Quote Originally Posted by Weevil View Post
B-i-t-c-h-i-n ^
Thanks, Weevil. I agree.. I'm fairly happy with the design at this point. It won't change much. I should have the final side and front panels completed within the next few days.

Quote Originally Posted by MaByBoi
that side panel looks amazing! great job!
Thanks.

Alright, time for an update. I know some of you are probably growing tired of renders and wondering to yourselves "when is this guy actually going to get his hands dirty?"

Tonight was pretty basic stuff, but I consider this the beginning of the building stage. The plan was to observe the structure and layout of the case and to strip it of much excess weight and bulk before taking measurements for the custom pump and drive mounts. So let's see what we have to work with.

The innards:



And the first thing I noticed, was...



Yuck. Those blue clips just have to go as they take away from the overall sleek look of the case.




Goodbye, Mr. Blue Clip. I hardly knew ye...


I have to say that Mr. Blue Clip looks a lot better lying on my workspace counter.. don't you agree?

Now that those are off, it's time to look inside the drive cage. But wait.. even before I got that far I noticed something that was eventually going to pose a problem.




That mesh cutout just isn't going to work. Notice how it's not lining up with the bottom bay section?


The XSPC RX240 is going to rest there in the bottom bay. I knew I'd be doing some cutting, obviously, to fit the two fan ducts. But what this is going to do is cause a bare, uncovered spot in the floor which I just can't have. One of the major objectives is to keep this build nice and tidy, so it looks as if a custom case floor may be in order. Hmmm.. more on that later.

So looking into the drive cage, once I made it past the initial horror of that awful mesh cut, I saw that it looked pretty clean. There was one resident that had to go, though.

Alright Mr. Drive Cage.. any last words? No? Didn't think so.




Aaah, nice and clean.. that's looking a lot better already. Except for that big ball of yarn/wires. Nils will be helping me out with that later.

Okay, speaking of wires.. I wanted to see how much space I had on hand to hide any excess wiring. I figure at least 20% of this build will rest on wire management as its impact on aesthetics cannot be overstated.



Ok.. I see we have a little bit of room over on the left behind the drive bay. What about to the right...



Yikes, that's not a lot of room to work with. Two positives to think about, though. One - the side panels on the Cosmos are thick and sturdy, so if the wires were sitting flush against the side then the panel probably wouldn't bow much if any at all. And two - there are a number of creative solutions for wiring. It just takes a little planning. More to come on that later, as well.



Well, she's all stripped down and feels like she's lost a good 10 lbs of excess weight and bulk. Now, perhaps, she can glance at herself in the mirror without running from her reflexion.

More to come, so stay tuned.