The evil but famous uncle Ianho suckered me into spicing up my year-old rig for the upcoming modding competition on the 2th at you-know-where. As a first timer but avid fan of you modding gods here at LYN, I thought why not give you guys a little something to laugh at.

WARNING: Very little dremelling and custom cuts will go into this as I know next to nothing about modding. I'll just try some ideas and see where this takes us.

For starters, here's my Thermaltake Shark:


The nekkid internal:


With some hardware and basic wire management:


As I take everything apart, I found that dirt and grime had collected on the casing. And so went out to get some cleaning agents:


This post has been edited by ZipD: Mar 19 2007, 01:43 AM

Initially, I soaked the case with WD40 to remove fingerprints and stuff, then with cotton and Brasso for polish. After 3 days of polishing (and sore fingers), here're the results...

The base of the case:


The other side:


A close-up of the internal:


The back of the case:


Not exacly mirror-shined but it's enough to make me happy

Moving on, I tried a little sleeving. If you had looked at the sleeving guide thread, you would've noticed I got into abit of trouble trying this. I initially bought a couple of Vantec/Vizo sleeving packs which has a few sizes of sleeves including heatshrinks. Here's a pic of the different sizes it has:


On the rightmost, you can see a heatshrink that was used and damaged in the process due to over-flaming (if there's such a word). What happened was I tried using a hairdryer to shrink it which didn't do anything. So I thought maybe direct flame was a good idea. And so I brought out a candle and started burning the heatshrink:


Great, just great. With other common sleeving problems happening (frayed sleeves, forgetting to tape the wire tips, wrong sized sleeves, etc) and about a dozen tries, I was about to give up. Then with uncle's advice (and Madman's encouragement), went out to get appropriately sized sleeves and heatshrinks:




These help a lot as well (called Molex Removal Kit):

Since I'm sleeving the whole PSU, I thought why not add some UV:


And not forgetting the tape the little b**t**d tips:


Some toastin' with a cheapo lighter:


And yay, a giant leap for a noob:


Done about 2 of the wires so far:


Hopefully I can get this done *within* the year

Some of the stuff I'll need to put back in after sleeving is done:


And the other stuff I bought earlier:




That's all for now... comments are most welcomed.

Holy moly! U sure bought a lot of stuff! Kekekekekkee. Looks like my poison is extremely potent. Go go go. More pix more pix.

Those arent even match ur expense on the casing or Apple cinema LCD TV ...

anyway good job with the sleeving .. i'm too lazy so always go for those that pre sleeved .... lazy ass am i ...

looks like there would be more bling bling ...

nice job..ur case looks lovely and shiney-miney

btw why dun u consider using a hairdryer instead of lighter..lower risk and nothing will got burn with hairdryer..

whoa.. i see a dragon figuring there..
U're gonna put it inside? there's space for it? or juz on the top?

haha..i think he should use shark instead of dragon..
but still, the dragon figure also look nice and roar..
wanna fight with uncle's kingkong aeh?

damn im saw ur rig at 1st..seem its very shiney nice job bro..hehe bring it to the LP..blame ian cz didnt help u much in sleeving..n summo he's the great poisoner

Nice new stuffs dude,hope to see the outcome soon..

Majulah Modding untuk negara..

I did try using a hairdryer initially but found that it wasn't hot/fast enough, so I resorted to a lighter. Anyway, the lighter is the wind-proof type and I'm only putting it close to the heatshrinks instead of directly.

It took me awhile to decide which dragon to go for out of so many in the McFarlane's series. This particular one looked small enough to fit inside the case and it has a green pattern which matches with the overall theme I'm thinking about. However, a quick test-fit showed that it's right wing may interfere with the graphics card.

Hmm, a shark sounds like a great idea (never thought of that myself) but I used a dragon as it's part of my nick

I didn't want to ask Ian to help with the sleeving as I wanted to do it myself and learn the hard way but I did consider it at one point in time when I felt too frustrated to move on. However, Ian has his own things to do for King Kong so I try not to bother his too much.

Mod the dragon too! Trim the wings to fit around the gfx card.

walawei...so many stuff u got there..i can see there is 6 ccfl...plus new uv ccfl..huhu..there will be a lightning show in your case..huhu.. cant wait to see your final touch..more pix please..huhu..

Yeah, ianho good idea.....................

Before I continue, let's see the mess I got myself in...

The workplace:


The accessories:


Ok, now for the updates...

I didn't do a more detailed log for the sleeving so I though I'd rectify that with this. Here, I'm doing the last of the PSU wires, an 8pin cable. Firstly, I used the Molex Removal Tool that's 2-pronged to remove the tips:


I had to poke hard (heh) into the molex so that the tool penetrated deep enough to extract it. Out comes all the pins:


Here it is with the pins taped-up and ready for sleeving:


With the sleeve in place, in goes the heatshrink:


This is the heatshrink I used, a close-up. I used this particular size for most of the cables:

With the heatshrink shrunk:


I had some trouble with this. I didn't realise that the pins had 'legs' which dictate the direction they must be in to fit inside the molex. I actually had to redo the heatshrink by cutting it out and adjusting the pins into the proper position as much as I can BEFORE heating the heatshrink. Here's a close-up of the 'legs' I mentioned:


Once that was done, the original (I couldn't find a UV 8-pin molex in the entire city) was fitted back in:


Frickin' finally:

Meanwhile, the Dragon awaits patiently...




This post has been edited by ZipD: Mar 20 2007, 02:51 AM

haha..i like this scene..quite horror..rather than KK which is more KEWL type