://www.overclock.net/t/1357316/build-log-phenomenon-switch-810-pedestal-now-with-delidded-ivy

But I've just recently disassembled it since I'm upgrading to 6 cores and wanting something more simple with higher quality (caselabs!)
Build log of my new pc http://www.overclock.net/t/1443103/build-log-project-blank

[Photoelectric]

Reporting for duty!

It's beautiful!  Thank you for sharing.  Did not even notice that it was a Switch right away--you've really made it into something else (+rep )

[elton5354]

My current is scratch build

Show Image

Show Image

I've since cleaned up a bit so the ssd is mounted properly beneath the radiator on the other side, and the cables aren't looping over the front, but passed though under the motherboard tray and into the mid cavity out to the other side.

What case is that?  Is that a custom case you made yourself?

[Photoelectric]

He's made it himself, I think.  It has a feel of an open-air bench combined with a Thermaltake Level 10. 

I would actually like to build something in this blue In Win case
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/10/in-win-flaunts-open-air-cases/

[elton5354]

The blue case is nice, but I probably wouldn't want to spend $400 on it.  I want a smaller case so I can have it on my desk and not on the floor.  I have the HAF X right now. 

Just found this on OCN

http://www.overclock.net/t/1450216/ultimate-test-bench-thread

Might consider one of these and then do a nice paint job on it

[IvanIvanovich]

I made mine from scratch, all by hand except the motherboard tray which was one of those Lian Li that you can buy alone. The two steel supports on each side I cut with hand saw, filed the corner radius by hand and bent manually. Acryllic base was cut and filed by hand too. Only power tool used was a drill to make holes for bolt, which were threaded with hand tap and I used drill with hole saw to make the tubing/cable pass through and fan holes. Once I had everything how I wanted it I finished it with appliance enamel like used on stoves and stuff.

Nice job jokrik. Even though I don't like huge case there is nice detail and layed out well.

That In Win H frame is interesting, but I think they really missed on it as well. Now if they would have made the whole thing a huge sink with heatpipes for a passive PC it would have really been something.

[Tym]

Reporting for duty!

Oh **** you're that guy! I watched your build somewhere, damn cant remember where. But great build!

[simkev]

My current is scratch build

Show Image

Show Image

I've since cleaned up a bit so the ssd is mounted properly beneath the radiator on the other side, and the cables aren't looping over the front, but passed though under the motherboard tray and into the mid cavity out to the other side.

So clean.

[Pacifist]

My current is scratch build

Show Image

Show Image

I've since cleaned up a bit so the ssd is mounted properly beneath the radiator on the other side, and the cables aren't looping over the front, but passed though under the motherboard tray and into the mid cavity out to the other side.

What happens if you spill something?

[simkev]

Sold more than a year ago, more pictures here http://www.sweclockers.com/galleri/9527-space-efficient-ivy-bridge



Currently working on a ITX build in a completely modded Cubitek Mini Cube.

[tp4tissue]

He's made it himself, I think.  It has a feel of an open-air bench combined with a Thermaltake Level 10. 

I would actually like to build something in this blue In Win case
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/10/in-win-flaunts-open-air-cases/

If you run water in these builds, it's significantly louder than air, and the cooling will get you 100mhz at best over air...

I've yet to find a water pump that doesn't make that zzzzzzzzzzzzzz noise.

[IvanIvanovich]

There is no drinking, eating or smoking around the computers. So if I spill something it won't be anywhere near the PC.

[Badwrench]

There is no drinking, eating or smoking around the computers. So if I spill something it won't be anywhere near the PC.

Exactly!

[domoaligato]

I am looking to upgrade my case to the new corsair 900D soon. my NXZT Phantom is a little bit to small for what I have in it.

No Caselabs, Little Devil, or Phanteks Enthoo Primo?

no I like the look of the 900d