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Case: RaidMax Storm 847 with 420W power supply |
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Purpose: I built this machine just to play games, mainly Unreal Tournament 2004. I was initially playing UT2k4 on my laptop, which is a decent machine, but really the video couldn't hang. So, I had to build another machine and keep it under a 600$. I ended up around 587 with shipping and I'm pretty satisified with what I've put together (with the help of a few friends, of course). The machine handles UT2k4 pretty well on the highest settings. |
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Method: While researching on the specific parts I needed to build a gaming machine, I came across a whole slew of "pc mods" and some pretty incredible machines that not only looked unique but performed very well. This opened up a whole new set of possibilities. I had wanted to see how hard it would be to build one of these machines. I didn't have the time or real patience to go all out, so that's why I made some choices that I had with the premodded case and orange LED fans. And so the madness begins... |
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Phase One: Here are initial images of the case from the manufacturer and images that I took after I had removed the power supply and the front beziel. |
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Phase Two: After masking and prepping the case, I decided to prime it with a metal primer and went ahead with Krylon Gloss Orange. This step I felt I rushed a bit, the orange came out good, but there was simply a few spots that I could not reach within the case with a can of spray paint, luckily they were in spots that no one sees. The temperature outside was perfect for painting and dried very quickly allowing me to put several coats on in a short amount of time. I wish I had more time for the painting process but 2 hours of priming and painting turned out pretty well. And I was itching to put this thing back together to frag with. |
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Phase Three: Next step I had read about "stealthing" the CDRom drive, and that turned out pretty good too. The object behind stealthing was to mask or hide your drive, and with my particular case, the drive bays looked pretty cool, why replace them with the stupid looking face of an ordinary CDRom drive? This step was pretty easy to do, I used velcro to hold together the bay plate and the drive door. The most challenging part was cutting the plastic off the bay plate so I didn't have to set back the drive too much when I mounted it into the bay, and I used a piece of an eraser to push the eject button when the front plate was touched and cause the tray to eject out.* |
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Phase Four: This part of the build I wanted to take time on and make sure I did correctly and neatly. I had to start wiring everything and figuring out how each power segment would go together and the placement of the fans. I have a total of seven fans. Four of them came with the case itself, three were clear and one was a blue color and I had ordered 3 orange LED fans. All of these fans came with 3 and 4 pin connectors which added a bit of extra wires for me to cover up. I had used black half-inch and three-eighths inch and silver three-eighths inch wireloom that I found at HomeDepot and Pepboys. the wireloom really helped clean up the inside of the case, however it was hard to get some of wire loom to flex enough to get the right angle to supply power to the needed devices. That light blue box you see in the case is connected to the on-off switch for the neon light, which is very bright. |
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Phase Five: At this point, I was just bout finished with the case, last minute changes and way ready to frag. Granted, I was almost out of time because I'd be out of town and way busy with my wedding coming up that very Sunday and then off to Mexico for my honeymoon, I knew I'd have no time to really test the machine out so I had to get all the hardware stuff done before I could start loading any software. Anyway, these are the final pics, with the lights on and the project complete. |
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Phase Six: So, check it out. Initially the project was done at Phase five, however, my good buddy Jim showed me the light. I looked over some tutorials he was showing me and really, my case was like a diamond in the rough. I wanted it to be clean, neat and just better looking in general. I added two new pieces to the swapper, first was the fan controller by vantec, the nexus 205. Second was the fan card by vantec as well. |
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Phase Seven: This will probably be the last step, however, I do have one last thing to try before I finally stop messing around with this thing. There really is an endless array of things I could start with this thing. I could add a cold cathode tube, or LED feet. Bah, anyway until i find some more mirroed plexiglass, the last project is going to have to wait. I might invest in a DVD RW drive, but that would mean i'd have to restealth a drive i want to keep, so who knows... |
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Phase Eight: Alright, well I guess I lied. I had some major cooling issues with this fan card thing. What was going on was that the card was blowing straight up at the video card, the video card was blowing straight down towards the fan card. Basically, I bought this fancard for aesthetic value, apparently it moves air pretty well and was circulating hot air up towards my CPU HSF. So, I did some experiments and figured out that it was indeed messing up the air flow in the case. So, what needed to be done was I needed cooler air to circulate throughout the case, and this required some heavy duty cutting. I ended up drilling big holes for the intake fan and exhaust fans because I felt the case frame was impeding the fan's ability to move air, and made the necessary adjustments. |
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Notes: Lastly, the project turned out very well, I added a few of the product vendor stickers to the case just to add to the cheese. I am very happy with the results and I look forward to future projects.** |
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*Credit goes to DennisJudd.com for help with stealthing the CDRom drive and BugHouseFX for getting me hooked on this crazy shiznit. |
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**Credit goes to Newegg.com and 3dCool.com for making my first real PC build a huge success. |
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