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[Xion X2]

Another idea would be to drill holes in the acrylic on the front if it would match a little better.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

That'd probably be the way I'd go if I decided to vent the PSU out of the front of the case. Perhaps even install a 120mm fan just behind the front panel to help exhaust the PSU and heat off the pumps.

Hay Xion X2 I feel that if you are pulling cool air from the bottom of the case for the bottom rad, then you should also be pulling cool air up from the bottom for the PSU and exhausting out the front, as hot air rises it want be sucked back in from the bottom. You would just need to inclose the PSU in the custom drive cage with only a hole to allow your cables through. That way you could put a chrome ring around the hole like the ones you are going to use for the tubing.

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I like the idea of exhausting out the front more, instead of the bottom. My philosophy in case modding has always been never to exhaust from the bottom of the case as that's where all the cool air sits.

As for the challenge with the custom drive bay. "By the way I should let you know that I know nothing about this case" But I have work with steel fabrication for 20 years.
Do you really need to keep the section that crosses the HHD bay?
Would three locking latches be enough to hold the door on tight?
If so you could remove this section along with the mounting bracket that the standoffs use. Hope you understand this next bit.

If the custom drive cage is say 150mm wide, then cut the support bar down by only125mm. As the support bar is a channel you will need to cut a piece out of the top and bottom edges, just mark where you want the bend to be, e.g. at the 150mm spot that lines up with your custom drive cage.
You will need to give yourself say 1mm more than the 150mm mark for the metal to stretch and give you room to put the custom drive cage in.
After you have cut the edges out and before you bend the support bar you should drill a hole in the support bar, (actually you should drill the hole before you cut anything, this will give the support bar strength and stop it from moving around).
One all cut and before you bend round off edges then bend to 90 degrees with pliers.
Now you can mount the support bar to your custom drive cage and have room to boot.

Hope this all makes sense Xion X2, and keep up the good work.

Thanks for the suggestion.

The problem I see with that is I hadn't planned on the bay cover running the full height of the case. What I mean by that is there will be no mounting support on either the top or bottom like there will be on the drive cage. The bay cover is simply a slide-on piece that will mount to the drive cage with a few screws on the side. Since it wouldn't be physically mounted to the case frame itself, I don't think it'd be a solid structure to mount the support bar to.

In addition, this case has probably the thinnest gauge of aluminum I've seen to date. It's very thin, and I would say that shortening the support bar in addition to mounting it to a piece not held to the actual frame would probably be risky in terms of structural stability. I am going to move both support bars up closer to the roof of the case to try to remove them from plain view like they now. This should keep them from interfering with that top window that will display both the pumps/res and SSD drives.


An update on the side panel and metalwork--

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the estimate today because I have to modify something within the cad file. I should be able to get the estimate either tomorrow or Monday and have the side panel cut some time next week. I'm going to speak with the shop to see if they'll let me document the whole process with photos.

I'm picking up a 4'x10' aluminum sheet from a guy tomorrow morning to cut the bay cover, new mounting frame and drive mounts from. I hope to have some cutting done by the weekend, but it may not be until next weekend. Will just have to see how it goes.