Alienated! Alienware Mod

About a month and a 1/2 ago I picked up a killer lil deal. An Alienware case, 650w PC Power and cooling PSU, Floppy, DVD, and a ton of case fans for less than 150.00




various misc goodies mentioned above


close up of PSU

After getting the case I started to have a few ideas going threw my head and i desided to strip the case, drill down the main chassis, take it all apart and send it to the sand blaster for a nice naked look!


all blasted and sprawled all over my floor before my girl friend gets home *note the fan shrouds have been cut out*


close up of the 5 1/2" case stripped


close up of motherboard tray

The next step is to polish the chassis rivet it all back up and get down to business. The plan is to put a hard lined water cooling system in this puppy. Either stainless steel lines or copper lines chome plated. I also plan to custom cut the power supply lines and hard line these also. Kinda give the inside of the PC an sporty cold air induction under the hood look. Between the hardlines and the componets I plan to use blue silicone tubing and Oetiker hose clamps


clamps

There are other numerous things I want to do, but first things first, I need to get this puppy polished and clear coated. I know this is going to be a long project between the full time job and my daughter on the weekends, but I think itll be a really good time.

Please dont quote the pictures I dont want to kill image shack also looking for someone to possibly host pics if possible.

Please comment away and give feed back! all ideas welcome!

not bad... how'd you get your hands on that case? very tricky if is do say so.
however, i find them to be WAY too huge... i know someone who bought an alienware system and i cant really stand the sight of the thing. but it looks like you are going to make it much more bearable

that is a pretty killer deal... geez how did u pull that one?

WejRepus said:

not bad... how'd you get your hands on that case? very tricky if is do say so.

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Found it on ebay. The auction was literally up for 40 seconds when I found it the guy had a buy it now option and I grabbed it.

Wow! Something out of the ordinary. I will follow this thread. Good luck! Can't remember to have seen any Alienware mods before, but then again I'm just a seminoob in the modding business.

@ your PSU

Lucky! That PSU is worth more than $150 alone.

Nice snag I must say. I see lots of modding potential in these things if I could get my hands on one for reasonable costs.

I modded my old-style Alienware case a little. Cut out some grills and a hole in the top for radiating but this promises to be more interesting.

Now this is a mod I would really like to be able to do.


.....starts hunting for alienware case.....

lil layzie said:

Lucky! That PSU is worth more than $150 alone.

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Yeah no kidding it not every day you buy something make $60 bucks on the deal, and get a free case and various goodies besides. Nice find

Did a lil work got a satin finish what do you guys think? I think a satin would prolly look nicer than a polished. The polishing could leave a wave looking effect to it.


Before...


after...

This could be bad, or extremely difficult at the least. Seems the blaster used numerous types of media... Some digging in pretty deep into the metal of the case.



any ideas?

Bead blast with pure bead media only. Light once over should clean/clear it up.

I hate to say it but if im going to have to pay the money again to have someone blast this thing I may as well go ahead and buy this



and just mod it slightly the cases are the same size. The Alienware case is actually a Chieftec BX series. You may have seen me freaking out in the case section looking to buy one of these. Thats because the blaster is an id10t that jerked me around for 2 weeks about getting the case back never answered the phone or anything and it was 60 miles away so i was ready to count my loses on it. No way im going back to that stick.

For the amount of elbow grease id have to invest in this by hand i think i may be better off getting the Chenming or something else in aluminum. Sux0r ive already spent this cash on having this thing blasted only for it to be a loss, but such is life...

Ill inspect the other pieces, take a good look at them then weigh my options either way this project is going to be completed. I really wanted to do this part of the mod by hand but with this crap Ill prolly be better off with aluminum modded slightly.

yeah the old style Alienware cases were chieftec cases which is why they became so popular . Anyhow I just think the shape of the front has alot of potential. The unique shape has me thinking some kind of reactor(whats been turning in my head is a mako reactor project, but haven't had the time to really work on my chieftec FF7 project even though I have the polycarbonate and just got a big arse 5'x5'x1/8"piece of acrylic free(has some hazing on the front but nothing some novous polish can't take out). Also if you want to strip it yourself just buy a cheap sandblasting kit from like an auto store and do it yourself. Last time I checked a cheap gun runs about 30 bucks at walmart. Just pick up a bag of silica dust or other sandblasting media and have at it. You should be able to setup your own booth with some scrap wood and some plexy for a window. This is assuming you have an air compressor or have acess to a compressor.

Edit* helps if I read the whole post first. If you want to buff out the metal quick use a die grinder and a polishing kit like those used in polishing of autoparts.

Well I have a Dremel. Do you think the small Dremel grinding bits would take care of this with out making it worse? Bad thing about the Dremel is ill spend so much money on there bits I could pay for the case I pictured above off Newegg for 55 bucks.

Being a person that has done this polishing mod already, you are going to want to do what nightingale suggested. Go to your local hardware store and buy two 8" (or larger) polishing wheels, a course, medium and fine tube of polishing compound and a bench grinder if you don't have one. It cost me about $50 for all of this stuff and the results are amazing. Too bad it is just sitting in my basement collecting dust right now. If you want to see how it turned out, check out the pics here.

dang Posidon42 that is nice. Could you link up an example of the wheels you used?

for perfect look you cant sand blask or that will happen... glassbead is what you need to blast with... its a bit pricey but it lasts longer and has a better result.. i suggest sanding t by hand or palm working up from 300-1500 then wetsand and polish with mothers.