Just picked up a tap and die set for a possible mod on this case. It is extremely interesting...and saves money!
I went to Menards and had to literally tell them what it was so we could find it. A hardware store that does not know what a tap and/or die is. Mind blown.
Behold, the most sexy drive cages for this case. Not to mention, they didn't cost me anything but the tap and die set! These were taken from another project. The case used was a Norco 470. The fans are facing out, and I meant for them to be in that direction. This leaves me exactly two 5.25" slots. I just need to find a place for my SSD to use both. Otherwise, I'll have to drop down to one.
Got the hardware cleaned and moved into the new case. I still have some cables left to redo (SATA/PCI-e), but the case is done overall.
Here is a picture with the front fans removed from the cages. I can do both the fans and the hard drives without removing the case itself. This is a large upgrade from the stock unit in multiple ways. Not only does it hold five hard drives per three 5.25" bays, adding/removing drives and dust cleanup are going to be substantially easier.
Here is a picture with the camera sitting in the top hard drive cage. This is looking at the edge of the case, just in front of where devices screw in. You can see on the far left, the thin metal is the movable "flap" that give the devices a beveled edge. Just to the right of that is a fairly wide piece of metal with a hole in it. That is to hold the stock 5.25" blanks. To the right of that, you see a gap shaped like a "L", which is large enough to hide a substantial amount of wires in. You can see the USB cable hiding in the back portion. Finally, to the right of that, you have the beginning of the 5.25" support panel and the hard drive cage. Using these channels down the front of the case hides wires extremely efficiently. When the whole thing is put together, they can not be seen. The cables come out under the bottom hard drive cage and will be secured with a tie-down.
I had the front fans removed to install the sleeving, clip them to the proper length and put the appropriate connector on the end. You can see they both got converted to 3-pin fan headers instead of the stock molex connector. The fans used are Delta WFB1212M, which are surprisingly quiet at lower voltages.
Getting a connector up to the fan controller was a bit trickier than the other ones. I have to make most of the cable and then put on the 3-pin connector after routing it through a hole in the case. It was too small to put the finished connector through. This simply loops around the 5.25" bay and plugs in the closest fan channel.
This is that cable after it is installed. It doesn't want to stay in a nice position, so I'll have to get a tie-down point for it. I'm all out at the moment, so I just have to leave it like this.
This was the final cable I needed to make to actually run the computer. I don't have a picture of the delivery cable, but it is very similar to the one for the fan door, just shorter. I needed to run three fans off this cable (two CPU fans and the rear 120m m fan).
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I did end up having to leave out the top 120mm fan, but I'm not disappointed, the airflow is balanced well with the current setup. Here are some pictures of the computer actually running, right before I hooked up the data and power cables for the hard drives. I'm using the ones from the 1200, which are ugly, but I need to order parts before I can finish them. I am only using 3 out of the 6 available channels since I combined the back 120mm fans and the top fan.
damn dude im almost tempted to mail you my tower and have you do all the cable management and such and make it look pretty. id even pay ya to do it.....handsomely
Got the case put back together. I still have some power cables left to do (HDD/DVD) and a lot of data cables (SATA), but this is what it will look like on the outside. I'm pondering the idea of using lights on the bottom, but I'm not sure what it would look like. There are two sets of images, the first set is "enhanced" by very powerful flashlight (SSC) and the second is natural room lighting to show how reflective it is.
Well, had a piece of hardware "fail", read below for details.
I've been noticing what I thought was extraneous hard drive activity of my system. I recently switched operating systems to Fedora 14 and have been getting accustomed to a Linux environment again. At night, I would hear a hard drive thrashing and I started to notice it tonight when I was sitting next to my computer. Quickly thinking, I turned off all the fans in the case, pulled the side panel off and started listening. I pinned it down to the power supply's fan starting to make noise.
After checking online to see when and where I purchased it, I found it was 07/04/2007 and had a warranty 5 years after that. To my surprise, I was still well within the warranty period and filled out an RMA promptly. I know that this issue does not indicate that the unit itself is bad and that this is a problem I could remedy myself, I would rather let Corsair handle this. I also want to get this fixed now instead of in the future when the fan decides to fail quietly and takes out the unit itself and some of my hardware.
I won't be down a system, but I do need to steal the HX650 that is in my Antec case until it returns. Good thing I waited to get rid of that unit!
WoW what a nice job on the cabling. you're making me think about keeping my case (not as nice as yours but the same case) and rewiring it like that. (IF I can...you do such a awesome job).
I finally found out what was wrong with my PC. (and got caught up in my other hobby as well) so soon I'll be back up and running.
I'll do that. I was looking at a Corsair 800D for my next case. but funds are low and my other hobby is eating up everything I make. but your case looks awesome. I love the dragon paint (mines just black and green) and what you did to it (all the wiring and painting the in sides black). I should do the same to mine....the wiring looks like a snakes nest right now.
You should write a short summary and use a few pictures to introduce this on the frontpage and link to this thread... I hadn't seen this until now. Turned out awesome, glad I found it.
Forgot to put in an update on the thread. I ordered $211 worth of equipment from Performance-PCs to get the parts I need for this. Granted, $90 was for someone at work and $40 was to make someone's cables. Only thing left that I'm unsure about is SATA cables. I sent a message to PPCs, inquiring about custom SATA cables (data, not power). It turns out there are non in the US and they are too expensive to get into the country. I'll see if I can sacrifice a cable to make a custom one. I'd rather have completely custom length everything than try to stuff cables behind the motherboard or let them hang around.
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