PEGASUS
So basically, this is my first big case mod, and I’ve got really into it! I planned it for around 2 mths before I implemented anything. Originally I was going to air cool the case with my current PC setup (e8400, TRUE, 8800GTS etc), hence the design with the intake through the front. This plan altered slightly later, the biggest change being an upgrade to i7!
While I was thinking of a theme, I was inspired by this fantastic painting by Carolyn Hundslev. My main inspiration for the actual case mods was Ian Ho from Malaysia, and his TJ07 called King Kong.
A lot of the colour scheme has come from this painting, so if you think some of my colour choices a little strange, well this is why. I’ve sort of made my own version of this painting, kind of what I see when I look at it. Also, being a girl, I wanted to really show off some femininity, so I wanted girlier colours than most of you boys will appreciate.
So even though I’d originally planned an air cooled case, and had designed my front plate to include mesh so I’d have through flow from front to back, I decided to go i7 and watercooling, just to go all out and have a bit of fun (I was jobless at the time and had some money spare and a few people were telling me to go for it because it is quiet and cooler, so yeh I just decided to go for it – thanks Charles and Nils and James all you horrid boys made me do it haha). I’d also like to thank Shazza for sending me some Bitspower fittings (you really should be paid by Bitspower for the fantastic photos you’ve taken). Bastard_Child, you have been amazing, and when I finally think of some way to repay all your time and effort I will! And last (but not least) I would also like to send a huge vote of appreciation out to Greig from Gammods whose tireless patience in giving me advice for modding my case as well as the watercooling side has been absolutely invaluable. Thanks to you all
So without further ado, and because everyone knows what the TJ07 looks like stock! Here are a couple of pics of my case before I changed anything. YES! Silver! Not black! I’m a girl. And I want it feminine and pretty.
TOP PANEL MOD
Now the first of the mods I did with this case, and by far the easiest and cheapest was making an acrylic top plate. I’d already decided on this Pegasus theme, and intended on having this sort of pretty magical feel about it. And I like starsSo I made a design with stars on it, and a fantastic fellow by the name of Bastard_Child from here in Aus made me an autocad file which I then sent to the acrylic place and hey presto – this is what I got:
I then turned the top of my case from this:
To this:
Much better
SIDE PANEL MOD
So the next big thing I was working on was a new sidepanel. Originally I had wanted to laser cut the design out of the side panel. Bastard_Child will also attest to the amount of work I put into drawing what I wanted cut out. I literally would have spent 2 weeks just drawing this image of the original painting, scanning it, editing it (probably doing everything the long way) in Photoshop. Turning it into something completely black and white that could then by converted into an autocad file and sent to the laser cutters. And the laser cutting place did TRY to cut it out. But it was too fine. And eventually this plan was abandoned. This was the image that I had originally wanted cut out:
It is so pretty, and I am kinda sad I never got to see it cut out of the side panel. But alas it wasn’t to be.
So I worked on something different. I remembered that the acrylic place was cheap, and had recently been perusing modding sites where people had had their acrylic “etched”. This seemed like a great idea. So I proceeded to make a NEW image (one that could be grayscale) to have etched into my acrylic window. When the acrylic is etched it picks up the light, so I thought with the lighting I intend to have on the interior of my case, it should look very attractive. This is the new image I got etched into my window:
Yes it is almost the exact original painting but I had to change the wings. And just having a circle for the sun didn’t make sense, and anyway, I had stars all over my case so it was better off being a silvery night time scene. So a moon was added. And then it just looked lovely have the horse cantering over a bed of little stars.
Photos of the completed etched acrylic window have yet to be taken (I haven’t mounted it up yet). These will be added asap
Another small thing I did was change the acrylic around so it sits on the inside of the case instead of the outside (why Silverstone would put those ugly screws and the acrylic on the outside of such a sleek looking case is beyond me). I also searched painstakingly for 5mm threaded length screws (quite hard to obtain here in Perth). However I did manage to find some and with the help of a small shim, I now have almost completely “stealthed” the screws in the side window.
I have further plans for my side panels, but they are top secret until I know more details
FRONT PLATE MOD
So basically this was one of the biggest undertakings of the entire mod. I basically designed this front plate with the mesh and also a panel to go behind it to hold two 120mm fans. I also wanted to incorporate the name of the mod, “Pegasus”. I wanted to use the mesh from the top of the case which I had removed and replaced with the acrylic stars. I thought this would match the best. I also wanted to light up the nameplate so I have got the name etched out of acrylic (yes I like the acrylic place!) and lit from the sides using purple (UV) LEDs. Lots of photos to follow.
I actually got the front plate reanodised clear after these photos were taken, I just really wasn’t happy with the colour here. Now it is a much closer match
I made my own little bits of aluminium to cover the mesh up. It was mostly so I had something I could clamp onto while the epoxy was drying. But it also serves to make the back of the frontplate look a bit cleaner too now (I suppose... Looks at Nils).
Here are some photos of the front plate partially fitted up:
And finally:
So that’s the front plate!
The fan plate photos follow. I have actually made this piece so it can fit a 240 sized rad on it now, seeing as I have changed my mind and decided to go with watercooling. The midplate WILL require some modification to make the rad fit however.
The little beast in the background is my cat MaxHe is a Devon Rex, or to be more accurate a “Si-Rex”.
Yes yes, I’ll get rid of the stickers on the fans. I know I will probably get some flak for using the AC Ryan fans, but I like them! They’re PINK! Well, UV red, but they’re basically a pinky/purpley colourGIRLY! And they actually have a pretty good CFM, I reckon they’ll perform fine and be a pretty little addition to the colour scheme in the case (think those magnificent red wings on the Pegasus).
SLEEVING
Well of course I had to sleeve my power supplyIt took me a while to decide on colour, but when I did I was glad of my choice (thanks Charles and Nils for your advice). I didn’t use black sleeving, I used the white MurderMod/MDPC sleeving (Nils calls them snowpacks, and they’re fantastic). My build is meant to be silvery and pale. But of course, because all the components in my case are dark (the motherboard etc.), and lets face it, the Pegasus is galloping across a dark background, I have decided to make the internals of my case dark grey. The white sleeving does stand out, but in a good way I think (I don’t think black would have looked as good, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion). And anyway, I wanted to be different.
Thanks Nils!
Here are some photos. Gosh the sleeving process hurts, but that’s what my mum always tells me. It hurts to look beautiful! Hehe
Which was a time consuming job let me tell you. Doubled the time taken to sleeve my PSU at least (probably TRIPLED).
Power switch:
Since this photo I have actually received some more sleeving from Nils, and sleeved each of the wires individually, look down to the other mods section to see how this looks (much better imo).
Update: Sleeving is officially finished.
I also soldered most of my fans together (the ones which sit next to each other anyway), and sleeved them using MurderMod’s red sleeving (which is fantastic as you can see in the closeup shot, the weave is impeccable).
They look nice with all red plugs and stuff too hey?
I will eventually get rid of the AC Ryan stickers, and replace them with red vinyl (although I am taking advice on what I could do alternatively).
POWDERCOATING
The internals are to be powder coated a dark grey colour. This will form the background that the Pegasus is cantering across, the night sky which is behind the stars. I didn’t want to go all out black as I thought the contrast would be too stark against the silver exterior. This way even in daylight and with all the lighting off the case will still look attractive (hopefully).
Update: The internals have been sent to the powdercoating place and should be ready for collection sometime this week
Update2: Powdercoating picked up
So this is the midplate, you can see some of the cuts I've made to ensure everything fits the way I want it to in the case
How good a job did they do?
Here is the fan plate, all fitted up with XSPC RX240 rad and my fans
Here are some pics of the hard drive cage, all powdercoated up. Because I have different holes drilled in this cage, due to a different way of mounting the hard drives (as shown below), there were lots of ugly "stock" holes all over the place. So I actually took this to a sheet metal place, and got them to aluminium weld the holes out. They did a fantastic job, you can't even see where the old holes were at all
I shortened the distance between the two plugs on this sata power cable, to make it neater... Lots of cabling is going to be running by here due to the fan controller and CCFL lights getting power, as well as all the sata related things
Front view of the hdd cage, where I will access the little fan controller from:
Under part of hdd cage:
Here are some pics of the midplate all put together. Really happy with how this turned out.
Mobo tray:
Slot the mobo tray goes into up the top of the case:
OTHER MODS
I took apart my HK3.0 waterblock, as I wanted to get the top most portion nickel plated – copper doesn’t really go with anything else in the mod, so I want to turn as much stuff in the case silver.
Update: Got my nickel plated HK waterblock back!
There is a slight imperfection in the plating that won't seem to come out, you can see it in this picture. Anybody got any ideas? It isn't very obvious, but I know its there.
And here is an arty shot - you can see my new motherboard
Angry eyes:
I also stealthed the front power PCB, using a Hammond box, thanks Charles
Test fit:
Then spray painted it silver (did prime it first, hopefully this paint sticks ok).
Update2: Got this little Sunbeam multi fan port, this will actually power the LEDs on my fans, and also the LEDs in the front plate.
I decided to spray paint it silver to match my stealthed Hammond box at the front (it will sit right next door too!).
Getting started:
Update, after photos.
Not sure what the mark on it is which is visible in this pic, can't see it when I look at it:
All mounted up:
Here is another little idea I had today. Basically I was taking apart my DVD drive for powdercoating, and was trying to think of a way to cover up the back which will be visible from the inside of the case (through the window). It looks ugly and I didn't want to spray paint it (wouldn't match the powdercoating). So I came up with this idea!
It will also be powdercoated to match, but should make the whole back of the DVD drive look much cleaner
Some pics of it all powdercoated and put back together
Here is another small mod I have done. I have basically made a little slot for the button for a pair of the CCFLs which will sit in the case.
Not much room at the back, but it just makes it
LOWER COMPARTMENT
Because of the way I want to orientate my Feser 360 radiator in the bottom, and the 240 up the top, I don’t have any space for my hard drives to go in the way the MurderMod guys do it. So I had to do something a little different. Basically I kept one hard drive cage down the bottom of the case, but I moved it forward as far as it could go. This required drilling 4 more holes, about 3cm towards the front of the case. Luckily I had learned about the use of a “punch” before I did this, and all the holes lined up well. I actually even tapped them (M3 holes). So that worked out well. I am mounting my two 150gb raptors in RAID0 in this hard drive bay, and also one of my 3.5" fan controllers. The Scythe will go up behind the flap that opens at the front of the case, and both my radiators’ fans will be plugged into this fan controller as well as two temp sensors which read temperatures of the water and also ambient temp within the case. This means that I should be able to control the RPM of the fans from the front of the case very easily while monitoring temps in the loop and case.
I still want to go inverted ATX, like Ian Ho did with King Kong. And *fingers crossed* if things pan out the way they should I probably still could. Will keep you guys posted on future developments related to this.
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UPDATES!!!!
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So here are some ALMOST finished pics. When I have finished the last little bit of sleeving that is required (just waiting on some sleeving from MurderMod), then I will put up some better photos. These ones just taken with my crappy point and shoot, and so they're not very impressive. But you can at least see the layout, and some close ups of the hardware.
I removed all the little backplates from my cards and got them and my aero-slots powdercoated to match the interior of the case.
Now it looks really attractive from the back as well!
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Originally Posted by shazza
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