In my long off time I've gotten a somewhat working semblance of a half-assed premodded rig together... and being spring break, and having some money past expenses (read: actual income) its time to work on the rig. ^_^

Fo' stahtahz!

Original build was in a skyhawk jupiter tower... looked good... cooled like a BBQ with a mountain of coal & gasoline mixed together with a box worth of matches being tossed in alight..

Migrated into a fugly brick red / orange colored Chieftec tower... average ol chieftec..

Somewhere in there, the tri-color antec led fan died, and then I went out and bought some UV bloooo fans for mounting on the visible spots (rear and window) and got a UV sound activated cathode..

That cathode is now powered by an old AT psu and sits on my desk next to my subwoofer

Moved the fans out, now all 5 are bloooo antec led fans (...wow, talk about a blah case, cheiftec/chenming/antec clone with std. blooooo lights) as of ... last week.


Enough backlog now (god that was almost preachy)

Moving forward, in the works are:

Hardware upgrade (duh.)
Repainting it to be black main, silver lower intake grill
Finding an airbrush artistyperson to paint wolves on the mobo side
Possible watercooling
Stealthing the drives (again, more vanilla grandma case mod)
Taking the 2x blooo CCFL I have on the inside, perhaps making a plexi window in the floor of the case and placing them on top of it, and covering that with tin/aluminum foil to get that under car lighting effect
Painting over part of the stock premod window to hide the drive bay cages / psu, if not replacing the crappy stock window with something less wavy/optically distorting


And now I guess here is when I ask for ideas:
How to stealth one of those pioneer slot loading DVD drives? or should I just paint the cover to match the case?

Any better ideas to get the under-case lighting done? I kinda think mine's one of those "wing it" things

More questions when I think of them...


Pics included are before I replaced the UV fans:
one shot is with the uv cathode on only,
one shot is with the CCFL's on
and one is a daytime/flash shot with the CCFL's on

New pics to come when I round up a camera to use

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for the slot loaded i would just paint it.

and the lighting under the case, have you thought about stringing up some leds and drilling a couple of holes nad poke them under?

btw great to see you again.

Quote: Originally Posted by me_john85 for the slot loaded i would just paint it. and the lighting under the case, have you thought about stringing up some leds and drilling a couple of holes nad poke them under? btw great to see you again.

Its great to be back

And I'd kicked around the idea of LED's actually, buying some lazer leds and working them through the floor somehow to shine out... only thing holding me back on that is that I dont have them. I'm such a cheap bastage...

*ponders* good idea though... wonder if 2 of the tri-lazer leds would cover the area, or if I'd need 3.. or 4.. hm... need to look at the one I have's light output..

I'd also say just paint the slot load, and maybe also try this mod and light that sucker up. Looks sharp.

For underneath, they have lighted feet/bases now or you could cut a bottom window or mount a fan maybe?

[Edit] Fixed that linkage.

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Quote: Originally Posted by jinx© I'd also say just paint the slot load, and maybe also try [URL=http://www.zapwizard.com/MediaPC/DVD/Index.html]this mod[/URL and light that sucker up. Looks sharp. For underneath, they have lighted feet/bases now or you could cut a bottom window or mount a fan maybe?

Lighted feet? That'd solve the problem, lol... have a link for them? I'd like to take a gander at them..

And that DVD mod... *blinks in disbelief* wow... guess I'd better go find myself a soldering iron.

120S
In case you have the 120s I grabbed the link for doing the LED mod on it

Brandon Cisneros

Heres a link for some feet that may work, although you can probably find them cheaper elsewhere.

Good follow-up linkage Gamma.

I said it in another thread, but I'll say it again here. Good to see you around Outcast.

Quote: Originally Posted by Gamma_Goblin 120S In case you have the 120s I grabbed the link for doing the LED mod on it Brandon Cisneros

Hm.. lookin over my drive, I find its the 120... thanks for the link, gamma

My hundreds of bookmarks pays off! I'm just glad that an otherwise obscure forum guide will be used

Brandon Cisneros

Looking good so far Cant wait to see what u do to it next!!

Jinx, Gamma... good news. The DVD mod has been done.

Pics tomorrow... with luck.

Its not as obviously noticeable as the one in the pic... perhaps because they're not bright enough LED's (2400 mcd's) (blue LED's), or perhaps because the alignment is slightly off... but nonetheless, it is noticeable.. and its f*ckin cool!

As I said, more pics tomorrow... and prolly some updated ones w/ the LED fans instead of the UV reactive ones that were in the last set...

Well you can also remove that little flap covering the slot load... err the dust cover? And that will help if you have not done so already.

Update!

Dvd mod was done, camera wouldn't take a good shot of it...

Got the case feet, wrote up a review on them.. hopin that review goes up

Umm... I won a case wrap thing, cause the dgroth guy that floats around here now and then needs pics for his how to mod book/tvshow/whatever it is... we'll see.. might let him use my skyhawk for that.. depends on what the wrap is of

Other'n that.. LED fan pics, grainy and all!

First: Case side
Second: Front shot with the door open
Third: Wiring, bad as it is right now...

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I think you got a nice rig goin there...........maybe some of that modders mesh where the front grill is or some anodize (right now I'm into this anodize thing) or brushed aluminum trim pieces on the front or side for accent........

Coming up in the not too terribly distant future is a paint job, and one of those dragonmeter things.. except.. a little bit.. hm.. twizted? Won't say more til its in-hands

Quote: Originally Posted by TheOutcast Coming up in the not too terribly distant future is a paint job, and one of those dragonmeter things.. except.. a little bit.. hm.. twizted? Won't say more til its in-hands

hmm.. I see some custom electronics in your future.

Twizted always does pimp work, you should check in with him about a fan controller too.. Those things are powerful, I got all 5 of my Delta 120's on it with no problems.

i would ditch the hdd cages all together. if you have a floppy move it to above the PSU and cut a hole for access there, and for the HDD float it on the back wall of the mobo tray. here is one i did awhile back, it is an old pic, so i know the Bio-hazzard grills are outdated, and the bloo lights are too......and when you remove the cages you can run 2 120mm fans in the front, great for improved air flow!

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Interesting idea.. only problem I see is floating 2 HDD's or more would take up too much space.. and I'm looking at 2, maybe 3 total when this thing's all said and done.. Not sure if I want to stripe-raid a pair of 36 GB raptors* w/ the 80gb I've got now as a backup, or get a "holy-****ing-****-this-drive-is-ri-goddamned-diculously-huge" 120GB+ drive as a media drive, with the 80 partitioned into an XP / swapfile drive and a games drive..

Also, I'd think there's a limit to positive pressure before there's a problem... 2x 80mm exhaust, 1x 80mm intake, 2x 120mm intake (in my case if I did that) ...

I'm gonna have to think about that one more... thx for the idea...

*Or larger 10k RPM SATA drives, I haven't poked around the market looking at those a lot lately.. might be able to ditch the PATA drive altogether then..

u had a SATA 120 there, worked out great. what all do you have in your 5 1/4 bays? you could put two drives in there, or get the HDD cage from a Lian Li, and mod it on the floor of the case. a buddy of mine (Trin here on the forums) did that with his modded XaserIII, really changes the look of the inside of the case. or you could get one of those ram drives that cost an arm and a leg.....lol...

I've got a Pioneer 16x DVD (modded slot loader ), and a Lite-On 48x CDRW... so 2 bays open.. 2 bays used..

I like the Lian Li idea too.. but hm.. those are held in place on the lian li's by thumbscrews right? so I'd have to either make little risers, or drill holes in the bottom of my case so that they've got somewhere to grab, right? (can't remember off-hand if the little wings w/ the thumbscrews on em was raised up or not)