PROJECT LOG Project Silver

Did some more work on the drive stealthing mod. Made the cable that connects the fan controller to the dvd drive.

First pin I crimped myself!


One connector done:


The whole cable:


Unfortunately I failed to adhere to the mantra, "measure twice, cut once" and had to use a lot of heatshrink to make up for short sleeving. Oh well next time I know better.

Tomorrow I'm going to home depot to get some epoxy to finish up the bezel.

Great work looking good , Mod on Bro!

Actually I think the cable looks good with that amount of heatshrink. I would also think that it would give some added bendability/poseability to the cord. Don't mind my use of words, I am from SC after all and we all make up words down here.

It took me a little while to figure out why you were moving the buttons for the dvd drive. Don't worry I re-read the to do list and figured it out myself. I like what you did with the keyboard. I was thinking that you were going to make the keys backlit. I picked up a keyboard from a friend that was backlit and didn't like it because LEDs shining in my face do not help me see the keys. Though your idea is equally as cool. I would think that it would tie the system together. As many others have said, MOD ON!

PS: I'll be lurking around. Just remember that we are watching you.

So I'm going to try to do an update once a day for the next week so I actually get this all done!

First up, I re-sleeved my psu to match the rest of the mod.

PSU with old sleeving torn off. Damn thing is messy:


It took me pretty much a whole day to do this. I had to resleeve some of the connectors because I kept doing terrible jobs. But I'm happy with the end result.

Sleeved connector ends:


For the ATX connector, I didn't have heatshrink large enough, so I took two pieces of 3/8" cut them both, and glued them together with krazy glue. It actually worked.

The end going into the psu. I didn't want to open it up and void the warranty just to sleeve it, so I opted to use some heatshrink to tidy up the ends.


Whole PSU:


Next I continued the drive stealthing mod. I took the stock bezel off the drive and put one of my aluminum bezels on to see what it'll look like:




Then I had to cut the side tabs off. I scored both sides then just bent back and forth till it snapped. Then I sanded the edges down to keep it clean.

Original:


Tabs cut off:




Tomorrow I'm going to get some epoxy and finish this part up

Short update today. I picked up some JB Weld from home depot to glue the drive tray bezel to the case bezel.

Bezels sanded and cleaned for gluing:


Stuck together and waiting overnight to dry:

Well JB should hold, but in my experience it works best on rough metal surfaces. I've tried using it on plastics numerous times and after drying it simply peeled off. Now, plumbers goop... that stuff is the best. Will bond to anything and stays semi flexible, like a hard rubber. Drys in a day, is waterproof. I said plumber's goop, but I think amazing goop and marine goop and all of the other names are really the same stuff. It's better than silicone, better than epoxy and what I use when JB weld won't work. I hope the bezel doesn't look ugly with black in all those little holes, maybe you can hit it with some silver paint, or maybe you won't be able to tell. By the way, glue isn't required for a bezel mod, I think some people simply use double sided tape or Velcro.

Looking great so far!

Ben333 said:

Well JB should hold, but in my experience it works best on rough metal surfaces. I've tried using it on plastics numerous times and after drying it simply peeled off. Now, plumbers goop... that stuff is the best. Will bond to anything and stays semi flexible, like a hard rubber. Drys in a day, is waterproof. I said plumber's goop, but I think amazing goop and marine goop and all of the other names are really the same stuff. It's better than silicone, better than epoxy and what I use when JB weld won't work. I hope the bezel doesn't look ugly with black in all those little holes, maybe you can hit it with some silver paint, or maybe you won't be able to tell. By the way, glue isn't required for a bezel mod, I think some people simply use double sided tape or Velcro.

Looking great so far!

Click to expand...

I actually did it before with velcro and I wasn't happy with the result. It was too flimsy for my taste. The JB weld worked great but I have to sand some parts of the bezel because its too tight of a fit. I'll finish it up tomorrow and post some pics.

I just thought about something. I was staring at my CD drive and thinking about your mod. What would be really awesome is if you could cut out the tray cover so that it slides in and out. In other words the part of the bezel that is attached to the tray would slide in and out with the tray and the rest would stay stationary. Not sure how practical it would be to pull off.

Coreyoliseffect said:

I just thought about something. I was staring at my CD drive and thinking about your mod. What would be really awesome is if you could cut out the tray cover so that it slides in and out. In other words the part of the bezel that is attached to the tray would slide in and out with the tray and the rest would stay stationary. Not sure how practical it would be to pull off.

Click to expand...

It would be doable but definitely a challenge. The problem is that most bezels have some kind of attachment mechanism that goes into the case, for example using the screw holes for the 5.25" drives. Once you put a drive in that bay, you no longer have space for the bezel to get attached. So you'd have to attach the bezel directly to the drive. In my case, it would be a real pain because there's less than 1/4 an inch of the bezel that goes over the drive. But it's certainly not impossible. I'll post some final pictures when I get home from work.

Finally done with my drive stealth It took some tweaking because the plastic piece that holds the dust filter in wouldn't let the bezel close completely. Then it was dragging against the inside of the case so I had to sand the bezel down and re-brush it so it looks uniform.

And now some sweet pics!

Drive closed, pc off:


PC On:


The lights kinda give it away since the dvd drive is darker, but it still looks sweet!

Drive open:


Without flash:


One more:


This weekend I'll hopefully get all of the cables made and sleeved so I can get on to the button replacements and side panel window.

Came out very nice! I wouldn't've known if I hadn't read the thread. Great work, Kayson.

I really do like the way that it looks. I am a big fan of minimal and everything looking uniform.

Hurry up and gets those cabels finished. You need to be on this weekend. We played a few games with Adriftquasar last night. Gotta get some of that double IP! WOOT WOOT

So I spent the morning sleeving all of the front panel connections. I was gonna do everything today but it took me a good 5 hours to do all of this so I'm gonna take a break.

Computer with all the cables taken out:


Front panel connections before:


Power/reset connection:


Buzzer:


Front panel box removed:


And taken apart:


Getting the black insulation off was a royal pain. For the front panel audio connector, it was a good half inch thick, and I had to preserve the shielding while cutting it off.

FP Audio Cable no insulation (and a few needed electrical tape repairs...):


Sleeved:


I ran into the same problem with the USB connector, but it was a bit easier since the insulation was much thinner.

USB Cable no insulation:


The stock Lian-Li usb cables terminate in a regular USB connector because its USB3.0 and there is no standard motherboard header yet. I don't have any USB3.0 devices, so I made my own connectors for the ends and just connected the USB2.0 wires. When I get a new mobo with 3.0 headers, I'll just re-do the connectors.

Pins crimped:


The shielding also has to be crimped into the ground pin since its designed to connect to the usb jack shield which no longer exists.

One side done:


One usb cable down. Check out my sweet connectors


All the front panel cables:


Box reassembled:


Yay pretty cables:

You can also see the power/hdd LED cable sleeved on the far left. I just forgot to take a picture of it after I finished.

Much cleaner now, but still lots of work left:

Very nice sleeving. I wish I had a big enough case and enough time to really make it shine. Until then, I'll live through you guys!

wow... that looks really really good man! you have some mad modding skills. that is one sweeeet machine, keep up the great work! -Wes

Looking great nice work on the sleeving of the front i/o panel cables, well done,
Mod On Bro!

very nice sleeving. I know how tedious that is. good job!

You do amazing work man!

Epic Update Time!

So I've spent the last three days making cables and sleeving stuff, and I still have some work to do. I made custom length modular cables for my PSU, sleeved most of the fans, and made some 3-pin extensions and y-cables. Then I did some intense cable management. Here's what I've got so far:

Custom SATA Power Cable:

I only have 2 drives atm, but I added an extra connector since I want to get a RAID0 SSD array at some point

Modular molex for the fan controller:


One cpu fan sleeved:


And the other:


The start of a y-splitter for my cpu fans:


The other half:

I only used a tach wire on one of the headers since it would only read one fan's speed instead of having two conflict. And my fan controller doesn't read it anyways so it's not an issue. The 12V and ground wires are double crimped into a single pin on the connector side.

Super glued together for neatness and sleeved:


Rear exhaust fan sleeved:


Exhaust fan extension cable:


Top exhaust fan 1 sleeved:


Second one:


Cable management in the back:


And bottom:


The inside:


SATA power routed:


The top exhaust fans were painfully routed along the top of the case:

You can also see the splitter here.

CPU Fans routed:


Up to the controller:


Inside psu cables:

The front intake fans still need to be sleeved and routed so they're just hanging out there

Rear exhaust fan routed along with the top exhaust:


Tomorrow I'll be finishing up the intake fans which should hopefully take care of everything. I have an 8-pin 12v atx extension that needs to be made but i broke some pins so I have to wait for the replacements I also gave up on my power/reset button mod because I ordered 6 different switches from digikey and none were what I was looking for so I figured I should stop wasting money lol

Looking really nice! Glad to hear that it's going well