1) First, grab the 800-grit and sand over the scratch you wish to remove, rubbing perpendicularly to the scratch. I found that the acrylic would heat up with friction and catch on the sandpaper surface, so I suggest doing this with water running over the acrylic as you sand it (this is known as wet-sanding, to you newcomers to the sanding scene). Imagine that!

2) Once the scratch is no longer visible, now you have to begin the arduous task of blending everything in so that you no longer see the scratches you just made in the surface, with the 800-grit. Grab the 1000-grit and sand first in one direction back and forth, then the opposite direction, perpendicular to the first direction you chose. You should have a consistent hazy look to the acrylic now.

3) Wash it off, get a cloth and the rubbing compound, and give the acrylic a major rub-down. I first went in one direction and then the opposite, as with step 2, but after that, did more even circular motions until everything was rubbed out nice and evenly. Wash it off.

4) Use the polishing compound and another cloth (or paper towel, is what I used) and rub again in even circular motions. Wash it off.

5) Now the acrylic will have a very fine hazy appearance, now it's almost looking quite smooth. The scratches are nowhere to be seen, only nice, smooth acrylic. Whip out your Colgate or Crest or what the hell, Aqua-Fresh Gel (it's the blue LED of toothpastes!) and some paper towel, and repeat the procedure as for #3 and #4. Wash it off.

6) Now you'll have a very nice, smooth finish with barely visible swirling. For most people, that would be good enough.

7) I had this Nu-Finish sitting around so I thought I'd try it out and see what happened. Turns out the results were even smoother! So if you want the best results, finish up your acrylic recipe with a nice creamy dessert of your choice of automotive scratch & swirl remover.

The pics show the various stages of this delicious recipe preparation. Serve fresh with beer or wine!

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Here are a few pics of the completed part of the I/O panel for the video and audio connections. The audio ports were simply drilled out with a 5mm acrylic drill bit, then I attempted to widen the holes evenly with the drill by moving it more and more angled to the drill holes...and finally, after all the scratches were removed (previous post), I flame-polished all the edges. I took 2 pics, with flash on and off.

Now, you can't get more []D [] []V[] []D than that for the oft-forgotten and decidedly unsexy rear view of your case!

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Here is the original scratch in both halves of the acrylic I/O panel, it was the worst one of all, I saved it for last (the one remaining on the left half, that is; the right half was already finished):



I used the same procedure that I outlined before.

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And finally some pics of the completed acrylic backpanel...

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I have a sweet little mod planned for you tonight! This took me about 3 or 4 hours. You've seen those drive bay coolers that fit in 5.25" slots? And they never match the color of your case? And they're noisy and probably using cheap-quality skinny little 40mm fans? Well, why buy one, even?

I really liked the way my hard drive fan exhaust worked in the top bay of my μ-Blaze Project, it really does a great job of keeping the drive cool, and it's unique. I was thinking how I could make my own inexpensive hard drive cooler for my WD Raptor. Since the Chakra case front bezel bay covers already have a black painted hole-mesh kind of thing goin' on, which I really think looks cool, I certainly didn't want to screw up that theme with some butt-ugly store-bought drive cooler!

I picked up a few StarTech 40mm x 20mm ball-bearing fans (Model No. FAN4X2LP4), I was originally going to use them on the chipset heatsinks on the mobo, but I decided they would get enough cooling as it is from the huge side panel fan. So I began giving more thought to an idea I had brewing months ago for making a hard drive cooling tunnel. The fans were about $10 each. I began by removing the ugly blue stickers from the fans, on the intake side.



I didn't want this case to be loud, I want this project to be my quietest project, and I was concerned how these fans would sound, usually small fans are whiny little things. I connected both of the fans to my test platform and booted, and was quite surprised that I couldn't even hear them over the CPU fan! They're almost silent! Now I knew I could make my drive cooler and not worry about whiny fan noise.

The drive tunnel cooler idea came to me months ago. The general idea is, take a crapped out CD-ROM drive (everyone has one that doesn't work lying around somewhere, eh?) and gut it. Toss out the guts, keeping only the metal outer shell. Mount your hard drive somehow inside the shell, mount a few fans on the front, and badda-bing, badda-bang, you got yourself a custom-made drive cooler that'll probably outperform anything on the market, and possibly match your bezels to boot!

Anyway, I had this drive I painted blue way back in the days of my first mod, my Charger mod, I tried to mod in a blue LED and for whatever reason, that LED never lit up. The drive probably still works fine, but it's probably a 24-speed, so useless by modern standards. I gutted it and trashed the guts. This particular drive had a metal lip along the rear edge which I had to remove. Some drives have this, some don't. If your garbage-bin drive doesn't, all the better.

I removed it with the rotary tool. Actually, I was lazy. I didn't even cut through the metal, I just cut about halfway through, the length of the lip, then used a pliers to bend it back and forth until it snapped off. I filed off the sharp edges.

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Luckily, 40mm fans fit almost perfectly in an open 5.25" drive bay. At first I considered mounting the fans directly to the inside of the black mesh bay cover, but the thought of 8 black screw-heads poking out from the mesh, visible to everyone, didn't appeal to me. It would detract too much from the smooth, clean lines of this particular case's bezel. So I thought about mounting them in the CD-ROM shell instead, as there's already room to spare for the fans AND disk drive. The best solution I came up with was to mount them kind of like a "fanwich" between the 2 halves of the CD drive shell, using high-quality double-sided tape. This stuff sticks like you wouldn't believe. It has a green backing paper and the tape itself is black, about 1mm thick only, and is the stuff you use to attach those stupid looking fake hoodscoops on your pick-me-up truck or ricer car. It's also used to stick on vent visors (those rain guards above the windows on many cars and trucks nowadays). In other words, it has to stick but GOOD to do that! You can probably find it at any auto parts store.

I cleaned the surfaces of the fans and the CD shell with rubbing alcohol to make a better adhesion. I stuck tape on the fans, stuck the fans on one half, then being a total dumbass, I stuck on the other shell...before I realized, "DAMMIT, I still gotta mount the DRIVE in there!!" And that's where I got to experience just how good this tape sticks...I bent the metal of the CD shell trying to pry it off one side of the fans!! D'oh!!

Anyway, I left the fans stuck on only one half from that point on, until I was finished mounting the drive.

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Mounting the drive wasn't that hard at all. Drives have mounting holes on the sides, as well as the bottom. But you can't just mount the drive right flat against the CD shell, you need the air to flow around it, above and beneath it. Especially beneath it, where the circuit board is, that's the place that gets hottest. That's why this particular drive has, cast in big raised letters right on the drive itself, something about "Do Not Obstruct Breather Hole" or some-such.

To my delight, I discovered that most of the standard motherboard standoffs I had lying in my nuts 'n' bolts bin, fit the threads of the 4 bottom screw-holes on the drive, perfectly! The 3rd attached pic shows that I tried to use longer standoffs, even doubling them, to get more space, but it was too much space when I used some washers and rubber grommets...the top surface of the drive was touching the underside of the CD shell. So I went back to the standard size of mobo standoffs, as shown in the first pic.

I screwed in the 4 standoffs, then placed the drive precisely where I wanted it to be, on the bottom half of the CD shell. I positioned it far back enough so that the mounted fans on the other half-shell would have an inch or so of clearance between them and the front of the hard drive. With this particular CD shell, I mounted the hard drive so that the rear end, where the power and data cables connect, was flush with the inner edge of the CD drive shell.

After positioning the drive where I wanted it, I used pencil to mark the standoff positions, which helped me drill holes in the right places. I bolted the drive to the CD shell as follows:

DRIVE | Mobo Standoff | washer | rubber grommet | CD shell | screw to fit the mobo standoff

Sorry, no ASCII art for you, it's late and I need my beauty sleep. Anyway, the rubber grommets should help ensure this drive makes reduced vibration and noise.

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I couldn't just have the power cables cluttering up the airflow inside my custom drive tunnel, so I drilled two holes near the corners of the CD shell, so I could slip some zip-ties through the power cables and route them exactly where I wanted, out of the way of the airflow. My first pic, showing the original drill holes on 2 edges of the CD shell, wouldn't work. The zip-ties stuck out too much and got in the way of sliding the CD shell into the case chassis. So I drilled a second set of holes more inboard of the holes in the CD shell roof, that would allow the zip-ties to zip down nice and snug. You can kind of see this looking at the second pic. The power cabling routed beautifully that way.

Now, I was ready to complete the "fanwich"! With everything in place, I carefully positioned the drive half of the CD shell over the fan half, and slowly lowered it perfectly in place. I used 4 screws to bolt the 2 halves together, and gave the surfaces above/below the fans some good presses to get a good "stick". With the 4 bolts keeping the shell together, and the 4 pieces of double-sided tape, those fans aren't going anywhere for a looooong time!

I put a spare bezel mesh-cover on top of the drive tunnel cooler, to show kind of what it'll look like. Of course, the bezel cover attaches to the inside of the case chassis by itself, and the drive tunnel will mount just behind it, just like you'd mount any other optical drive.

I also used my heat gun to remove the CD label, and I'll be painting the drive tunnel cooler black.

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I worked on an incredibly sweet mod tonight that I'm sure you've probably never seen before. I wasn't sure what effect I'd get from this mod, but it exceeded my expectations!

I wanted to put a piece of black acrylic beneath the 3.5" drive caddy, and would sit almost flush with the front intake fan, helping to form a "fan tunnel" that would better route incoming air directly to the motherboard components, and not creating eddies or turbulence along the way by getting beneath the drive caddy. This would also give me a place to hide some cabling.

I took a couple motherboard standoffs and humped a few together. The mobo already had holes in appropriate locations for me to place them. The acrylic piece will bolt onto the standoffs. I originally was hoping for black thumbscrews to hold it in place, for ease of removal, but they wouldn't fit the threads of those super-long standoffs, and would also be rather bulky...and would interfere with a wild idea I had begun brewing.

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Everyone does etches. I toyed with the idea of putting an etch somewhere for this case project, especially considering all the acrylic I've used, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that. I've seen some amazing etches in my years of modding, that's for certain. The problem is, it's been done to death!! So I came up with an original idea..."Etches??! We doan need no steenkin' ETCHES!!"

I cut out my rectangle of black acrylic. I masked it off, and drew a design of one of the weirdest, eeriest fishes in the ocean, the anglerfish. The one with the little lighted lure hanging from it's snout, and the dagger-like teeth. I figure if you were swimming around in pitch-black inky waters in the depths, and you saw this little glowing light, and swam closer, hoping for a meal...and in a flash of light, you suddenly found yourself gaping at this creature, that'd be a pretty hellish way to go!

I used the image on my computer screen to help me sketch a side view of the anglerfish on the masking tape. I then spent about an hour carefully and painstakingly cutting out the shape and removing the outline with an X-acto knife and tweezers.

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I then cleaned the areas with the tape removed with some Windex (as recommended by ClearNEON) to prepare the surface for some UV-reactive blue paint. I hit it with a few coats of ClearNEON (the same paint I used for the 120mm fan blades of my fans), waited 10 minutes, then carefully removed all the masking tape.

What remains is a slightly visible "etch". The camera makes the anglerfish look a lot more obvious than it is, especially when it has something white behind it. Where it's going to be positioned, above the black rear part of the chassis, you won't be able to see the anglerfish that well.

But when the UV comes on....

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I plan to hook up a little red LED to the anglerfish's lure tomorrow. I think I'll attach a clear piece of plastic on top of the black acrylic/UV anglerfish to protect it from scratches, or frequent wiping of dust from damaging the UV paint design.

I needed some cheap, thin acrylic to make a protective layer to cover the UV-painted anglerfish piece. If you're doing smaller window mods and don't want to buy huge sheets of acrylic or plexi, I've mentioned before you can buy smaller pieces like this that work just fine. These acrylic sign-holders can be found in various sizes at any office supply store, and are usually folded over at one edge to make a double layer. You insert your sign in between the two halves.

I got this piece, which is designed to house a standard 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, for $8.49 CDN. I split the 2 halves apart, and gave it a brisk snap, and I had 2 nice, flat pieces of acrylic.

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I repeated the usual masking-off of the clear acrylic, and traced the outline of the anglerfish black acrylic rectangle, then cut out my protective layer. After lining up the 2 pieces, and marking/drilling the 2 screw holes, I blobbed on some Weld-On acrylic cement. I applied the cement only to the top part of the pieces, which won't be visible behind the 3.5" drive caddy.

Unfortunately, I blobbed on a bit too much, and the blobbing is clearly evident at the upper-left corner. However, I didn't like how it stuck out anyway, so I'll probably saw off that corner just where it overlaps behind the drive caddy.

I temp-mounted the anglerfish mod, and you can see it's barely visible (pardon the pun) without the UV. But when the UV is on, you can see it. In medium light, you can see a slight, ghostly blue anglerfish, but when the lights are off, he really pops out at you! Scary stuff, eh kids?!!

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I worked on the anglerfish's lure. I didn't want an intense, bright red light, so no 5mm LEDs for this mod. I have several of those cheap little 3mm LEDs that most cheap-o cases use for disk activity, so I chose a red one. These make a softer glow and aren't as intense. Perfect for this mod, in other words!

I wired it up, soldered it, and sheathed it with a piece of spare cable sleeving I had lying around.

I then drilled a 3mm hole 3/4 of the way through the black acrylic from the rear side. Again, I didn't want the LED to shine very brightly, I was just looking for a soft red glow--maybe similar to the light a small fish might be attracted to near the bottom of the ocean.

This works out nice for another reason; just as with the anglerfish in its natural environment, you would only see the glowing lure, which comes on whenever the system powers on, it's connected to the Power On header on the motherboard. You won't see the anglerfish until the UV comes on.

My cam doesn't take an accurate color pic of the lure. The lure is a nice, blood red color, not too bright. The cam over-emphasizes the brightness and washes out the deep red glow. Oh well, I'll use a better cam for the money shots when the project is finished. This is just a test of the light effects.

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I did some minor detailing today. I liked how the black acrylic looked, substituting for the usual shiny tin mobo I/O plate, and I had a lot left, so I measured out some pieces for the 5.25" and 3.5" drive caddies. I considered mounting them by drilling holes and using either black or blue anodized thumbscrews, but I decided to use Velcro instead, to maintain an overall clean, smooth look.

Once the pieces were cut out, filed, sanded, and the visible edges flame-polished, I placed them onto the chassis. Since the acrylic is black and the metal behind it was also black, it wasn't easy to determine where I'd be sticking the Velcro, or how big they'd need to be. So I stuck a flashlight inside the caddies, which lit up the back of the acrylic enough to know where to place the Velcro pieces. I used a Sharpie to mark the spots.

In the last pic, I had to cut some notches in the 3.5" caddy cover to make room for the intake fan (which you may remember, many pages ago, I had to cut notches in the caddy itself to make room for me to reposition the fan), and also for one of the large sheetmetal screws that I used to bolt the 3.5" caddy onto the chassis.

The other reason for using Velcro is it will not be difficult to mount or unmount drives or other devices in the bays. Also shown in one of the pics is the Raptor/Drive Tunnel combo, test-mounted in the chassis. I might move it to the bay below.

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It was time to wrap up a few loose ends with the near-finished drive tunnel cooler.

I had to grind down the 4 screw-heads on the bottom of the CD shell, as they were bumping into those tabs on the inside of the 5.25" bay caddy between which you slide your optical drives. The drive cooler wouldn't push inside! After grinding down the heads, the cooler slid in nice 'n' easy. Then came time to test-fit the front bezel, and it wouldn't go in all the way, two of the tabs wouldn't snap into place. So more thinking had to be done.

The drive cooler stuck out just a tad too much, just enough for the CD shell to interfere with the black mesh bay cover. I decided to extend the mounting holes in the 5.25" bay caddy about a quarter of an inch inward. I only had to extend the 2 holes on the front side of the caddy, as the holes on the reverse side were already oblong holes. Once the holes were extended, the drive tunnel cooler pushed in enough to allow the front bezel to snap back in. I mounted the drive tunnel cooler with black screws this time, so they'll be less visible through the black acrylic caddy plate. I found the standard chromed screws too visible (you can see them a bit through the black acrylic in the previous post's pics). They probably won't be visible at all, now.

The finished mod ends up being a "stealthed drive bay cooler", I figure that's probably a first! The coolest thing is that it totally matches the rest of the front bezel.

One last detail, regarding my fanatical obsession with airflow, was my decision to place the drive tunnel cooler in that particular slot. As you can see in the second pic, there's a nice line of flow from the intake air, across the drive, it'll pass over my RAM slots and past the CPU area, to exhaust nicely in line with the rear 120mm chassis fan.

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This afternoon, I figured out a way to mount one half of the acrylic I/O panel. I was fortunate to notice that there was an empty spot on the motherboard, as well as 2 screw-holes that my case doesn't use, which gave me an idea for how to mount the outer acrylic I/O panel.

I cut some more pieces of acrylic from my small pile of leftovers, measured and drilled so that I can screw it in from the underside of the motherboard with a few self-tapping screws I had in my big bin 'o' nuts 'n' bolts. I had about a millimeter or two of the tip protruding above the acrylic after it was screwed in, so I ground then down until it was smooth. I then glued a second piece, forming an "L" shape, flush with the front edge of the mobo, and flush with the first piece of acrylic.

I'll now be able to use a few small pieces of Velcro to hold the I/O plate in place. Using the Velcro gives me wiggle room to make sure the fit & position are perfect. Using screws instead would've resulted in visible screw-heads, and I didn't want anything like that to ruin the overall smooth, glassy finish.

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I did a little bit of "fit and finish" on the drive caddies and caddy plates, and the anglerfish mod which will become one side of the intake duct. The 3.5" drive caddy forms a second side. I'll use clear acrylic to form the other side(s) as I figure is necessary.

The anglerfish "floor" gives me a good 1/2" space where I can tuck cabling between that floor and the case's rear side panel.

I'm pretty happy with how it looks! With any light shining on it, it just looks like black glass. I'm sitting 4 feet away and I can't see the caddies at all. Smoooth.

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I didn't want my IDE cable that runs to my DVD drive(s) to look the same as everyone else's, with those UV-reactive thick, stiff, rounded cables. At first I considered doing a tight cable-fold-job with the sweet black IDE cable that comes with my ABit mobo, and it was good. But not good enough. If it's gonna be visible, I don't want to do folding. Folding is for cases like my μ-Blaze case, where you're trying to stuff the cables out of the way due to the lack of space. I needed something that was black and looked different. I didn't want any cables to glow inside the case EXCEPT for the SATA data cable and power cables, as it would take away from the effect.

I didn't want to mangle my ABit cable so I did a test mod on a spare cable lying around. I first made some slits with an X-Acto knife between some of the wires, approximately in groups of 5 or 6. You only need to slit it a quarter-inch or so, and you need to be very careful to slice it perfectly lengthwise, and try not to cut across a wire. It's really quite easy with a steady hand. Once you've made a little slit, use your fingers to separate the slit, and it'll split apart all the way up and down the cable just by pulling it apart.

Once I finished splitting the wires, I got some spare black cable sleeving (for PSUs) ready. In order to get the sleeving to go over the IDE connector, I folded the connector sideways, then used electrical tape to tape on the plastic cap of a Gelly-Roll pen (any round or tapered cap or object will do the same thing). This makes it easy to slide the sleeving over the large, square connector, which would normally drive you nuts as the sleeving would catch and grab on every sharp edge. Once the sleeving was slipped into place, I slid on some pieces of shrink-wrap and used the heat gun to shrink 'em on.

Unfortunately, when I was done, although the sleeving itself looked great, the end near the connectors looked like sh!t. See for yourself:

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