[jfenwick]

Allright, this is for a cousin who sort of doubles as our second daughter, she's 12 and I built her a comp a couple of months ago. I could tell she was visibly disappointed with it as she'd seen some past projects I'd done for others. Nothing fancy but LEDs and a window would have made her day. However, at the time I didn't have the time to do what I wanted to do, and didn't feel like giving her just a minimum job. Her family has had some rougher times this past year and so I figured I'd rather give her a custom paint job and such, little more than the basic as she does spend a lot of time with us and could really use the perking up, she's coming to visit at the end of August so the mod needs to be done by then.

Anyways, there aren't a lot of requirements for this build:
- keep it cheap...under $150, considering paint alone is easily $100 this should be a challenge.
- gloss black is a must, both because I know she likes the look and because its the cheapest paint to get!
- incorporate the family # 55 into it. Supposedly her family is huge on this number, they have a family baseball team and they all have #55 on their jerseys.

Anyways, at this point i'm thinking of orange and black, two racing stripes up the middle, I have a number of orange LEDs, some orange plexy and I even have a left over orange vandal resistant switch from performance-pcs. Lucky her, dem switches aint cheap and dont' usually go into pro bono work!

I'm going to use a Centurion 5, I have two in the garage waiting to be modded so I might as well as start chopping into one of them! I'm not really counting this as an expense as I'll be trading this case for her current case, forget what it is. Some coolermaster case. Anyways, here is a stock photo of the case, thanks newegg.ca:

The only difference is that the one I'm modding has the blue aluminum rather than the silver,.
Anyways, here's a basic sketchup of what I'm thinking at this point....sorry for the weak google sketcher skills, I'm still learning and would really rather spend my time modding than sketching! The widow will be with orange acrylic and I'll etch "55" into it in large font. Two racing stripes down the middle with some fiberglass work to flatten out the DVD ROM cover and empty bay cover. I'll use plexy on the front rather than the stock purf:


Ok...that gaping hole in the bottom middle is an intake fan, a la mnpctech.com turbine style. Hopefully I'll have some photos soon...but this weekend is my annual dota/CSS lan party so I'll definitely be out of commission for a while

[synergy]

Awesome! What a lucky gal to have a cousin that will mod her PC!! What do you mean weak Google Sketch skillz?! Looks good to me

[Nubbleet]

Looks good. GL in your LAN too.

[philbar71]

wow that will be nice.

[jfenwick]

Thanks guys...yeah, should be a straight forward, relatively easy one to get me going, I'd like to do a second case before christmas, an x-mas gift for the wife so I need to do this asap.

Thanks for the well wishes on the LAN, should be a blase, Fri-Mon (yaye for long weekends), 12 guys and 3 full days of LAN/meatfest. This is the best turnout yet, but is starting to break the bank feeding this many guys for that long!

[S0ULphIRE]

Good luck with the mod, keep updating with new pics

[jfenwick]

Ok, my annual LAN/meatfest party is now done. Nothing like 4 days of none stop dota, CSS, pok/beef/chicken and beer, I can’t wait for next year already! Anyways, back to worker, I’ve broken her down now:



In the interest of time I’m going to keep this window size and change the acrylic over to an orange panel. I’m going to keep the original 6 holes and just replace the hardware with some socket bolts.


I’ll have to chop this up to allow space for the 120mm turbine intake:


As you can see, a lot of this is going to be scrap, I want a solid front rather than the perforated look that it comes with. The entire front mesh, power switch, etc… has to go. I’m hoping to keep the front I/Os.


Allright, that’s it for now…just some quick disassembly for today.

[yzmxer608]

She's lucky . Build sounds like it's going to be pretty cool, can't wait for more updates!

[jfenwick]

Ok, let the fun stuff begin! The whole front needed to be chopped as I’m going for a single piece of acrylic front with the 120mm turbine…that means clearing space. I also added some support braces in the 5.25 bay area, you can faintly see them in the second image….she’ll never need more than two bays and I needed something that will support the acrylic:



Here is it with the front panel on, had to cut the hole as well as the spacing for the 22mm switch and the front inputs…wow, measurements were good on the first try. I gave it a scuffing so you can see it a little easier, this is all extra acrylic I had lying around the shop so no cost really associated with it.



Here are some more shots…close up at the side, the spacing between the side bar and the front plate.



Here is a shot of the front cutout for the usb, sound plugs, lots of hand sanding later...:



Went ok, cut that out with my scroll saw, fair amount of hand sanding to make level and smooth. Anyways, that’s it for today, progress is slow as the project is sharing time with home renovations….my wife for some reason believes home renos should come before modding...bah!

[S0ULphIRE]

Nice job there, cuts look great!