Greetings modders,

Glitterkill contacted me with an idea for a new project with a novel idea: modding on the cheap. We often hear from newcomers to the modding scene, "If I had lots of money, I could do a great mod, too." Well, I've never been anything close to rich, so I've always had to resort to original, "outside of the box" modding techniques to make a project case look different, to distinguish it from other cases. Most of the tricks and techniques I'll showcase in this worklog require very little cash. However, don't confuse "modding on the cheap" with "modding on the lazy"! While these tricks may indeed cost very little, many require a fair amount of time, thought, and always, attention to detail. It's not really wads of dough that make a unique, quality case mod; it's the effort and attention to detail.

GK asked me to choose a case from FrozenCPU to be my platform. To pick an expensive case would have defeated the purpose of this project, so I chose a case well under $100; in fact, I settled on a very reasonably-priced Enermax case, the Chakra mid-tower case. The cost was only $69.99. GK also gave me a budget of only $50 to spend on goodies. Thanks go to FrozenCPU for supplying the case and all the goodies used for this special project. They have quite a nice selection of modding gear and cases, so hit them up next time you're looking for gear for your next project!

I'll begin with a mini-review of the Enermax Chakra case. I'm not going to talk about the size of the packing peanuts or the condition of the box. What matters in a case mod project is the final product, period.

Why did I choose this case? To be honest, I'm actually quite surprised I've never seen anyone use this case in their projects, I can't even recall seeing one in the gallery. It has a quite effective-looking, massive 250mm side fan, arranged to suck air inside the case. More on that later. The case interior is quite uncluttered, and has room for 120mm front & rear fans (not included with the case, although FrozenCPU's website for the Chakra states "120mm blue LED fan included"). Unfortunately, the case also doesn't come with a PSU. The case looks like it could be a wicked platform for a unique mod project.

Here are some advertising pics of the case:



I think this case looks great, and should be a good performer for cooling too, once I've made some changes.

I'm going to multiple-post, please excuse that, but my excuse for that is that I'm doing this project in phases, and I want to keep the steps separate to make things easier to understand and follow for the newcomers to modding.

I hope you all enjoy this project! Cheers!

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

Here is the Chakra case as I received it, before the tear-down. Note the interesting modder's mesh-like bay covers for the drive bays; the same meshing is used to cover the 250mm side fan and front "axe-head" intake hole. Each of these areas also has a fine filter material backing the meshing, which is a nice touch to reduce dust getting into the case. Another nice feature is the use of the teal-colored plastic toolless fittings for the peripheral cards and drives. They won't stay that color, of course. I also like the flip-top panel at the top front of the case, which protects the power & reset switches; good for those of you who have your cases on the floor, and are accidentally shutting down or putting the system into Standby mode with a bump of the knee during a particularly engrossing game moment. The e-SATA ports up there are also a nice touch.

I personally think the indicator LEDs at the top are an afterthought. They look like crap. We'll definitely have to do something about that.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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Here are the goodies I chose with my $50 budget limit. Thanks again to FrozenCPU for supplying the goodies.

From left to right: a pair of foot-long ACRyan UV cathodes; blue ClearNeon UV-reactive paint (goes on clear, glows blue under UV); blue and red UV-reactive electrical wire; two 10-packs of red UV-reactive zip-ties; and a red UV-reactive cable sleeving kit.

I also bought a clear 120mm fan which I'll probably use for the rear exhaust (what, no LEDs?!). Yep, no LEDs, just a plain clear fan.

Well, it ain't gonna be easy to do something incredible with only that, but I'm up for the challenge! I've got some ideas simmering on the back-burner that I think will make this case look intriguing.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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I like working on this case because stripping it down is quite easy. I believe that any serious case mod project starts with a complete tear-down. For me anyway, it helps me to see the case's good and bad aspects, and gives me a very basic guideline of what things I'll have to do to implement future mod ideas.

I began by removing the main panels and the 4 screws holding the 250mm side panel fan to the panel & housing. The fan is originally oriented to suck air inside the case, but I'm thinking an exhaust direction would be better for cooling. Although the fan does include a switch which allows you to change the spin direction, the fan blades won't work half as effectively if they're spinning backwards. The fan blades are of course not symmetrical, so simply reversing the fan rotation is hardly the best solution. I plan to reverse the whole housing and remount it the opposite way.

After removing the side fan, I removed the front bezel, which is held on only by 4 plastic tabs. 2 of them were quite difficult to get at, on the motherboard-side of the case, as there's very little room to fit a finger inside there to press the tabs outward, but a flat screwdriver did the trick nicely. The front bezel has a cool-looking mesh- and filter-covered axe-head-shaped hole. The housing itself popped out easily enough by slipping out the filter material, and pressing in 4 plastic tabs. All the bay covers pop out the same way, only with 2 tabs.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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The case comes with handy mounting holes at the front of the chassis to install a front fan up to 120mm in size. I found a problem however. The axe-head intake hole doesn't come even close to lining up with the fan mounting location. Maybe you can see this with the attached picture. The 120mm fan will mount nicely enough to the underlying chassis; however, the axe-head hole will be positioned a good 3/4" above the fan, which will look quite sloppy. I'll figure out what to do about that later.

I also noticed another thing that would seriously impact the front intake cooling ability. There are 3 separate drive caddies positioned along the front of the chassis; one for the 5.25" drives, one for a pair of 3.5" drives in the typical floppy drive locations, and the third, for 3 more 3.5" hard drives. I've never been a fan of putting drives in this area, even though at first glance, it seems that the hard drives would be well-cooled by the intake fan. True, however, that warmed-up air just gets shoved right into the area of your hot video card and CPU. Not to mention, with the tiny holes in the caddy itself, those drives won't be effectively cooled anyway. So, that bottom drive caddy will be removed completely.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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In this post, I'll demonstrate how I removed all those teal-colored plastic drive locks. If you're planning to paint the inside chassis, it's important to strip it down entirely, and that means removing those tool-less drive locks. First, I took a piece of metal that was discarded from one of the PCI slot covers, but a flat screwdriver would work fine too. Looking down at the drive lock, you will see notches in the upper and lower edges of the teal plastic, but they don't move to the left enough so you can remove them. That's because there's a little metal boss or blister or tab that's holding them in. I used the flat piece of metal to lift the plastic drive lock up and over the metal boss, so now the lock could be slid to the left enough to line up the notches, and then the lock was removed easily enough. After the lock was removed, the metal retaining clips were removed by twisting them clockwise a bit, to clear the round raised metal hole, then a gentle twist to pull it clear of the retaining tab at the left. I believe the attached pic should be easy enough to follow this procedure.

The last pics show the completely stripped-bare chassis, and my table full of disassembled parts. I also removed the teal plastic PCI/AGP slot locks by twisting them carefully out from their round retaining holes.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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Hello, I just wanted to apologize for the delays in updates to this project. The big thing is I'm changing careers, so that has taken up a lot of my spare time. My previous work, as manager of an automotives department for the last 15 months, didn't leave me with any spare time (how ironic?) as I was working 12+ hour days at times. For me, having a creative outlet is an important aspect of my life, and finding myself working in a job that gave me no time for that outlet ends up with me not enjoying life that much. Hence the career change.

The other thing is the Gothic Gargoyle case (which still houses my main computer). The Gargoyle computer was so dusty inside, even though I'd hit it with a spray-duster every 6 months or so...and some of the lighting stopped working, so as I was beginning the cleanup, I just figured I'd tear it down and rebuild it completely. I'll post pics of the rebuilt Gargoyle soon. Don't worry though, nothing has changed with it on the outside, it just needed a major overhaul.

Sorry again people, but don't worry, I haven't forgotten this special project!

Well, I finally had some time for modding, so I got the generic rotary tool out and made some sparks fly. I cut out an intake hole in a shape approximating the axe-head shape of the front bezel hole, then spent about an hour filing away the excess metal and to get the correct shape.

I wasn't able to take the top two "points" all the way up, because the chassis metal just ends there, it doesn't fold in beneath the 3.5" drive caddy. I was forced to leave a good centimetre of metal just to preserve the structural integrity. You can see this in my initial cut, I wasn't able to cut the two upper black "horns". Still, after filing everything down and doing a bezel test-fit, I got the results I wanted. A plain circular hole would not have looked good beneath that axe-head hole, even though it would have been much easier to do that.

Next step is to make some kind of duct that matches the shape of the axe-head. No flower pots or store-bought duct tubes are gonna work for this intake! Lastly, I still haven't figured out what to do about the intake fan mounting location; as I mentioned earlier, if I use the existing mounting holes, the fan will not center inside the axe-head hole, but will rather sit about a half-inch below center. I'll either drill new holes to remount the fan or use meshing or a custom grille to "hide" the offset. Hehe!

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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Here is what I'm talking about, re: the odd offset mounting location of the fan beneath the bezel. I guess it wouldn't really matter to Enermax if the fan lined up exactly or not, as there would normally be mesh and filter material hiding the fan anyway. But that just won't do for me! I'll figure something out one way or the other... I think the first thing I'll try is to cut away a little of the metal in the 3.5" drive caddy, that should let me mount the fan at least a half-inch upward.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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I was wondering what to do to mod the front 120mm intake fan, something to spice it up, so I hit the local hardware store to see what would work, be different, and also is cheap. As I was walking through the light fixtures aisle, I found this wonderful little gem that'll be *perfect*! It was a whole 6 bucks. I removed all the wiring and mounting crap from the inside, so I was just left with the part I was going to use.

Unfortunately, the "bullet" cone has a big hole where the mounting arm went in, I'll be doing something about that. Also, the cone is a bit too long, I'll probably cut it down at least a half-inch at the base. I put it on top of the intake fan to give an idea what it'll look like.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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Well, I cut down the bullet cone and very carefully measured the cut edge to make sure it's straight and level. Because if it's not, when the fan spins, the bullet will wobble. The techniques I used for checking the level is putting the cone near the edge of my desk, and eyeballing it as I rotated it. I then placed it on the fan itself, and turned the fan with my fingers to make sure it was straight. I'll probably paint the non-chrome part after filling it in from the inside with body filler so that the hole gets filled, sanding everything smooth, then painting it a color contrasting with the case...I'm thinking gloss black or blue...

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I also bought this light fixture, on sale for $25...The triangular cones are really cool, the brushed aluminum arm and base also both will come in useful in future projects.

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Not a big update today, but I got a little more done to the intake fan "bullet". I filled in the inside of the cone about 1/3 of the way, enough to cover the area left by the hole. When that had fully dried 2 days later, I sanded off most of the excess epoxy, then applied some good ol' Bondo. Time to wait a few hours, then sand it smooth.

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Finished the prep-work on the fan cone and masking off the fan itself. It's going to be a rather unique paint job that will create a neat effect. More on that later.

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After staring at the front bezel many times for long periods, I finally had some ideas on how to mod it. First of all, I liked the overall clean, consistent design of this bezel in stock form. I didn't want to go painting things or gluing stuff on it. I like the drive bay covers and the all-black color. So I decided to keep the bezel stock except for the front intake fan, and a little funky idea I cooked up to get a little lighting happenin' for power on and IDE activity. The way I'm planning this, at least at this early stage, is for the eyes to be drawn to the high-contrast areas of the future intake fan and bezel lighting.

I began by removing the four screws that hold each of the black brushed aluminum side pieces onto the plastic bezel. My plan is to cut out a section of each aluminum piece, replacing it with an acrylic tube that will have LEDs on the ends. I only wanted to remove a section that was between the 4 mounting screw holes, so that it will easily mount back in place on the bezel. The images show where I planned to hack away.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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I then masked off the aluminum pieces to protect from scratches or other damage if I "oops" and slip up with the hacksaw. After some careful measuring, I cut out middle pieces of the exact length from each aluminum piece.

I then got out the rotary tool and very carefully and slowly cut out the plastic sections of the bezel, in order to make room to mount the acrylic tubes. The pics show my rough cuts, now it's time to get out the X-Acto knife, files, and sandpaper and smooth everything out.

Oh, the price (individually) for the 3-foot piece of 8mm acrylic tube was maybe $4 or $5 bucks. I'll only be using about 1 foot of it for this mod.

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Since the areas where I cut the black aluminum became a shiny silver color, and since you can't really paint anodized aluminum without a ton of hassle, I filed the cut ends into angles so that the shiny parts would be less visible from the front, when the bezel is done. Also, the aluminum pieces overlap the holes cut into the plastic, to keep things looking a little more neat, once things are reassembled. The filing also gave the cut ends a uniform, shiny surface, much nicer than the rough, ragged texture that you get after hacksawing them.

I also used the X-Acto knife and a file to clean up my rough cuts in the bezel plastic.

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I'm a big fan of doing creative things to a computer's "Power On" and "IDE Activity" lights. Anyone who mods a case but leaves the stock LED lighting is really missing an opportunity to make their case unique. I've seen about a bazillion Lian Li cases that are "modded", but nothing is done to change the ugly existing LED lighting.

I filed down one end of the acrylic tubes I'd cut so that they were a perfect fit. They will rest beneath the overhanging, angle-cut aluminum pieces. I'll probably epoxy them in place when things are closer to completion. I also include a picture of a test-fit, to show kind of what I'm planning to do. I'll have to do something about the rough edges where I'd X-Acto'd and filed the plastic. Not sure what yet, but it'll come to me eventually.

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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I used some tape to hold the bezel tubes in place, to show the progress so far. It's almost 1 A.M., time for bed.

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Wow, sometimes I even amaze myself! I was about to go to bed, wondering what the heck I was gonna do to clean up the look of the bezel side accent lights, when the absolutely PERFECT idea popped into my tired head! All the drive bays have this neat black mesh-like grille covering them. And I just looked at a piece of 6" x 9" black speaker grille I had lying around from a previous grille I made for a fan for the Gargoyle computer, and got right to work!

I did all the work with a wire cutter, normal and needle-nose pliers, and about 45 minutes of bending and shaping (just for this one side, I'll have to repeat that process for the other one). And this is what I ended up with, pretty pimpin' I'm sure you'll agree!

Later, I'll epoxy the light grilles into place, before I mount the aluminum sides...I bent the tips at the top and bottom of the grille so that they'll barely fit snug beneath the overhanging aluminum pieces. Now, that's something nobody's done before!

Project Feedback thread is located here if you would like to leave any comments.

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