Project Anti-ghetto

Problem: I mangled my old case to hell, it was so ugly i couldnt stand it anymore. It is cramped beyond belief, hot as hell, and is getting sent down to grammy for her new computer. Good ole Antec SLK3700AMB.

Solution: Buy a cheap large case and make it about 100 degrees cooler than the cramped oven box i just got rid of. Enjoy the space and cut millions of holes in it. And also try to not make it look ghetto like your old case. Do all of this while spending very little money, and having very little time.

Heres a pic of the case. Chieftech Matrix full tower. Pre-modded window, because i'm half lazy, and it was cheaper than the ones without the window. The color is charcoal black, which is actually not as bad as I expected, and thats why it was so cheap.


EDIT: I am waiting for activation of my free webdomain, so until then the pics will have to be clicked.

EDIT EDIT: The Biostar motherboard is going in the grammy's PC, thats why its sitting there. Nice reliable cheap motherboard, cant complain.

EDIT EDIT EDIT:

Here is a side view with the premodded window. I am waiting on a my filters and fans to come in so i can get rid of that restrictive speaker grill filter, and get some bling bling in there.

EDIT: The PSU is also for the grammy. Yes i know it sucks, but it will power her hand-me-down rig.

EDIT EDIT:

Here is an inside view. Notice the front fan grills not being there, and the holes in the motherboard tray. The one towards the front of the case will be a 80mm intake. And the two 60mm towards the back lie under my CPU and Northbridge and will act as exhausts of the hot air. They are perfect fits for once, hence the project anti-ghetto. It is still project poor, but not ghetto. I am going to home-depot tommorow to by some holesaw bits and make cuts that are actually round in the side panel. The white papers are just acting as my guides for the guide bits.

EDIT:

Here is a back view. Notice once again the lack of the default fan grills. I also expanded the 92mm hole to a 120mm hole. I did it with a dremel, it came out OK, but by no means good. It is the inspiration to buying the holesaw bits or whatever the hell they are called for making my 80mm and 60mm blowholes. Since I wont be looking at the back it can be semi-ghetto, but its only a matter of time till i screw up.

I am new to modding for both beauty and function. Usually I dont care how it looks as long as I get a temp drop. I just built my buddy a premodded computer, added some LED fans and a cathode, stared at my ****ty computer with gaping holes in it, and decided it was time to buy a new case and do some mods to regain my manhood.

EDIT:

This is as far as I got today. I am still waiting on some fans, grills, etc., and for me to get back to school to pull the guts out of my old case and insert it in here. Here is a quick dumb pic of my attempt at "sleeving" everything. Good ole black electrical tape. Makes the cords stiff as hell, but i think it came out okay. No money left to buy sleeving and heatshrink, so this will have to do. Hopefully I will have all these wires hidden away anywho, so the "sleeving" job i have done shouldnt bother me.

EDIT:

www.uploadit.org is your friend! Looks like a good idea switching cases. :d

thanks spyder!

Lookin good so far.

nice job keep it coming

great work, remember is practice what makes you better, not time.

i positively hate huge cases like that one. what's the point??? we are not in the 50's you know, big heavy things are sooo out

Now if you had like an 8-raptor-raid 0+1 array, with a SMP system and watercooling with two pumps for your HDDs and three pelts for CPUs and GPU, and two removable HDD racks and CD-RW and DVD-RW . . . then and ONLY then that case would make sense.

emilio

Huge cases offer the best in cooling though. Plus for a modern (anti-ghetto) case you need to hide the wires, and in a tiny case that can prove quite challenging.

Also, excellent job so far. I hope your mod(s) turn out well.

Lookin' good, man!

A nice big, roomy case is the absolute balls:
plenty of room for:
working in
alternative cooling
ideal fan placements
plenty of components
and just plain looking good.

lookin good sofar, keep it up. One thing i might sugest is spray painting the purple fan holders a different color (if you are planning on using them, i see you took out the grills, so you may have other plans).

i agree that a big case is good, i had a little crampt mid-tower for a couple years... got pretty sick of it. Although people were pretty impressed with my ability to squeeze a water cooling system into it . I love my chieftec, although its not the full tower, its signifigantly bigger than the one i had. However, i would kinda like to have a nice small light box for lan parties. But i dont do that as much as i used to, so there really isnt much point.

did you take the powersupply out for those fangrill cutouts?
might have hurt it if you didnt

i like that case, it's a giant

If I were you I would cut out the holes on the back even bigger and use 92mm fans, they are genearlly more efficient than 80mm and fit almost pefectly when I saw them in a similar case (I havn't done it though, no money for a hole saw or fans ) Same with the front if you want, 92mm fans fit in the HDD cages pretty well, unless you don't have money for 92mm fans.

As for not looking ghetto, electric tape does - if you can afford it (I can't so I have used electric tape in the past).

Just some thoughts, looks good besides that so far

I went with a roomy full tower case for several reasons.

A) HDD's...i have 4 of them now, and there is always the possibility of me adding more.

B) Overall room. I hate my little cramped case, and this thing is a dream to work in. I have watercooling components but no pump (last one died and took my CPU with it), and I once again ran out of money so they are on hold....but this way the possibility always exists. A nice rad would fit wonderfully on top of that PSU.

C) I never go to lan parties, so this bad boy isnt going to be moved around

D) The amount of air i can pump through this thing is amazing. I have it planned out so far that I will be moving roughly 500 cfm at relatively quiet levels. That will increase component life and hopefully help me squeeze a few more Mhz out of everything. This full tower comes standard with 3x80 front, 2x80 and 1x92 rear, 1x80 side intake. After the mods there will be a lot more airflow.

E) ability to squeeze 2 PSU's into the case...so nice


The PSU was removed before cutting.

As for the larger fans in place of the 80mm fans. I wont be doing that because i only own 1 92mm fan. That wont get me very far in the scheme of things, and once again I am on a tight budget here. In order to increase airflow i'm basically using every fan i own, and none happen to be 92mm.

As for using electrical tape....yes i know its ghetto. But this is project cheap anti-ghetto, so i am making an exception. I dont have enough money to drop for sleeving kits and heatshrink. Plus half of the time just because people have their PSU's sleeved they think they can have the wires sticking out. Not for me, I hopefully wont be seeing any wires, sleeved or unsleeved, so for now I am ghetto electrical taping them, then hiding them so not one thing can be seen.


Everyone should give a full tower a try..at least once

Looking good so far.

I personally prefer smaller cases. I had a full tower and it was heavy and bulky which made it annoying for LAN gaming and unnecessary as I wasn't using many hard drives or anything. Plus I think large towers just look retro, the trend is to make things smaller in computers. If I wasn't water cooling I'd definetly want one of those small shuttle cases with the built in handle. But hey, to each his own

BTW if you care to make the 120mm hole in the back look better, you could simply put molding around the hole.

thats a good idea with the molding..

where do you suggest i get molding from? like home depot? if so what type?

i love my full tower PC 70 TONS of room for everything and i think it looks really good.... but if i was not water cooling i would have a mid tower.