Hi guys....... plus girls as well NOW !!! (got UV's gf and pmmonkey)

after coming back to Penang with a few heavy boxes of casing and speakers from the LAN party, new semester (getting more difficult) has started but still i want to mod more !!!!

since my current setup cannot fit into the Silverstone SG-01 that i won, i had no other option but to sell it off...........

however my condition of selling the casing would be i will have the chance to mod the casing myself

all the hardware just came in last week and today i will start planning on how to mod this casing.....


here are the specs of the parts that are going into this casing

Pentium D 3.2Ghz (very very hot proc )
Silverstone ST-05 heatsink
Gigabyte 7300GT 256mb PCIe
Gigabye GA-965GM-S2 mobo
Mushkin 1Gb 800Mhz DDR2 ram (single stick)
FSP Blue Storm 500W
Liteon DVD writer (SATA connector)


Objectives

- maintain stock looks as much possible
- provide sufficient cooling for the Proc as well as the GC
- bling it up but not too much........


MOD(s)

airflow and cooling mod(s)

- whack 92mm Panaflo onto the GC which runs on a passive heatsink
- put 2x 80mm Panaflo M series/H series as exhaust fan
- put 3x 60mm fan on each side panel (6x fans in total) to increase the airflow onto the GC and onto the CPU area
- mod the rear plate to fit 2x 40mm Delta Focus Flow (or any 40mm with similar performance) to suck air out of the CPU heatsink

Aesthetic mod(s)

- red HDD activity downlight
- stealth DVD cover by using the stock CDROM bay Alu plate
- all lighting controllers + fan controllers hidded behind stock CDROM bay Alu plate
- BLUE interior lightings (or any of his liking)

This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 12:21 PM

First of all, just to examine the casing's quality, i stripped down the casing patiently.......

I've already taken a 360° shot so enjoy the pics !


Here is the front shot......you can clearly see the brushed Alu pattern......




Side Panel Shot (left)




Rear Shot........even the PCI bracket screw slots are covered




Side Panel Shot (right)




Interior of the casing (from left)........there are 2 80mm fans on the left side of the casing which is directly above the graphics card area......





Interior of the casing (from right)

the CPU area is quite tight because the PSU is directly above the CPU area.......




the HDD bay which is removable and the optical bay........

all the wires for USB, firewire are all damn long.......




oh, this is the removable HDD bracket which can be removed by hand because it is secured down by a hook in mechanism and then tighten by using a thumb screw





fortunately, there are still empty space to hide all the cables and for the cables to pass through



This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 08:55 AM

as you can see here, this casing is quite graphics card friendly because you can fit in graphics card with huge PCBs and the cooling for this area can be considered excellent because the 80mm is directly above the GC area




the whole casing is held by a main bracket to ensure the rigidity....even it is removed, the casing is still quite rigid because the joints are secured by 2 rivet points....




to continue with, here are all the hardware that are going into the casing.....









This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 08:56 AM

here's the victim of my cooling mod.....naked heatsink without any fans......definitely going to be hot during load








to check the pressure of the heatsink onto the proc.........evenly distributed pressure i'd say






the GC area and the CPU area is separated into 2 chambers by the bracket itself



This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 08:59 AM

this is the CPU area without the PSU...........








there are still some space in that corner.....perhaps can fit a reservoir or pump at that corner.....






ok, i'm gonna show the nicest and most sexiest part of the casing which is the front...





the blue thing you see is the protective layer for the mirror layer they stick on the acrylic to give the shining edge on the bay and IO panel.....








there are still around 15mm of space in between the front panel and the casing itself.....a very nice place to hide unused cables





with the acrylic removed, this is the front Alu panel........this thing is really the most expensive part to make........very heavy and really precise joints.......




the mirror acrylic that i removed from the front.......it is actually laser cut which makes shining edges



This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 09:03 AM

hmmmm......still wondering how to implement the side cooling fans





since the airflow for the CPU area is not that efficient, i'm gonna have to add two 40mm high speed Delta Focus Flow directly behind the heatsink to take all the heat out directly.......we have a Pentium D 3.2Ghz in the system and it is definitely no cool to play with

i'm not going to use the Sanyo Denki because airflow not good enough

for better airflow, i'll need to remove the grill and replace with an acrylic plate with 2x 40mm fans holes





after removing the main body bracket, can start to chop the grill

the acrylic plate is made in a very tight fit condition because there are only 2-5mm on the top and bottom edges

short (~5mm) precision 3mm in diameter screws were used to secure the plate to the rear

i also left some of my DNA on the mobo backplate because i cut my finger when i tried to push the backplate into position







this is how to mod for better airflow

the watermark can be removed easily by rubbing them off with your finger tip





after fitting in all the hardware......

you'll see that the heatsink configuration will push hot air directly to the back, but since there is no fan over there, the heat will all be taken into the PSU fan exhausting from there........too much heat entering PSU will shorten the lifespan of the caps an component inside, so it is advisable not to let your PSU breath in too much hot air

i'll make a 5/12V switch to be coupled with the fan or else will get negative feedback from the owner

the fans will be pushing out 30cfm at 12V and ~10cfm at 5V






This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 09:07 AM

thanks bro....how come you know so much good stuff ar

the 6x 60mm are ok, just that the rear dual 40mm at the rear are noisy......but anyway, i love challenges

not too much bling bling........this is not my PC

unfortunately this casing is worth more than a shoebox


surprise surprise


if you dont have proper airflow for the Pentium D

continue from the previous post...





okay, this should be the most interesting part.......

but to protect my idea, i'm not gonna reveal how i do it......some people have been copying my design and even make money out of it and even claim is his idea


i took out the casing's CDROM bracket and break off the legs.....just need the front bracket for this mod.........

the DVD's front cover is removed completely to be fitted with this......

and minor adjustment here and there and you'll get this

you just need to press onto the bottom right corner of the Alu and the thing will eject....but you'll need to push it inside to make it retract

so just enjoy the pics






alright, proceed to GC card mod.....

i use a 92mm Panaflo M series for this.....






i just told him(the owner) that i'm going to add a fan onto it without even looked at the GC before !!

after some analysis and brainstorming, found the easiest way to mount it.....

i just secure the fan by using a screw hole from the GC itself





after some ninja chopping action

i left the fan with just a single corner of the frame to secure the fan





This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 09:08 AM

after searching for the correct size of screws on my screwbox, finally found one which is near to the perfect length

if you want to attempt this type of mod (securing screw onto PCB), make sure that you use nylon washer like the ones that i used because the normal paper washer will not be strong enough and you might damage the PCB due to excessive pressure or scratch the PCB as well.

FYI, nylon washers are more resistant to heat and is usually used in watercooling block locking mechanism

i've made some testing with the fan on the GC, it is totally dead silent yet pushes a lot of air an is capable of cooling the whole heatsink together with the ram area because there is no frame to restrict the air direction












This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 09:10 AM

with most of the components inside the casing, this is how it will look like......
i did all the mods within 4 intense hour and it is really tiring to execute them out as planned









okay, thats all for the time being......will update more when i planned out what i'm going to do on saturday

This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 09:11 AM

more pics on the stealth DVDROM mod











i've uploaded 2 QuickTime Videos on FTP

please visit the link here for the video, each video is 10mb in size

http://kcbox.net/allngap/

This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 09:11 AM

hahahhha......you know me lah
but it is really not noisy at all, less than 2.5k rpm and without frame somemore....

your sensitive ears are somehow very rare to find ler


ok bro........very excited to see what female modders can do

i havent finish all the wirings yet because i havent finish up on the fans and LEDs yet......dont worry i dont have got more than 60wires running here and there like my own casing



uncle sniper is the god of silence....cant blame him also


the owner is a guy ler........

anyway, if not mistaken that is the GC is an OC version right ?
actually i was quite worried because all the fanless and silent version are prone to heat problem.....

the fan itself is definitely silent and definitely will keep the temperature well below 40°C during idle or load

it works like pressing the button itself, but the mechanism is classified because i troubleshoot for more than 1 hour to get the correct material for it to work nicely and i seriously dont want some bugger to copy my design and make money out of it and take the credit for himself.......

if you want i can send the pics to you

This post has been edited by AllnGap: Apr 20 2007, 07:19 PM

i meant the technique to make it stealth
stealth drive is so common d le


most important part in any casing is to plan the airflow first........get proper heatsink and reroute the casing's airflow

finished modding the casing already......got some changes here and there...

stupid photobucket not working again

ya, i realized the problem as well.....sometimes i couldnt login at all

i'm shifting all my pics to a private server....easier for me....but i afraid i'll exceed the bandwidth only


This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 12 2007, 11:02 AM

this is the acrylic panel that i did to secure the fans to the side panel......unfortunately my original plans did not work out that smoothly because when the acrylic is directly attached to the side panel, it started to make funny wooshing noise (wind noise)

so i had to use the square type of acrylic rods to make some spacing for the acrylic [ ]






the wires on the fans were shorten and re-soldered to make it look clean and neat
wires from the first and third fan were routed to the middle fan









this is how it supposed to look like on the sidepanel, i've adjusted the fans to be directly in the middle of the mesh




this is my first time i really did some serious cable management myself.....

the blue cables are the USB and firewire cables, hard to bent and positioned directly between the HDD cage and the front panel, so have to give them rollercoster type of routing





This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 13 2007, 04:59 AM

next is the cable management for the PSU itself, this is just the initial state where i had to figure out which part of the cables should be accessible and which part should be hidden



as you can see in the picture, the Fortron bluestorm does give a lot of headache to me because not only i have to manage them, but i had to make sure that the molexes which connects to the side panel fans are easy to be removed as well....





after some thinking, i had to house all the blue wormies into the optical bay since it is empty......obviously this helps the looks and also the airflow as well...







next, it is time to wire up all the lightings, fan controllers and fans as well

all the fans except for the CPU and top 80mm fans are routed to the main circuit board....






there are 3 additional flip switches on the pci bracket

the first two are the blue and white led lighting switch while the one on the bottom controls the 5/12V for the rear 40mm fans.

the one with the knob(low to high indicator) is default from the silverstone heatsink




This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 13 2007, 05:10 AM

this is the board which houses 5V, 12V and ground......the main molex wires comes all the way crawling from the optical bay area to the pci area through the main frame bracket.....




this part is still the most interesting part.......the holes i made for the pci bracket were aligned straightly vertically, but when i screwed it on, it looked like this......you can clearly see that even the horizontal spacing between the left and the right of the speed control is not the same

i think it is because of the screw holes were mainly too small because normally smaller diameter screws were used to secure PCI bracket, but this casing uses the casing type of screws to secure the bracket.....







i've even made a cradle to hold the board to prevent it falling off during transport and to protect from short circuit......





this is how it looks when it is finally secured





the white molex header you see here is the one for the board.......

the 80mm silverstone fan is also connected to that board....






as usual, i'll bling up the casing

this time, i used 6pcs of white and 6pcs of blue 5mm leds to a single unit, and there are 2 of these units in total.......

well, these leds are very easy to used, compared to CCFL, have to worry about the heat coming off inverters, ccfl sticks got no where to place or too long to hide





one of the unit will be glued to the top of the bracket lighting up the whole graphics card area



This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 13 2007, 05:25 AM

the other light unit is installed on the front panel area shining towards the cpu area......







sleeved the led cables and used 2pin connectors for easy removal





this is how it looks like when all the cables are connected to the board......controls 2 set of leds, 2x40mm fans, powers up the GC panaflo fan and the HDD cage fans as well






this is yet another very interesting part.........

i've actually made 5 red leds in a row for this purpose, but due to the current limitation on the HDD activity light from the motherboard, i had to reduce it to a single led.....

because the whole base of the casing is really reflective, a single led would be suffice







here's the home for all the blue wormies

the strip which is bended horizontally is the acrylic panel for the 3x 60mm fans....

when i try to install the sidepanel with the fans on it, i found out that i can only close the sidepanel but not open them because there are definitely no space in that area particularly to allow the casing cover to slide in comfortably,

on the other hand, the vibration from the fans will be transferred directly to the cover itself......

hence i had to alter the design......

i've decided to secure the acrylic onto the optical bay area.........

i've purposely screwed in this way because i cannot let the fans get too near to the casing cover and neither can i leave a space too wide to let air leaked to the rear fans directly






i've even used thick black sponge as a spacing material to absorb all the vibration from the fans to the casing........

please note that the vibration is not the vibration that you're thinking of, because when you install more than 1 fan on a single material, it will cause resonance effect with the other fan





the fan also brings in cool air for the rams and CPU fan intake directly




This post has been edited by AllnGap: May 13 2007, 05:39 AM