Howdy y'all. Complete n00b to case modding here.....but trying his best. At the advanced age of 52, I finally got the gumption up enough to try modding, or more likely destroying, a case. This may be a long leadup to what I'm doing, but a bit of explanation is deserved, I think.
I've been running a CM Mystique 631 case...just like Kikbox's High Roller starting point. In fact, Kik's mod of that case gave me some inspiration to try my hand at doing mine.
Here's a link to Xoxide & Kikbox's High Roller case.
As for what's currently running in the case....hardware-wise, I've got an Intel BadAxe2 motherboard (black pcb), an e4300 @ 3.2GHz, an ATI X1950 Pro video card w/Zalman VF900 cooler (blue LED....but it may go in favor of the Fatality version which is nickel plated and red LED fan), 2 x 1GB Buffalo DDR2-800 RAM w/red heat spreaders, two silver-faced optical DVD burners, Corsair HX620 ps, and a Corsair Nautilus 500 watercooling system for the cpu (blue Pentosyn w/distilled H2O for coolant).
I first tried to cut a window into the side of my original Mystique case.....a silver ano'd one that the computer is running in. I got a dremel and with some hesitancy, bagan to cut and then put a mirrored AC Ryan panel in. But my dremel cutting skills suck, as you will see below, so the windowed panel was anything but well done. Oh well, one case panel essentially destroyed....on to another case and idea.
So, bought another case, again a Mystique 631 but in black this time and with the side already windowed. Hey, I sorta know my limitations......
I got the second case, and thanks to the cheap price on Mystiques from another source other than here....sorry about that....the cost wasn't too bad and gave me a bunch of spare parts to have now.
So, while Kik did his in red powdercoat w/the polished front door, I'm doing more of a black and chrome theme on it. I hope it works out.........
I started with the idea of painting the whole interior of the case...sort of like what Kik did with the powdercoating of High Roller, but powdercoating is horribly expensive so I had to do paint. Seemed reasonable, but then I began looking at the aluminum interior of the case and wondered if any of it would polish up. I have a bad habit of polishing any and all scraps of exposed aluminum under a vehicle's hood, so that nasty habit resurfaced with this case......or cases as it worked out.
I found my tube of Simichrome polish only to discover our new Golden Retriever puppy liked it better than me and said tube now had LOTS of tooth holes up and down the tube.....and the contents were dried out. DAMMIT! Simichrome is, at least in my experience, the best metal polish out there and unavailable anywhere around me....one of the bad things about living in the country in SE GA. So, I had to source some metal polish locally and I ended up buying some Mother's Billet polish....and thankfully it does work pretty well, too.
The beginning of the interior polishing.
Result of initial polishing of interior.
I started polishing anything and everything inside the case. I did find out a few things, though. First, some pieces polished quite well. On the other hand, the motherboard tray, front and rear case panels did not. They seemed to be coated/ano'd/something and just would not polish. So a new idea had to be formed for those spots. Maybe some paint there and the mb tray would get engine-turned vinyl covering.
Inside case painted w/some polished look.
Another shot of inside painting and polishing effect.
I used some DupliColor paint for the bottom of the case and front/rear panels....I used a GM metallic black for them. And if you know CoolerMaster cases, you know the Mystique 631, while tool-less, uses horribly colored light purple locking slides on the drive bays. Those I painted a metallic blue, again DupliColor GM paint. The paint was buffed out using, of all things, the Billet Polish followed by silver polish. Had no access to jeweler's rouge, so this was the next best set of things I had....and seemed to buff out the paint nicely. It will get a coat of wax later.....to prevent fingerprints, to protect, and to give it a little deeper look.
I did make some cuts on the tray, inside the hd mounting area, among other spots for cable runs. I know my cutting skills blow chunks......and the edges will be cleaned up, but the worst of the cuts will be hidden by the motherboard, thankfully.
I covered the mb tray, where it'll show, with engine turned vinyl. AS you can see in one of the above pics, I've got two LEDs taped to the mb tray. My intention is to somehow string LEDs along the edge of the mb, just underneath, that will make the motherboard appear to be "floating" on light/color when they are turned on. I have only those two right now to experiment with....came from the front of a ThermalTake Tenor case, and while they do work sort of, they don't put out enough light or spread it out enough.
I'm thinking of one of those Logisys 24" LED strips. The effect the single LEDs had on the vinyl was nice, but just not enough light. I'm thinking one of those LED strips, looping along the bottom, side, and a bit along the top, will give me the effect I'm looking for. I just wonder if anyone has used one of those strips and how bright they are.........
Case lighting is another question. I don't really want overblown lights everywhere.....just something fairly subtle. I do have on hand 3 CoolerMaster blue LED fans and one black non-LED CM fan. I've been playing around with putting in some CM white LED fans.....but I just don't know. Ideas anyone?
The next steps I envision are to paint the outside of the black case with the same metallic GM DupliColor paint and try to get it almost mirror-like through buffing. Unfortunately, CM used a hair-line process with the anodizing on the exterior of the case, so one of two things are going to have to be done. Either I sand down the entire exterior of the case prior to painting to rid the panels of the hair lines, or build up through primer and paint the exterior to get a smooth finish. I toyed with one of the silver case's panels the second choice and it seemed to work pretty well......just took a lot of primer and paint. But I did get a very nice finish in a 6" block by using several primer coats, wet sanding, then several coats of paint and then buffing out.
Future plans: take the silver bezel and door from the silver part donor case....paint the plastic bezel with some sort of metallic paint and polish the door fronts just like Kik did with High Roller.
The water cooling system will be upgraded in a couple of months to a ThermoChill PA 120.2 radiator, a Liang DDC2 pump w/Petra's top, a D-Tek Fusion cpu block, a small reservoir, and mount the radiator externally on top of the case. The interior of the case is too cramped and small to house the rad, so I'll just sit it on top of the case. I've got some spare hifi-looking case feet, so I plan on screwing them underneath the rad to give it a stable platform and decent looks and some space for exhaust from the fans blowing down through the rad. I'll enclose the screws in hollow aluminum tubing and polish them up like the interior of the case. I've just got to figure out how to make the fans look good instead of just having fans sitting on top of the rad. Some sort of shroud enclosing the sides of the fans I figure.
But my biggest problem is a lighting scheme. I considered CCFL lighting, but they seem to be so bright that they are not what I'm looking for. If there was a way to dim a CCFL maybe. The color combo is another question area.....red underneath the mb? White LED fans? Blue maybe? Ideas anyone?
I've been running a CM Mystique 631 case...just like Kikbox's High Roller starting point. In fact, Kik's mod of that case gave me some inspiration to try my hand at doing mine.
Here's a link to Xoxide & Kikbox's High Roller case.
As for what's currently running in the case....hardware-wise, I've got an Intel BadAxe2 motherboard (black pcb), an e4300 @ 3.2GHz, an ATI X1950 Pro video card w/Zalman VF900 cooler (blue LED....but it may go in favor of the Fatality version which is nickel plated and red LED fan), 2 x 1GB Buffalo DDR2-800 RAM w/red heat spreaders, two silver-faced optical DVD burners, Corsair HX620 ps, and a Corsair Nautilus 500 watercooling system for the cpu (blue Pentosyn w/distilled H2O for coolant).
I first tried to cut a window into the side of my original Mystique case.....a silver ano'd one that the computer is running in. I got a dremel and with some hesitancy, bagan to cut and then put a mirrored AC Ryan panel in. But my dremel cutting skills suck, as you will see below, so the windowed panel was anything but well done. Oh well, one case panel essentially destroyed....on to another case and idea.
So, bought another case, again a Mystique 631 but in black this time and with the side already windowed. Hey, I sorta know my limitations......
I got the second case, and thanks to the cheap price on Mystiques from another source other than here....sorry about that....the cost wasn't too bad and gave me a bunch of spare parts to have now.
So, while Kik did his in red powdercoat w/the polished front door, I'm doing more of a black and chrome theme on it. I hope it works out.........
I started with the idea of painting the whole interior of the case...sort of like what Kik did with the powdercoating of High Roller, but powdercoating is horribly expensive so I had to do paint. Seemed reasonable, but then I began looking at the aluminum interior of the case and wondered if any of it would polish up. I have a bad habit of polishing any and all scraps of exposed aluminum under a vehicle's hood, so that nasty habit resurfaced with this case......or cases as it worked out.
I found my tube of Simichrome polish only to discover our new Golden Retriever puppy liked it better than me and said tube now had LOTS of tooth holes up and down the tube.....and the contents were dried out. DAMMIT! Simichrome is, at least in my experience, the best metal polish out there and unavailable anywhere around me....one of the bad things about living in the country in SE GA. So, I had to source some metal polish locally and I ended up buying some Mother's Billet polish....and thankfully it does work pretty well, too.
The beginning of the interior polishing.
Result of initial polishing of interior.
I started polishing anything and everything inside the case. I did find out a few things, though. First, some pieces polished quite well. On the other hand, the motherboard tray, front and rear case panels did not. They seemed to be coated/ano'd/something and just would not polish. So a new idea had to be formed for those spots. Maybe some paint there and the mb tray would get engine-turned vinyl covering.
Inside case painted w/some polished look.
Another shot of inside painting and polishing effect.
I used some DupliColor paint for the bottom of the case and front/rear panels....I used a GM metallic black for them. And if you know CoolerMaster cases, you know the Mystique 631, while tool-less, uses horribly colored light purple locking slides on the drive bays. Those I painted a metallic blue, again DupliColor GM paint. The paint was buffed out using, of all things, the Billet Polish followed by silver polish. Had no access to jeweler's rouge, so this was the next best set of things I had....and seemed to buff out the paint nicely. It will get a coat of wax later.....to prevent fingerprints, to protect, and to give it a little deeper look.
I did make some cuts on the tray, inside the hd mounting area, among other spots for cable runs. I know my cutting skills blow chunks......and the edges will be cleaned up, but the worst of the cuts will be hidden by the motherboard, thankfully.
I covered the mb tray, where it'll show, with engine turned vinyl. AS you can see in one of the above pics, I've got two LEDs taped to the mb tray. My intention is to somehow string LEDs along the edge of the mb, just underneath, that will make the motherboard appear to be "floating" on light/color when they are turned on. I have only those two right now to experiment with....came from the front of a ThermalTake Tenor case, and while they do work sort of, they don't put out enough light or spread it out enough.
I'm thinking of one of those Logisys 24" LED strips. The effect the single LEDs had on the vinyl was nice, but just not enough light. I'm thinking one of those LED strips, looping along the bottom, side, and a bit along the top, will give me the effect I'm looking for. I just wonder if anyone has used one of those strips and how bright they are.........
Case lighting is another question. I don't really want overblown lights everywhere.....just something fairly subtle. I do have on hand 3 CoolerMaster blue LED fans and one black non-LED CM fan. I've been playing around with putting in some CM white LED fans.....but I just don't know. Ideas anyone?
The next steps I envision are to paint the outside of the black case with the same metallic GM DupliColor paint and try to get it almost mirror-like through buffing. Unfortunately, CM used a hair-line process with the anodizing on the exterior of the case, so one of two things are going to have to be done. Either I sand down the entire exterior of the case prior to painting to rid the panels of the hair lines, or build up through primer and paint the exterior to get a smooth finish. I toyed with one of the silver case's panels the second choice and it seemed to work pretty well......just took a lot of primer and paint. But I did get a very nice finish in a 6" block by using several primer coats, wet sanding, then several coats of paint and then buffing out.
Future plans: take the silver bezel and door from the silver part donor case....paint the plastic bezel with some sort of metallic paint and polish the door fronts just like Kik did with High Roller.
The water cooling system will be upgraded in a couple of months to a ThermoChill PA 120.2 radiator, a Liang DDC2 pump w/Petra's top, a D-Tek Fusion cpu block, a small reservoir, and mount the radiator externally on top of the case. The interior of the case is too cramped and small to house the rad, so I'll just sit it on top of the case. I've got some spare hifi-looking case feet, so I plan on screwing them underneath the rad to give it a stable platform and decent looks and some space for exhaust from the fans blowing down through the rad. I'll enclose the screws in hollow aluminum tubing and polish them up like the interior of the case. I've just got to figure out how to make the fans look good instead of just having fans sitting on top of the rad. Some sort of shroud enclosing the sides of the fans I figure.
But my biggest problem is a lighting scheme. I considered CCFL lighting, but they seem to be so bright that they are not what I'm looking for. If there was a way to dim a CCFL maybe. The color combo is another question area.....red underneath the mb? White LED fans? Blue maybe? Ideas anyone?
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