My first mod... a completely custom case.

Walleye · Post by **Walleye** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 10:28 pm

ever since i saw mp3car.com, i've been planning towards this. this is my car-puter... it's not complete yet, but i've very nearly completed one of the biggest steps. building the case.

here it is as it stands now. it's currently running at a decent 45 degrees C under full load with XP2800 stock cooling.

specs are:

MSI KM2M Combo-L --- I needed a motherboard with a small form factor and accepting of SD-RAM. i know people dont like via chipsets, but i havent had any trouble yet, and i keep it running folding@home all the time. 55 dollars.

AMD Duron 1.8 ghz, with stock cooling off XP2800+. --- On my reccommendation, when my brother built his computer, he got an aero7 blower, leaving me the stock cooling.

40-X dollars. (X = the price i sell the ECS mobo that came with the combo for.)

Sparkle 180 watt Power Supply --- purchased from Frys for this purpose, for 20 dollars.

WD 40 gig 7200 RPM HDD. purchased from newegg before i got the idea of MIR's, for the princely sum of 58 dollars. i was stupid, i know...

On with the pics:

smb · Post by **smb** » Sun Apr 11, 2004 11:39 pm

Nice work.

Walleye · Post by **Walleye** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:14 am

just did today.

BillyGoat · Post by **BillyGoat** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:26 am

You need a fan grill-

If you dont have one PM me

Pugsley · Post by **Pugsley** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 1:39 am

Fan grills are for weenes. I say let Darwin do his damn job.

Walleye · Post by **Walleye** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 1:43 am

Originally posted by BillyGoat
You need a fan grill- If you dont have one PM me

i have several... that's not the problem. the problem lies in that i need to properly mount the fan in the first place to place a fan grill, and that includes getting more than 1 screw through the plastic. (3 stripped heads while trying to drill.. gonna have to redrill larger)

Pugsley · Post by **Pugsley** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 7:49 am

just uses small nuts and bolts to put hold it in place instead of the mutant wood screws.

Walleye · Post by **Walleye** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:31 pm

Originally posted by Pugsley
just uses small nuts and bolts to put hold it in place instead of the mutant wood screws.

took your advice... worked easier than i had thought. i got the fan grill installed, and now it's currently working. i also got the switch that controls the CL's on the outside of the case, so i can turn it off at night.

Nomad · Post by **Nomad** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:44 pm

Any thoughts on what the Temps are inside that case at times under load and at idle? Seems to me like its a nice case, just not as much air flow as I would like in a case. Maybe one or two more fans?

Also I would reccommend either buying or rounding the cables yourself, would clean it up a little. Other than that its looks excellent.

Walleye · Post by **Walleye** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 6:52 pm

well.. considering it's registering the ambient temp as 18 degrees (both under load and at idle), i'm suprised how well it's holding temps. i will probably add another fan, below the hard drive.. just later.

edit:

i think that because it's a small volume case, it exchanges all the air really quickly, so it doesnt have a chance to build up an ambient air temp. i did reverse the top fan and made it an exhaust fan for a couple minutes, but it quickly shot up to 21 degrees ambient and was still on the rise. i turned it off and turned it back around to being a intake fan, cause for this purpose, it seems to work a lot better.

Nomad · Post by **Nomad** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 7:04 pm

Nice, suprising how low that temp is. But you are proabably right though, being that it IS a smaller case, the air flow is proabably much faster in and out of it...... But I still reccommend another fan, as you can never go wrong with another one of those

I currently have 7 inside my case, but only 6 if you dont count the Power Supply's. (2 on the side panel, one on the back end, one from my LCD control panel, and two on a hard drive cooler I bought)

Walleye · Post by **Walleye** » Fri Apr 16, 2004 2:11 pm

alright.. this happened yesterday, but i forgot to post it.

i cleaned up my room, and cleaned up the desk this is sitting on. (now i have all the stuff i have for sale sitting under the desk) and the desktop is now more usable.

in these pics, i have added the fan grill, made the power switch to the lights accessible, and covered the lights in brake light repair tape to make them less pink. They dont look great in these pics, but at night the light is less overpowering, and more blood red "navy ship ambient red" light. it's nice. makes a nice nightlight, too.

I still need to permanantly attach the light switch to the outside (i'm eyeing the area between the power supply and the motherboard.. or just above the motherboard, i need to buy a decent power switch (not the cheap plastic thing i bought for my camry.. this is a corolla now, damnit.) I also have a couple of LED's to put on the case for hdd access and power.

I also need to repaint the aluminum.. the bottom looks terrible. and i need to give it some sort of protective coating.

as far as software goes, i still need to optomize the operating system (the black viper list and msconfig), install winamp and palmamp (i'm deciding between 2.91 and 5.. i'm thinking 2.91) and just a few other tricks and stuff. i'm currently stress testing it by 2 weeks of constant folding. it's performing admirably so far. the sound is only a little annoying. (funny... i would have thought a vantec stealth would be well.. stealthier...)

Nomad · Post by **Nomad** » Fri Apr 16, 2004 3:41 pm

I believe they sell (at most hardware places) a sort of "Rubber Paint" that seems, to me, would be an awesome solution to both the coloring and protecting of this case.

FanTum · Post by **FanTum** » Fri Apr 16, 2004 5:54 pm

Looks kool, good job!

123cool · Post by **123cool** » Mon May 10, 2004 4:28 pm

Ermm one question where is the cd-rom and floppy drive? Other than that looks great. love to have my own case like that.