Worklog: WOW for a lady

[Nagasama]

nice dude.

 

[jfenwick]

She sent me a couple shots in the semi-dark. Fan looks way cooler in RL bah, should have kept a few photos of in the dark. Anyways, you get the idea:

 

[hickfarm]

looks good. Doesn't look like your main vision at first though. Still looks great though.

I need to get me some of that perforated metal as well.

 

[jfenwick]

looks good. Doesn't look like your main vision at first though. Still looks great though.

I need to get me some of that perforated metal as well.

Lol...the joys of modding a case for someone else, things change

I'm glad she changed from the lime green though. I dont mind green but I wasn't seeing it for this build. And of course black is cheaper

 

[Total Immortal]

Can you talk a little about the wire management you did? It looks brilliant!

 

[ricanflow]

wire management really isnt that hard, it just takes time and you really have to think carefully about where everything is gonna go. I have pretty good management and didnt even mod my case at all.

 

[philbar71]

that is a beautiful paint job. and i really like how clean and simple it looks

 

[Nagasama]

what kind of case is that? coolermaster? and what kind of fan in the front? totally agree on the comment about the paint job...its stellar.

 

[jfenwick]

Can you talk a little about the wire management you did? It looks brilliant!

It's actually relatively straight forward wire management, mostly just hiding rather than re-wiring. If you want a more detailed guide watch my next build:

http://www.techist.com/forums/f10/worklog-spidey-senses-183611/

I'm just starting to chop up the mobo now so i'll make sure to document the wire management process much better than i did here.

For this one I essentially did the following:

1) Started with a dry install, using marker I traced where the mobo would sit in the case and where the wires needed to come out behind it to connect (gpu, power, usb, IDE, SATA etc...).

2) Knowing where I needed the wires to come out I pulled out the mobo and cut holes with my drill press and dremel that would be hidden behind the motherboard once it was installed. I also cut a hole at the top to run all the psu cables behind the board.



3) I also drilled a bunch of small holes on the mobo tray to run zip ties through so that I could tie back the wires behind the tray as there wasn't much space. Be CAREFUL doing this, there isn't much room under the mobo for these cables and if you try and muscle the room then you can break your mobo.

4) Next I cut holes in the back of the CD/DVD and HDD trays so I could run wires in there instead of through the open where they'd be visible and ugly, sorry no photo of that.

5) Some minor PSU cable management, I only needed one SATA supply so I removed the second from the unit and re-wired the first so that it only has the 2 connections at the end for the DVD burner and the one empty one for where she'd install the player if she wants to down the road. A big pet peeve of mine is the space between these connections when usually you mount your two drives so closely.

6) The re-wired the molex power cables to length for the fans.

7) Mounted the HDD backwards to hide the wires.

8) Extend the power, reset and front LED cables so they can be tucked behind the mobo tray.

9) Lastly, zip ties to bind the excess and hide it either behind the mobo tray with or behind the mounting brackets for the HDDs.

You can a bit of the hidden wires here on the bottom right of the phone through the mounting bracket holes.



There is significant room for improvement, with more time, another $20 and if you don't mind limiting your PSU then you can also:

10) sleeve the cables to all one colour either with shrink wrap, meshing or even re-wired to a certain colour.

11) cut and re-wire cables to length (ex. CPU fan) and remove excess wires, I left the extra PCI-e power cable, mobo power etc... on the PSU that I could have removed but that would have limited future upgrade possibility.

12) Start with a better case, this one wasn't very good for cable management, not a lot of room behind the mobo tray and there is the open 3" gap between the mobo tray and the DVD/HDD racks where without some structural mods you cannot hid the cables, no option but to run them in the open. You can see the yellow SATA cable running to the burner at the top, prime example. normally I'd run that behind the mobo tray and then through the back side of the DVD/HDD rack so you wouldn't see anything other than the last inch where it connects to the burner. This case was used and therefore dirt cheap, cuts down on the price that way

[edit]LOL, took me so long to write this post up (screaming baby) you guys got three more in on me

Yeah, I love a good paint job, just stripping the case and giving it a good quality job makes such a huge difference. This was a good but not great job...done properly I'd have another two weeks to wet sand it and buff it out to and even smoother, new car finish. As for keeping it clean...that's somethign I always shoot for, I like a computer case to look like a computer case and to me, clean means class.

As for the type of case...no idea...could not, to save my life, figure out what kind of case it was. Got it used and not a single marking on it with make/model or even serial number. it was a real cheapo tho, cheap paint job, some coolermaster knockoff i think. [/edit]