The full ingredients are yet to be decided but will be updated along the way As for now, please enjoy the photos and journey of my newly painted ATCS 840 casing. Sorry for the bad photo quality if any as I'm a noob photographer. I spent my whole weekends doing this

The last Cooler Master case I've owned was the Cosmos and today, I will be giving some touches to my ATCS 840


Good aluminium finishing (although Lian Li looks a bit better)


Case with the side panels off


The front panel is screwed with allen keys (WTF!). I've no idea why they use it instead of normal screws and I have to look for an allen key set to get it open, additional hassle.


The huge fans on the top panel would provide good airflow I'm sure but anyhow, I'll have to remove it to mount my triple radiator


The front cover removed, wasn't that hard after all


The casing getting ready to be ripped apart


This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:04 AM

Told ya, now it's a little bare and empty but still more to go


The top panel is attached to the casing via rivets. I wonder why they don't use screws instead?


In order to remove the rivets, I have to call upon my friend, a "Black & Decker" drill to help me out with it


The case is now ripped down further




Next, I would have to remove the power supply compartment and as usual, rivets again (duh!)




Now it's clean shaven



This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:04 AM

In the meantime, I started spraying some loose parts from the casing. Red colour casing? Well, it's not


The motherboard tray getting sprayed the same red colour




Here are the cans of paint which I've used and in fact, it was more than this in the end. The red colour paint is basically the primer/undercoat so that when I get my flat black onto the aluminium surface, it doesn't come off so easily


The case is now being sprayed with the primer too




It's now time to spray the actual flat black paint onto the case


Most of the parts removed from the casing is still lying on the floor


The back PSU panel sprayed with flat black. I hope the paint doesn't come off so easily


This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:05 AM

The motherboard tray with flat black






Apparently the PSU holder has some sort of spongy material at the top so before spraying, I would have to put some tapes to cover it




After spraying




This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:07 AM

Another problem now arises. The crappy motherboard tray does not have proper holes to support my EK 250 so again, some modifications are required.








In the meantime, I had also sprayed the case to flat black. I had to spray a few times/layers in different orientation to cover all the gaps.


Finally, this is how it looks like (end result). Smooth matte black surface






It's time to put back the legs of the casing


This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:08 AM

If you notice the 4 screws, it was intially rivets but I figured out that I can still manage to hold the PSU panel tightly with screws so I left it this way. Besides, it's also easier to remove.


The motherboard tray railings being installed back to the casing. This is fun, it's like playing Lego when I was young






Now it's time for the top panel, need to get it riveted back since screws don't work




This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:09 AM

The case is now ready to be fitted back with other parts & pieces






This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:10 AM

Some shots of the case with lovely matte black paint along the way while I fix everything back in




















This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:11 AM

Hmm, the top panel is indeed useful with plenty of connectors but most of the time, I don't use anything else except USB so I decided to remove the other cables off and only put it back at a later time if I need to use it


Unfortunately when I try to remove, it's totally stuck and eventually I found out that Cooler Master have smartly placed some glue on all the connectors (for whatever reason) making it difficult to remove


I had to remove off the glue and thankfully it worked out well


I also had the power/reset button and the LED wires sleeved with MDPC-X


Not to forget the huge fan on the front panel. The sleeves are from MDPC-X but the heat shrinks are my custom ones and it costs a lot cheaper but works just as good as those MDPC-X


After two long days, here is the final result of the case painting and some wire sleeving as of now. More to come soon


Just to share with you guys some MDPC-X sleeves with me. The blue looks cool ain't it? They would certainly match well with my Gigabyte P55-UD6 but perhaps not if I were to install an EVGA P55 FTW instead




This post has been edited by clawhammer: Jan 25 2010, 02:12 AM

wahhhhh.....

where u gonna place ur 360 radiator bro ?

bila want to sale ur a77 ???

top part has a adapter to install 3x120 fan instead of the 2 gigantic ones.

well done bro, all have been dismantle and assemble right with good color scheme.. how long the mdpc you take for all of these thing? i think the big fan works silently against those 120mm fan, but you can mount the triple 120mm rad right?

At the top panel, there's a bracket included for it


LOL, no one wants to buy?


Thanks boss, you're the expert!

wtf so much mdpc sleeves ... how much is the sleeves... also custom ordered from usa???

also bro what is the purpose of the pylon paint in the pic?

Yup and it's actually meant to be sold here so I'll post it up in garage soon The "Pylon" paint is just like "Anchor" but a different brand. After using both, it's more advisable to get the "Pylon" as the spray coming out from the nozzle is a lot more evenly distributed compared to "Anchor" brand. However the smell of the paint has some heavy odour (probably due to different chemicals inside) The "Anchor" ones smells a bit more acceptable.

good solid lookin case though go malik style claw lol...

malik style? what is it? hahahahhahaha.....

bro can share how many times did you resand and repaint the paint layers + primer???

Thanks and photography skills are important to get that "Malik" style (if you get what I mean)


Malik is a popular modder with nice water cooling setup too


I sand it once, spray primer multiple layers until it is even and then do the same for flat black