Not quite sure how to go about posting an article on a case mod. I am pretty new to overclockers, but I will do my best...
First off I'm sorry for the big boom of a post this is...it is because I didn't have a camera to show progress but now that I have my camera here's my post!
Secondly I'm using my own server to host the pictures and sometimes my server is down for various reasons (such as directly connecting my own computer to the modem so I can host w3 games) but I'll try to keep my server up.
For months I have been trying to figure out how I could give my computer case a circuit board theme. At first I was going to get a whole bunch of PCB board and glue them together and stick them on a case...but the more I thought about the more it became not such a good idea. The case would have been extremely heavy and I doubt I could make glued PCB boards look good. And I bet that would not be good for my computer temperature. I went through various ideas but finally came to combing those strips that you put on your car to make it look like it goes fast and washers. My goal was to make it look something like this:
My dad brought home this PCB board from work when I was still in my crazy stage of wanting to glue the PCB boards on a case. I used this board as my main guide in designing the circuits on my case.
Before I got started I had to buy all the supplies and what not... here's a list of what I have gotten so far:
Newegg Stuff
1 x CASE LOGISYSCOMP| CS888CL RETAIL ......$87.99
2 x CABLE IDE|24"RD3 UV YELL 2078 TT RT......$8.30
1 x CABLE SLEEVE KIT|CSK-80UV-YL VT RT......$9.99
1 x CABLE ACC|MOLEX CT KIT UV YELLOW RT...$7.99
4 x CASE FAN UV ANTEC 8025 GREEN RET........$19.20
(shipping + $30.01)
Xoxide Stuff
4 x UV COLD CATHODE KIT............................$15.96
(shipping + 6.37)
Walmart Stuff
(lost receipt...but I think it was...)
1 x PLUMBER'S GOOP ..................................$3.00
2 x FLAT WASHERS NW-52...........................$2.00
2 x FLAT WASHERS NW-50...........................$2.00
Did you know you have to be over 18 to buy super glue??? I sure didn't - I'm 17 and have a full time job yet I can't buy something to stick things together with?! Ugh
Pepboys Stuff
1 x TOGGLE SWITCH WITH COLORED BOOTS....$7.53
1 x STYLIN' LINES - SILVER..........................$13.00
The Stylin lines look like this:
Lowe's
5 x MINITAURE MX #4-4..............................$1.17
5 x MINATURE HEX NUT...............................$0.87
Which comes to a total of about…do I really want to know this?… $215 … ugh that’s like a week of work! But well worth it.
Everything else I pretty much had at home or borrowed from my boyfriend [Err just to let you know I'm not gay...I am a girl...]
Here are my tools:
Unfortunately I didn't have a digital camera for the last 3 weeks so I couldn't take pictures of my progress. The pictures aren't really gradual.
I don’t have my own picture of the original case so here is the one off of newegg:
Yes the fans are very fruity...do not worry they did not stay on the case...at the moment they are sitting lonely in the corner of my room...just as they should be.
[insert pictures of progress here]
And after a few laying (grammar?) down of those car strips and gluing of washers you get...
Okay that right there took hours upon hours of work because I had to make sure all the lines were straight...and that can be a real pain in the .... (I'm guessing cussing is not allowed here, but is *** considered a cuss word?)
Plus I had to glue all the washers on...I really shouldn't have spent 4 hours gluing in my room with no windows open. I think that was my first major mistake.
Here are some more pictures...
It's really hard to see the lines because those strips are just like mirrors and so you see the reflections and can't see the strip that well. It's pretty cool because you can see yourself perfectly in them so like if I need to check out my hair during a lan I can just look at my case...haha jk...
Okay now I didn't want to have to bring a screw driver with me to lans in order to open my case so I wanted to use thumbscrews. Problem is with my acrylic case you need longer than your standard screw length to secure the side panel. Okay I did not find any thumbscrews that were longer than standard size. I made a post about that...I don't think anyone really found a place that carried them. I checked out Lowe's to see if they had some but no...oh my gosh did it take forever to get some help there! (one hour!) So I thought about how I could make my own. What I did was bought long screws then at the end glued some washers together with my handy goop. Then my boyfriend taught me how to solder them to keep it secure...here's how the thumbscrews turned out...
Not very shiney but I will fix that up with some nail polish remover. The thumbscrews seem to go well with my case seeing how I have that whole washer/circuit theme going on. The thumbscrews are sort of like the capacitors...yea...
Here's my toggle switch that turns on and off my uv cathodes
Okay time to flip the switch!
(side view)
See some similarities between that circuit board and the panel?
Okay so that's my case so far...I sleeved my power supply and fans (I have to thank my boyfriend here for teaching me how to do it right) but I needed my psu so it's in my other case which is the famous aspire case on newegg that looks like this:
I think everyone and their grandma has that case by now. But anyways here's the sleeved psu:
Unfortunately the uv reactive "yellow" IDE cables do not match my sleeving nor do they look very yellow *sigh*
See what I mean ^?
Sleeved fans...
Thanks again to my boyfriend who taught me how to solder wires and such. You can see that the wires on the two panel fans were soldered together. Couldn't have done that and made it work the first time without his help!
Work In Progress:
On that aspire case it has that really cool thermometer that tells you the temperature of your computer. Well I would miss that way too much...not that I really look at it that much...but I'd miss it. So I took it out...err my boyfriend took it out because it was very screwed in and I couldn't do it and didn't want to strip the screws...yes I'm weak but luckily my boyfriend is not. But the thermometer casing was tan, ew! And there is no hiding color in an acrylic case. So I painted it black along with my floppy drive because that was also tan. I plan on putting that thermometer right next to my toggle switch. My dad took it to work to make a custom bracket thing for it so I can display it nicely on the drive bay. I love having an engineer for a dad! (More pics on that later)
Here's the newegg picture of the thermometer:
I wish those were for individual sale!
Another thing I’m working on is finishing the circuit board theme! I still have the top of the case to go (and maybe the front and back…and possibly the other side too)
Here's the top so far:
I doubt you can see the green lines that I used to mark where I'm going to lay out the stripes. I plan on finishing that this week before I head to the beach! More posts to come.
Please post any comments or suggestions that you have!
First off I'm sorry for the big boom of a post this is...it is because I didn't have a camera to show progress but now that I have my camera here's my post!
Secondly I'm using my own server to host the pictures and sometimes my server is down for various reasons (such as directly connecting my own computer to the modem so I can host w3 games) but I'll try to keep my server up.
For months I have been trying to figure out how I could give my computer case a circuit board theme. At first I was going to get a whole bunch of PCB board and glue them together and stick them on a case...but the more I thought about the more it became not such a good idea. The case would have been extremely heavy and I doubt I could make glued PCB boards look good. And I bet that would not be good for my computer temperature. I went through various ideas but finally came to combing those strips that you put on your car to make it look like it goes fast and washers. My goal was to make it look something like this:
My dad brought home this PCB board from work when I was still in my crazy stage of wanting to glue the PCB boards on a case. I used this board as my main guide in designing the circuits on my case.
Before I got started I had to buy all the supplies and what not... here's a list of what I have gotten so far:
Newegg Stuff
1 x CASE LOGISYSCOMP| CS888CL RETAIL ......$87.99
2 x CABLE IDE|24"RD3 UV YELL 2078 TT RT......$8.30
1 x CABLE SLEEVE KIT|CSK-80UV-YL VT RT......$9.99
1 x CABLE ACC|MOLEX CT KIT UV YELLOW RT...$7.99
4 x CASE FAN UV ANTEC 8025 GREEN RET........$19.20
(shipping + $30.01)
Xoxide Stuff
4 x UV COLD CATHODE KIT............................$15.96
(shipping + 6.37)
Walmart Stuff
(lost receipt...but I think it was...)
1 x PLUMBER'S GOOP ..................................$3.00
2 x FLAT WASHERS NW-52...........................$2.00
2 x FLAT WASHERS NW-50...........................$2.00
Did you know you have to be over 18 to buy super glue??? I sure didn't - I'm 17 and have a full time job yet I can't buy something to stick things together with?! Ugh
Pepboys Stuff
1 x TOGGLE SWITCH WITH COLORED BOOTS....$7.53
1 x STYLIN' LINES - SILVER..........................$13.00
The Stylin lines look like this:
Lowe's
5 x MINITAURE MX #4-4..............................$1.17
5 x MINATURE HEX NUT...............................$0.87
Which comes to a total of about…do I really want to know this?… $215 … ugh that’s like a week of work! But well worth it.
Everything else I pretty much had at home or borrowed from my boyfriend [Err just to let you know I'm not gay...I am a girl...]
Here are my tools:
Unfortunately I didn't have a digital camera for the last 3 weeks so I couldn't take pictures of my progress. The pictures aren't really gradual.
I don’t have my own picture of the original case so here is the one off of newegg:
Yes the fans are very fruity...do not worry they did not stay on the case...at the moment they are sitting lonely in the corner of my room...just as they should be.
[insert pictures of progress here]
And after a few laying (grammar?) down of those car strips and gluing of washers you get...
Okay that right there took hours upon hours of work because I had to make sure all the lines were straight...and that can be a real pain in the .... (I'm guessing cussing is not allowed here, but is *** considered a cuss word?)
Plus I had to glue all the washers on...I really shouldn't have spent 4 hours gluing in my room with no windows open. I think that was my first major mistake.
Here are some more pictures...
It's really hard to see the lines because those strips are just like mirrors and so you see the reflections and can't see the strip that well. It's pretty cool because you can see yourself perfectly in them so like if I need to check out my hair during a lan I can just look at my case...haha jk...
Okay now I didn't want to have to bring a screw driver with me to lans in order to open my case so I wanted to use thumbscrews. Problem is with my acrylic case you need longer than your standard screw length to secure the side panel. Okay I did not find any thumbscrews that were longer than standard size. I made a post about that...I don't think anyone really found a place that carried them. I checked out Lowe's to see if they had some but no...oh my gosh did it take forever to get some help there! (one hour!) So I thought about how I could make my own. What I did was bought long screws then at the end glued some washers together with my handy goop. Then my boyfriend taught me how to solder them to keep it secure...here's how the thumbscrews turned out...
Not very shiney but I will fix that up with some nail polish remover. The thumbscrews seem to go well with my case seeing how I have that whole washer/circuit theme going on. The thumbscrews are sort of like the capacitors...yea...
Here's my toggle switch that turns on and off my uv cathodes
Okay time to flip the switch!
(side view)
See some similarities between that circuit board and the panel?
Okay so that's my case so far...I sleeved my power supply and fans (I have to thank my boyfriend here for teaching me how to do it right) but I needed my psu so it's in my other case which is the famous aspire case on newegg that looks like this:
I think everyone and their grandma has that case by now. But anyways here's the sleeved psu:
Unfortunately the uv reactive "yellow" IDE cables do not match my sleeving nor do they look very yellow *sigh*
See what I mean ^?
Sleeved fans...
Thanks again to my boyfriend who taught me how to solder wires and such. You can see that the wires on the two panel fans were soldered together. Couldn't have done that and made it work the first time without his help!
Work In Progress:
On that aspire case it has that really cool thermometer that tells you the temperature of your computer. Well I would miss that way too much...not that I really look at it that much...but I'd miss it. So I took it out...err my boyfriend took it out because it was very screwed in and I couldn't do it and didn't want to strip the screws...yes I'm weak but luckily my boyfriend is not. But the thermometer casing was tan, ew! And there is no hiding color in an acrylic case. So I painted it black along with my floppy drive because that was also tan. I plan on putting that thermometer right next to my toggle switch. My dad took it to work to make a custom bracket thing for it so I can display it nicely on the drive bay. I love having an engineer for a dad! (More pics on that later)
Here's the newegg picture of the thermometer:
I wish those were for individual sale!
Another thing I’m working on is finishing the circuit board theme! I still have the top of the case to go (and maybe the front and back…and possibly the other side too)
Here's the top so far:
I doubt you can see the green lines that I used to mark where I'm going to lay out the stripes. I plan on finishing that this week before I head to the beach! More posts to come.
Please post any comments or suggestions that you have!
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