PROJECT LOG "Thideras Modded" Antec 1200

This is the second Antec case that I've modded. I don't have a clear-cut path for this case, so I won't have a lot of details in this post. The main goal of the project (or any "Thideras Modded" case) is clean routing of cables through making them from scratch. Sure, anyone can hide cables, trim them to length and even use extenders (ugg...); but they don't look as good as fully custom, cut to length and sleeved, cables.

I've been making custom cables for many years now and have used them in previous and current projects. I've done a "Thideras modded" Antec 300 that used the stock fans (plus the two in the front that don't come with the case) wired up to a fan controller in the front. The wires were completely stealthed, unless you ducked your head into the case. I've also made custom cables for my file server's hard drive backplane to save space, increase cooling capacity and make it look better.

I have no problem tearing apart components to solder in my own wires and creating harnesses from scratch, if it makes it look good. That was my project for tonight.

------------

I wanted to keep the stock Antec 3-speed fans since the move a lot of air and are fairly good quality for stock fans. The problem is, they come with this "pod" so you can choose the speed of the fan. If you don't have a fan controller, they are extremely convenient as it allows you to choose one of three speeds. The (huge, in my case) downside is that it adds wires that I don't need and are extremely hard to hide while still being accessible. I've seen a few projects where people tear apart these fans and "disable" the pod to clean up wiring. I wanted to do the same and it is actually pretty easy. Before I get to explaining how that works, I'll start with the shameful un-modded pictures. I've been running this case for about five months and never got around (lazy) to hiding wires or doing anything custom for it.

So, here you have it. My horrible looking case that I used three weeks ago:




Terrible, I know. I'll fix it though, trust me! Here is the case completely torn apart. The design holding the parts on is creative, but if you don't know how they come off, it can get really frustrating. I think it took me 30 minutes or so to tear the whole case apart, not counting the computer hardware. Here is everything after I stripped the parts off. Ignore the Cooler Master's fan door sitting on it.





Onto the fans!

------------

Here is a stock Antec 3-speed fan with the (ugly) pod attached to it. One of the messiest stock fans there is. Good thing you can easily fix it and the fan itself is good.





First thing to do, strip the sticker off to see how everything works.







From here, you can see the solder joints. There are three on the top and three on the bottom. The most obvious ones are the thick black and red wires, those are power. What I didn't know is that there is a pad between the power cables for a RPM wire. So, if you want to add that to the fan, it can easily be done. Below that you see a trio of small wires (black -> red -> yellow). These are the pod's wires and what controls the speed of the fan. To figure out how they work, you can simply use a multimeter. Here is how they work if you were to wire them together:

Black -> Yellow = Full speed
Black -> Red = Medium speed
Black -> Nothing = Low speed

So, if you simply remove all the wires, the fan would run on the low setting. Since I'm going to be running these fans off a fan controller, I want them to go full out so I can control their speeds. I remove the red and yellow wires then cut the black short. With the proper length, I stripped the end of black wire, tinned, curved the wire and soldered it in place. PRESTO, I now have a permanent high-speed Antec fan. Simple as that. I also put my own power wires in and made them with very long leads (3ft) so that I could wire them however I wanted. The only stock fan wiring is the little "jumper" to set the fan speed.









I then had to find a path for the wires. Running them behind the motherboard was not feasible due to the case design. There wasn't ample room to get them behind the tray. I could also have run them down and around to the front, but that path is far too long. The option I settled on was running up and over the case, just under the large fan up top. They are secured with a ziptie into a sticky square mount. The ends are currently unfinished. I need to locate a fan controller that I want to use and design a two-to-one harness for the fans. Easy enough, but I want to have the hardware in hand before I finalize the wires.



------------

That is all I got done tonight, but I do have ideas in the works. I still need to custom wire the top fan, and that will be the same method as the rear two. I'll try to get pictures of that since you can control the LEDs from the pod. In addition to that, I'm going to custom wire the front panel. That doesn't sound exciting, but you'll see it will be "interesting" once I snap pictures of it. The entire front panel (short of the power/reset buttons and the power/HDD LEDs) is in a molded plastic enclosure. That is going to be the most difficult part of the build by far. I also have plans for the old fan pods, but I need to think that design over a bit before I post about it.

I've thought it over a bit and I want to go the lighting direction for the pods. I can use the old fan switches to control either the colors for the lights (need to research) or just control the lights themselves. This will make the case look stock and allows me to clean up that horrible mess of wires you saw in the very first picture.

Trying to figure out what to use for lights, how to wire them and where to put them.

----

Fan wise, I'm not completely done. I'd like to wire up the front fans in a fashion where they are controlled by a fan controller, but the cages are easily removed for cleaning/removal/replacement. In addition to that, I want to have a fan in the door, but that may prove to be more difficult. I'll have to play with that more.

I also have not decided on a fan controller, but I'm looking at the Lamptron ones since they look nicer (and are a bit more expensive!). This is more of a looks problem than a functionality one.

The power supply will have a custom harness for extra components (since the 24 and 8 pin are hard wired) to reduce clutter. I may trim the extra 4-pin wire, but I'd rather not void the warranty.

I'm still mulling this over in my head, so details may/will change.

Got the top fan done, and it was a pain. The back of the fan hub does not allow access to the pads on the motor board, so I couldn't remove wires without removing the entire fan. "Simple!", I thought, "I'll just remove the fan itself and then I'll have direct access to the board." Not quite as simple as that, though. The retention clip is pressed on and not one that you can remove without destroying the fan. I ended up soldering the wires together towards the end, which will be hidden beneath the edge of the fan.

Got some more progress tonight. I've been toying with the front fans to force them to run at full speed. After a few days of thought and tinkering, I decided to "sacrifice" one (if needed) to test out my theory. I found that the rheostat does not go down to 0 ohms; the lowest was 500 ohms. I was worried about shorting the two pads together if it is made to have that resistance. Doing a preliminary test proved my idea was correct and did all three fans in the same fashion. What I found odd was that the pinout for the "pod" was different than the back fans. I see no reason to have two different board schematics. But I didn't design them, so I have no idea why they did it.

Since the solder points were adjacent, I decided to just dump a solder blob on them. Anyway, to the pictures!

















-----

Here was the extra from the front fans.



-----

I'm scrapping the idea of lights on this case. I haven't found a place that I would like to see LED's.

Cable wise, there is a bit left. I need to get a fan controller to get the fans wired up. In addition to that, I need to create a harness for the front fans and find a path for it. I'm also going to do custom wiring for the hard drives and optical drives. I'd do cables similar to the ones that are in my file server (link). Need to order some parts for that, though.

Just ordered the fan controller for this case and parts for my other project.

Looking very nice so far. The sleeving, as usual, looks incredible.

Awesome work. I wish I had the patience to trim and sleeve everything in my case, it's an absolute mess right now.

SilverJeep said:

Awesome work. I wish I had the patience to trim and sleeve everything in my case, it's an absolute mess right now.

Click to expand...

It is something that bothers me as well. Right now, I'm using this 1200 with the top and two rear fans completely disabled. I don't have 3 pin headers on them since I don't know how long they need to be! Very annoying, but that should be resolved this week.

This is amazing work thideras. I'm just wondering but if I paid you perhaps $80 could you sleeve a bunch of wires for me after I paint it a wood color? This is during the summer as I plan on building a wood case. Thanks

P.S. I'm not so sure about pricing yet but within a reasonable range.

If you have classifieds access here, I do have a full list of my services. If you can't see that section, make sure that you are using an ISP assigned email address in your profile and notify a moderator.

I can see it but I can't get a isp issued email because cox is being a pain in the butt with me.

Thid excellent work brother. Looking good.

Dom

Parts just arrived, but the Dragon Case has priority. I also need some 90 degree SATA connectors.

This is back on my plate. I had to RMA my very first HX620 a few weeks ago and the replacement arrived recently. I've been working on my other project lately and haven't been giving it the attention it needs. All the parts I need are here (I hope!) and I have some preliminary ideas for cables and routing.

And, to be completely clear on the intent of this project, I do not plan to keep it. When it is finished, it is going away to a better place.

---

Speaking on the design of the case, I'm honestly not impressed. Where there are a ton of crevices in my other project, which makes cable routing far easier, this seems to be a brick wall. For example, I can easily run wires from the front to the back of the motherboard on my other case. But, this one is completely sealed off short of the motherboard tray holes. This problems could easily be remedied, but I don't have the tools nor patience to fix it. The wiring can be worked around, though.

One very huge problem I had when I was pathing out the cables was the front headers. In my other case, everything detaches and I have direct access to the pins to make completely custom (and sexy!) cables. But, Antec specifically created this case to spite me. The front panel headers are encased in hard, sealed plastic. I had the option of hiding cables I didn't want, cutting them off entirely or trying to rip open the cemetery they called a "front panel". Not wanting to risk damaging the case beyond repair, I had to settle for less; not something I enjoy doing. The cables were going to be near-impossible to hide well, so I opted for cheating and simply cut them off. I removed the eSATA connector and the audio connectors. Not only did this remove some very obnoxious cables, it worked fine. The other stock cables (buttons/lights) were surprisingly long enough to simply sleeve and run through the proper channels. Kudos for that, I guess.

Another series of issues, that was resolved at the beginning of this thread, were the fans. The quality of each unit is good and I've yet to have an issue. They move a good amount of air for how loud they are and overall, I was impressed. The "pod" idea on the fans is a good one, don't get me wrong. The problem lies in cleaning these up. I have to put a lot of time into "fixing" the fans so they are up to my standard. I probably spent a week or two planning on this alone.

Overall, usability is decent. Everything is easy to install and nothing seems to be cramped. There are some small changes I would suggest, but nothing would prevent me from purchasing another. Ah, yes, except one problem, the hard drive cages. It is obvious the case was designed and someone went "OH NO, we forgot the hard drive cages". Instead of making major changes to the case, they decided to simply use bays. This in and of itself isn't a problem, but combine it with shoddy bays, it makes it incredibly annoying. For example, you want to add a hard drive into the bottom bay; simple yes? First, we need to get the bay out. You have to remove not only the main door, but the other has to go as well. Not very annoying, but it is tiring after a bit. After this, there are eight thumbscrews that hold the hard drive bay in. Don't forget to unplug the fan and the existing hard drives! Then, the cage simply slides out. Once the cage is out, slide the hard drive in and put in four screws. Finally, put everything back together. Doesn't that seem asinine? There are too many screws between you and having an installed hard drive. I'm not one that is normally fond of "tool less" devices since they tend to be plastic and not work properly, but adding some simple plastic rails would make it so you don't have to remove the other door, the thumbscrews holding the cage in, unplug the fan and the existing hard drives and screw in the new drive. This one part would save an incredible amount of time. On my Cooler Master 830 Stacker, I'm using hard drive bays that were not intended for this case. Installing a drive is as simple as removing the main door, swinging open the fan door, attaching the plastic rails, sliding the hard drive in the cage and plugging it in. No wonder I never screwed down my hard drives in that Antec.

To add onto the previous "quirk", you have to unscrew the cages to clean the filters in front of the fans. That is a total of two doors and twenty four thumscrews. Granted, you don't have to unplug anything to do this.

On looks and materials, I'm a bit on the fence. The metal is a bit thin for a case this expensive and there is an awfully large amount of plastic. The painted inside is a nice touch and does help overall. One huge annoyance is the plastic. Not the looks, no, I'm quite fond of it. The material and finish is what gets me going. It has a knack for holding onto anything that you don't want. I'm not talking about screws and cats (never really tried the latter), but dust, dirt and grime. It is a very rough surface, which gives it a pleasant matte finish. I quickly learned that it holds onto "stuff you don't want" far too well and eventually makes the case seem like no one cared for it. If anyone has owned any case I have had, they know I baby my cases. I've yet to find a material that can clean the plastic and not make the situation worse. Even shop-quality rags leave behind dust from the rough surface. I half considered sanding it down and giving it a proper clear coat.

Even with the bit of ranting I've done, it is still a great case. They are common and I believe the prices are fairly decent. I wouldn't buy another one, but it has that look to it that makes it likable. Just like the original 900.

I have no idea where this text came from, so I apologize for such a windy update. Depending on how much I get done tomorrow, I may have pictures.

I don't have a lot of pictures, but I got a lot of planning done for the case. I got the fan controller cable made and installed and I got all the fan cables plotted and cut. I was going to put headers on them tonight and start sleeving each one, but I found out that I have almost no 1/16" heatshrink. I started looking around and found that mouser had it for cheap, and I ordered 100' for $17. While I was at it, I bought more 3/8" for around the zipties, which was around $36 for 100'. In addition to these, I need more ATX pins since I have around eight left. I'm going to do one of the video card cables like I did on my case.

For trying to figure out how I want the cables, I dropped in my dummy motherboard with two cards that are getting ready to be baked; a 9800GTX on top and a GTX 260 on bottom. This gives me a good indication of how cables need to be run for the cards and hard drives.

This is the fan controller's power cable before installation.


Fan controller's power cable installed. You can see it coming out of the power supply to the right of the video cards and behind the 5.25" bays.


And yes, the zip tie colors are not final. I'm just using whatever color I have on hand before I use my black ones.

Got the CPU fan created. This allows use of any fan while still allowing the user to keep wires neat. I also got the top fan hooked up into the fan controller.







I'm now working on the rear fans and the harness for that. I may also work on the hard drive and optical power cables, but that depends on how I feel.

How do you like the yate loon fans???

TorqueRanger said:

How do you like the yate loon fans???

Click to expand...

None of the fans in this case are Yate Loons...

Got the rear fans and their harness hooked up. The top is done, at this point. There are three pictures here. The first is looking up on the inside, pretty obvious. The last two are looking through a motherboard tray hole on the right side of the case. You can see the top fan's cable, the rear fan's cable (plus their harness hookup) and the CPU fan cable. I'm now working on the optical power cables.

No pictures of the cable, but I got the optical cable made and installed. I'm waiting on my heatshrink and ATX pins.