Hello fellow modders and welcome. Here I have attempted to document the many transformations my trusty Inwin Q500 case has undergone since I first got the modding bug. This is not a how-to, but if you're half way to handy you should be able to figure out how I did most things either through the pictures or my description of them. I owe it to the two sites below for giving me the inspiration to first rip apart my case.
 | Siz's case |
| Dansdata's Wind Tunnel PC |
The second half of 2000 has seen case modding gain ludicrous exposure. No longer is it just for the crazy overclockers, every man and his dog is doing something to their case (and from the looks of some of the hack jobs, it's mainly the dog). Here are some of the bigger collections of modded cases. I have yet to submit mine to any sites, probably after the paint job is done next week.
| Case Mods forum @ Overclockers.com.au |
| Case and Cooling Fetish forum @ ARS Technica |
| Cool Case Gallery @ [ Virtual Hideout ] |
| Cool Case Madness At It's BEST! by FAST-MHz |
This is what I have planned for my PC (as of 10 Sep 2000):
| Digital Doc 3 - If you haven't heard of this, go here. |
| Paint job, starts next week, it's all ready for painting I've chosen an Ultra Blue colour for the bulk of the box with chrome highlights. - COMPLETE |
| More neon lights. |
| Possibly a NewQ Platinum. |
As promised, the old girl got a paint job. It's actually a darker blue than these photos depict, but you get the idea. Notice the big handle on top (like you couldn't notice). Yes it's metal, yes it's strong, yes it supports the case, yes the case is BLOODY HEAVY.
I'm very very happy with the way it turned out, and of course I had major bragging rights at the LAN I went to the weekend after ;-)
Well, hasn't case modding taken off this year?!? I feel the need to do even crazier things with my case just to stand out from the crowd ;-)
Below you'll find pics of my case in it's current state (10 Sep 2000) with a brief description of the new mods. At the top I have a pic which pretty much shows the current 'mod' state of my case, for those of you with little patience.
Click for a larger image
This one takes a bit of explaining, so I've dedicated a whole page to it. You can check it out here!
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Firstly I added another 'thingy' to the front
of my case above the 'thingy' for the HDD ducting. This particular
bit of plumbing PVC is held tightly to the front of the case by the 120mm
fan grill which is in turn bolted to the plastic bezel.
The 'thingy' continues right through into the case and hence the rest of the ducting (seen below) can attach to it securely. I like the 'thingies' because they...
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The rest of the ducting plugging onto the
'thingy' is simple a small length of 100mm PVC piping, in turn holding a
15o collar (bends the duct down 15o), then the floor
flange cut down to 120mm fan size and bolted to the fan goes on the end.
Pretty simple, very modular, no glue or adhesive of any kind required. It
all fits together tightly, but can be dismantled in seconds if you need to
get in there to work.
On a side note, I used a friends jigsaw to cut the hole in the metal in the front of the case this time and it was soooooooo much easier than using a Dremel. If you have a Dremel, stick to using it on plastic or trimming small bits of metal, leave the big stuff to power tools, that's why God ® created them :) |
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If you click on the pic and take a look at the
big version you can see clearly what the 120mm fan ends up blowing on.
Yup, it feeds cool air directly to the CPU and AGP card.
For P3V4X users you'll also notice it blows right over the clock gen chip, so all you need to do it stick a heat sink on it and you're covered. You can also see that the thingies actually DO add a descent amount of length to the ducting. My theory is that the further those fans are down the duct, the less I'm likely to hear them.
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Ok, after much umming and ahhing, and
consultation with the good folks from the overclockers.com.au Case
Mods forum, I decided on bolting my window on. I used the jigsaw to
cut the panel out, the dremel to smooth the edges and a drill (duh) to put
the holes in. I did all my marking for where I wanted the holes on the
back of the case and drilled small pilot holes first from the back then
the proper size holes from the from of the case to stop burring on the
display side of the case. I can't stress enough how important it is to
take you time and make sure you have everything measure perfectly. If you
drill a hole in the wrong spot it's going to be obvious and
hard/impossible to fix.
The bolts actually have chrome dome nuts on them, which you can pick up anywhere. I got mine from Mitre 10. |
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This is the back. As you can see all my
marking was done on this side. The bolts were too long, so I used the
cutoff wheel on the dremel to make them just the right length, although a
hacksaw would do the trick. Make sure you have a vice or something secure
to hold the bolt while you cut it.
One last tip, the perspex should have a contact like covering on both sides to protect if from scratching while you work with it. Make sure you leave it on until you are 100% ready to bolt it on for the final time, that way you'll have a perfect window (until your first LAN party when someone puts a dirty big scratch in it). |
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So here is the window fitted to my case with
the neon on. Yeah the picture sucks, I can't hold my hand steady with low
exposure settings. Oh well.
I picked up the blue 12" 12VDC neon tube at Autobarn. It's actually called a glow rod and is designed for petrol heads to stick in their glovebox or something. It comes with a ciggie light plug on the end of a really long wire, but you can just lope that off and stick a 4 pin molex connector on. I rigged mine up to a switch so I can turn it off whenever I want. I'm not to sure about the way neon works, but I think when you turn it on and it excites the gas the EMI is pretty high, I had a dodgy pin in my plug powering the light at one stage and the light would flick on and off, this almost always coincided with my machine locking up. It seems stable when you just leave it on though, or even turn it off and on with the machine on, it just doesn't seem to like the strobe effect ;-) In this pic you can make out the chrome nuts holding the window in as they reflect the cool blue neon glow. Oooh Ahhh. |
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This pic shows where I mounted the neon. I just used stick on velcro on the light and the bits of the case I wanted it to stick to, so removal is really easy. Notice how the neon just fits in the case, it's pretty much the perfect length. |
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I don't really have anything else to say about
the neon, but I have this picture and thought I might as well use it,
blurry and all.
I do plan on getting more neons, I don't want any shadows in there :) This time I think I'll order the two pack from Jaycar Electronics. I had one crazy idea about neons and a Digital Doc 3, but I'll leave that for another day. Or maybe the forum ;-) |
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I have always thought that it would be better
to seat the intake fan deep in the case for the following reasons:
Well I finally got around to finding a nice way to do it. I stumbled on the mother load when I thought of checking out my local plumbing supplier. Here are the bits (all 100mm) I got from left to right. Collar, 15o elbow, 5o elbow, 90o elbow, drain intake. |
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Here you can see the fan mounted on the collar
I got. Pretty easy to drill the holes and screw it on. With the sound
proofing in my box the hole thing was too wide, so I loped two sides off.
I later decided to lop all 4 sides off.
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These parts allowed me a few configurations, but I decided on sticking to two possibilities which I call config A and config B. Config A is the low profile config. Config B is my extreme ducting setup which is ideal for hooking onto more ducting, perhaps running from a colder outside climate, or even an air con unit. Only time will tell!! :) |
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Well here they are! You can see I have angled
the elbows up to shoot air onto the video card and cpu fans.
Config B is a bit pointless at the moment, but hey, it looks the part, I just hope someone doesn't try to take a dump in it ;-)
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At this early stage the whole system is pretty
much free floating. I think a nice grill, a few shiny screws and a bit of
spray paint will have this looking funkier than your mum on E.
The second shots invites imagination. Picture a T junction with one going to the current fan and another tapping into the case in front of the hard drives to blow air over them. Muahahaha, I can see it now!
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This is the front view of my case mod, as you
can see it mainly consists of the 120mm fan (complete with frozen Kenny
sticker). The hole was made with a Dremel and dressed with a margarine
container's lip (worked out ok eh?).
Behind the empty 5.25" bays is another 80mm fan blowing into the case, I usually just have the middle slot missing to let air in, but I intend to cut out some neato pattern in the bay covers to let air in. Most of the noise from the whole computer comes from the 120mm fan. I have it screwed in tight with a bit of the sound proofing (seen in the next few pics) between the fan and the case to stop and noise vibrating through the case. This is why getting a quieter fan is my number one priority right now. |
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Here it is in all it's glory!
Result - 10oC cooler than before mode (hovers between 23oC-30oC depending on room temp).The sound proofing is just carpet underlay. This lot is about $3.00 worth.
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Not a great shot, but you can see the IDE and
SCSI cables in their slimmed down version. To do this, simply split the
cables every 5 wires (DON'T STRIP THEM) and then stack and wrap them!
I also taped up most of the power cables with electrical tape, which really makes it easy to work with them and see where they go/need to go. Taping wires out of the way also helps air flow through the case, and is well worth the time. Just be aware that anything you tape down will probably need to be untaped when you make mods later, or change a card, or in my cases case, slide the motherboard tray out (learnt that the hard way). Some finer points: Wiring for front LEDS threaded behind the motherboard tray. Spare IDE cable tucked out of the airflow Sound proofing stuck on using adhesive velcro for removal purposes. Fans wired with pass through power cables to keep some power plugs free.
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