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Zen Master

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Coreyoliseffect

Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2009
Location
South Carolina
Project Log: Zen Master

Gets a ying yang!

I have finally gotten all of the supplies that I need to mod my case! I currently have a CM 690. I love this case and really need something to make it unique. I know there are many others that have the case. I have decided to add a ying yang to the side. Bet that you will never guess where I got the idea from. ;) Anyway, I am going to make, what would be the white part, out of plexi so that you can see inside. I am using blue LED fans so it think that it will do nicely. To solve the issue of the black spot inside the plexi(white) side I will be using a cut out piece from the area that I cut out. Simple adhesive I think will do the trick. I am trying to stay away from rivets.

I am a little curious of how to put the plexi to the side of the case. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. Remember that I am trying to stay away from rivets. If I must I must then.

On a side note. I would like to say thanks to some fellow forum members that have purchased some of my extra parts and to those that have sold me some parts. You have really made this project possible. :thup:

I managed to get my hands on a brand new Dremel! Ah yes, every geeks favorite tool.

I have finally gotten some things done with this project. Along with modding my case I did some much needed cable management. I also did my long overdue spring cleaning on my loop. I must say that I am very satisfied. I routed much all of the cabling that you do not see behind the mobo tray. I have to say that it was quite the task. There isn't much room at all behind the tray in the CM 690.
 
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Reserved for PICS!!!

0513101809.jpg

For the longest time I had my rad laid over behind my case. After looking at some other cases I saw that there were a lot of people that had the rad mounted behind. The issue is that the holes that a re stock are way down at the bottom. It looks rather stupid to have to run the tubing all the way down to the holes.
0513101809a.jpg

So I drilled these holes. They fit perfect. The tubing goes straight in and looks much cleaner when it is run through the case.
0513101809b.jpg

I had read up on some of the reviews of the CM 690 II. It had said that CM increased the size of the mesh that covered the case. This got me thinking about why in the world there would be something extra in between the fans at the top of the case and the mesh. So *POOF*!
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A little closer to try and show the difference.
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I got a little ahead of myself with the cutting. I meant to take a pic show the template that I used. I printed a ying yang out using paint. I set the dimensions to 12inX12in. It was the biggest that I could get the circle and not have it interfere with the clips on the inside of the panel. I used the opposite side of the case that has the two fans on it. I figured that I provided a little less mesh to deal with.
0516101719.jpg

Took a while to get it this far. I was trying really hard to not mess of the part of the case that I was not cutting. Needless to say I did mess it up a little; nothing that a little paint can't cure.
0516101730.jpg

This was really hard to cut. That circle was ridiculously small. I had said in the original post that I was thinking about putting this black circle on the plexi. After cutting that out I decided not to do that. I am going to leave it as is.
 
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0516101800.jpg

So this was a little invention on my part. I recently sold a top from my pump to CharlieCS. I had decided to move the pump from the bottom to inside the 5.25 mounting area. Low and behold it fit perfect even with the fan controller. I wanted the fill port to be close to all of this so I ordered the parts and this is what I came up with. Keep in mind that under the plastic shroud that surrounds the case there is the metal case. I should have mounted the fill port a little farther back. It ended up causing some clearance issues with my CD burner.
0517100034.jpg

Leak testing. There was a leak! luckily I caught it way before I had the entire loop filled. The leak came from the 90 degree swivel. I didn't use teflon tape; I know that I should of but I was hoping that it wasn't going to leak. That is what I get for trying to cut corners.
0517100035.jpg

I really liked the way that this was ran at first. Turns out that it caused some clearance issues with the top fans and the bend that leads to the input on the water block was causing the tube to kink.
0517100034a.jpg

Trying to show where I had all of the wires and the pump.
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Tubes rerouted and filled. Pretty blue lights! :clap:
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Closeup of the CPU water block.
0517101949b.jpg

Two of only a couple wires that poke out from behind the mobo tray. :D
 
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I had an extra fans now that I was using opposite side panel. I figured why not have an extra fan to push air around in the bottom of the case and keep the HDDs even cooler.
0517101958a.jpg

The extra fan that you see up top is zip tied in place. It actually fits great. I couldn't get it to pull air into the case because it would knock against the supports. It still lights the front of the case up nicely. :thup:
0517101958.jpg

I haven't gotten the plexi installed just yet. I had to see what it looked like.
 
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I recently purchased a top for my pump from CharlieCS.

Lies! Never happened , I did purchase a top from you tho :p ..am sure you just confused me with someone else:)


Also I just realized you used the left panel on the right side,did you switch em ?
 
Well looks like I will have to edit my post again. You would be correct on the top part... I have purchased so many items and sold so many in the past few weeks that it is all a blur...

Yes I did switch the sides. The reason for doing so was because there was less mesh to deal with on the side that I cut out. I wanted the image to be as clear as possible. As you can see the line for the clear part gets a little lost in the mesh. The down side to doing this though is that all of my dirty rats mess is a good bit more visible; notice that there aren't any pics of it. tehe All in all I really like the way that it has turned out thus far. I am hoping to make it to Lowes tomo and grab some black paint to cover the booboos that I made while sanding the cuts. Also I have to figure a good way to attach the plexi to back side of the panel. I had read a post from this forum that was dated some time in 2006 that said to use double sided tape, super glue, or an epoxy. I will have to take a look around Lowes tomo and see what I can dig up.
 
whoa...is there a way you could shrink the pictues?
i can only see half of each picture on my 22" :bang head:

nice theme! =D
 
whoa...is there a way you could shrink the pictues?
i can only see half of each picture on my 22" :bang head:

nice theme! =D

Thanks!
+1 to 4GHZ

I like the nice blue color. I wish that I had another spot for a fan.:p yes I really do like my fans. I am still deciding on how I want to attach the plexi to the case though. I have heard that super glue is a good thing to use but I am a bit leary of it. I am not sur it it will dry hard and not flex. The side of the case does have some give in it and I can see the plexi falling off inside the case. Thanks again for all of your comments. :thup:
 
I use m3 double sided tape (got it at home depot) for attaching fans to heatsinks where useless wire clips are used,doesn't take a lot , just a lil bit.I even use it to hang some light stuff on the ceiling of my closet :D , works well.Am rather certain it will not have a problem holding a piece of acrylic , just make sure the surface is clean , before applying,the only problem it might cause, the piece of acrylic wont sit flush to the metal , the tape has a bit of thickness to it...


They even had a show on discovery featuring this stuff,it is pretty good.
 
Build lesson #156

In light of some recent events, I want to share with you what I have found about electronics and their connections. As the four of you that have been patiently following this thread know I recently began a project to add a ying yang shaped window to the side of my computer. This project has turned out well and all that remains to do is put the plexi to the metal. Which I will do some time... Anywho, around the same time that I was starting this project I began thinking about trying to push my OC a bit further as well. You can find the link to that story on the second line of the Zen Master specs. This is relevant because I am a watercooler; not sure what the exact term is. :shrug: To accomplish my OC I reran my tubing and such. I also decided to do some much needed cable management. I relocated my pump and reran those nasty wires. The end result in very nice if I must say so myself.

To give myself a well deserved pat on the back I purchased a 5870 from Mattspalace that I just installed today. Thanks Matt! I also received my shipment of games that I ordered from Amazon.com. Diablo II, Age of Empires Yes they are old but they are still good, and cheap! So after being enthralled in Diablo II for about two hours I decided to go ahead and download the newest drivers for my new 5870. Downloaded and installed. Awesome!

Restart and load the OCed options for a quick test to see if some issues from earlier had been cleared up. I had frozen up earlier installing Age of Empires, so I had gone back to stock settings. I booted in with no issues and loaded up LinX. I set it to three passes just to be safe and clicked start. All of a sudden RealTemp :temper:freaks:mad: out and and shows that my CPU temp is 100C! I can not post the words that ran through my mind at that time. My first thought was that it was simply an error caused by the new 5870 drivers. This seemed odd however, so I decided to give my connections a look. Remember that I had just installed this card today and I had all of my wires "tucked" away "neatly" behind my back panel. I had to pull this off to get a new connection out to power the beast. Low and behold one of my fans was off. This was same fan that I was using to daisy chain a connection. It turns out that the item that was daisy chained through this fan was my pump. Wonder who did that? There is NO WAY that it could have been me?!?! So I reran my pump and fan connection and everything is back to normal.

Lesson here is that if you are going to daisy chain a connection, don't run anything important through that connection, especially if it is a connection that comes off of a fan.
 
Wow, that story could have ended a lot worse haha. Good thing you didn't assume it was an error an keep testing. Anyway case looks cool. I think you should do something to accentuate the black part of the yin-yang, like put a border around it. Also, you should put something on the plexiglass to add the black circle for the clear section, I think that would look awesome. Keep up the good work!
 
Side Window

I noticed that my plexi window the other day looked a little dusty so I proceeded to wipe it. When I did this it pushed into the case. Seems that the epoxy that used to hold it on is no longer doing so. What type of adhesive should i have used?
 
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