Dream of the Blue Turtles

Grez

Well, this thing is still taking a lot longer than I'd like, but there was more progress last night. First of all the window fixes...

As I mentioned before, I scratched my acrylic windows while installing them. I did some research and found some good advice on how to fix this issue. The general process is as follows:

1) Sand around scratch with 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper, using plenty of water and soap as a lubricant. Do this until the scratch is gone.
2) Clean area, and sand again with 1000-1200 grit sandpaper, "hazing" affected area, and creating a finer surface.
3) Clean again, and now scrub over area several times with metal polish (you can get this at the auto parts store). This is going to require some elbow grease and some time. I personally went over this at least five times per window. However, when you're done, almost all of the hazing should be gone.
4) Clean, and give it a final polish 1-3 times with silver polish, which is somewhat finer than the metal polish.
5) Stand back and smile at your repair.

So here we go...the top window after sanding out the scratch:


And fixed:


And my side window...right next to the etching! Grrrrrr...


But it was fixed as well...voila! No scratch left!



As for further progress, a little was made last night before I collapsed...I decided that I couldn't live with the bare metal hole in front, even though it was never going to be visible. I'm freaky like that. So, I put some c-channel on it to make it look better:


Got the mobo and proc mounted to the pretty white mobo tray:

This tray is a pain, because it only has the left six standard holes...had to use washers, etc., and mod the right three to make the board mount properly. This case is just granting me no mercy at all! LOL

Last but not least, the case is slowly starting to come together...looking nice so far, and really happy with my "redo" of the front panel:


More later today/tonight...

mechem

wow good method for fixing acrylic... gonna remember that.

and omg it looks schwet.

jay.scratch

looks pretty good

RedRoseWolF

looks great, color scheme worked out more than good!

Rob!

That is looking very, very nice! The blue/white go together perfectly.

keyoshi

that looks fu*cking hawt! I like the blue and white. That scratch removal (sp? <-- tired) guide is pretty cool. Too bad I don't have a window, I just skimmed through it, but it looks good. My friend really likes that computer, he said he wan'ts you to bulid him one :P

SacredTbag

that's turning out pretty damn good for a ****ty original case. keep up the good work man!

Pulshion

very nice paint job, nice window cuts and etching...i dont really like how u molded windows tho...i dont like molding windows with rubber things, i rather screw

keyoshi

Rubber makes it look clean IMO...I like it better than rivet windows...

Grez

Well, if the price is right...I spent about 60 hours on this one (at least)...could get pretty expensive... But, of course, this stuff works out faster if you're not trying to mod an old case.

Heh heh...thanks, man...it's been a freakin' uphill battle. At no point have things just gone smoothly...I've had to duke it out with this case the whole way. But, I'm done now (turned it over to the bro today), and it did turn out like I wanted. I'll still try to get to a full post tonight...should be a long one! LOL

Yeah, I debated the molding vs. screwing around a sanded cutout thing, and I think I prefer the molding as well. Unless you pay to water or laser cut the opening, it just looks kind of hacked up unless you seal the window with molding. Maybe some of the other guys are just better with their Dremels than I am and can get it looking perfect, but for me the only way to get a good professional look out of it without sending off the side panel is to use the molding. So that's what I opted for in this build. It actually sets everything off nicely in reality...the black looks really clean on the finished product. You'll be able to see all of that in my post later.

Thanks, everyone for all of the comments...I read 'em all, good and bad. Of course, if you don't agree with me, I pretty much frickin' ignore you.

J/K...seriously, I'm glad people are interested in this build. I expected it to be short and simple, and then I saw a lot of potentional and just couldn't let it go until it was done right. So, without further ado, I'm going to get on posting my last steps and pics of the final build. More to come...

Dr_Doom

I love the customized fan lol. I skipped to page 3, so I'm gonna go back and find out this scratch removal thing, my main rig is an acrylic case :)

Quick question, the case was rivetted together right? Did you re-rivet it when you put it back together? Or did the parts you took off not take rivets. Just wondering for my own mod reference :p

Grez

Well, a lot was riveted and some was screwed. So I left any riveted parts together where possible, and just had some tricky painting to do. Anything that I could unscrew, take apart, and paint properly, I did. The top panel in this case is a dang nightmare. It takes like eight or nine screws to get it off, and you can't remove it unless you've first removed both side panels and popped off the front panel, which requires pushing out the plastic plugs from the inside with a screwdriver after you've removed six screws that hold it (the front panel, that is) in place. The front panel is two pieces of plastic that snap together, and it's a pain too. Basically, this is probably the weirdest case I've ever worked inside, but it looks really good done. It's pretty, but it's difficult. Come to think of it, I dated a couple of girls like that earlier in my life...

Grez

This is gonna be a loooonnngggg one y'all, so brace yourselves...

Ok, first of all, we have to go back in time a couple of days when I was still working out some of the final bits and pieces...

With a good portion of the build well in hand, I got around to putting the cooler on the CPU and getting the mobo tray into the cage. I chose the Asus Star Ice, mostly because it fit the look I was going for in this machine, and I've always been curious to install it. A few people tried to steer me away from this (didn't like barrel coolers, apparently), but their fears were ill-founded. This is a great cooler (more on that later). I will say that because of its completely universal nature, and the fact that apparently Asus can't afford to hire anyone who speaks even relatively good English to write their manuals (almost infreakindecipherable), it was a little tough to figure out how to install it (not like the 2 minutes to put on a Zalman 7000 series). But once it was on there, it looked great:

Also in this pic, you can see a couple of beige wires to the right that I haven't yet routed at this point...these are for the front USB and Firewire ports (old case didn't have any). I found a kit that fits into a 3.5" bay that did the trick nicely. There are a lot of hub/passthrough kits out there, but I hate those...you have to run wires from the back panel through an additional PCI slot and all the way across the machine...they don't use a header on the mobo, and the wires are a mess. Plus, most people want $20 for them. This kit goes straight to the headers on the mobo, and it was $5.99 from Directron (hint, hint Xox...stock these, they're great) and came in a variety of optional colors. Now, you have to place every individual pin, which is a pain, but the end result is pretty nice.

Another challenge was the Zalman fan controller I chose. Again, I chose it mostly for aesthetics, but figured it was reliable because it was a Zalman. Plus, I needed something that would control more than four fans, and this one handles six (also fit the budget at about $30). Because it's not the full size of a drive (depth-wise), you have to route the wires a looooonnng way to get to the controller. Also, it controls four 3-pin fans the "normal" way (i.e., just plug 'em in), but will also control two 2-wire fans (usually 4-pin molex plugs but with only two wires). However, it doesn't have any ports to plug these in...you have to cut the connectors off of the ends, and mount the bare wires through a hole and screw them down like you do with loudspeakers. It works great once you get the wires there, but considering that now pluggable extension wires aren't an option (like with three-pin fans), it takes major effort to route the fans there. I had to solder on additional wire after clipping off the molex plugs:

I had some old speaker wire and old PSU wire that were the right gauge, and this worked great. But I can forget about ever selling those fans! LOL! Modded and p0wned!

Next, I finally installed the false bottom to hide wires running across the base of the cage. It turned out great:

I used weather stripping from Home Depot (about 1/4" thick, and 5/8" wide) with velcro on the bottom to stick it down to the bottom of the case and give it some height to run the wires under. You'd faint if you saw all of the wires under there...there are about 25-30 runs underneath there (lighted case feet/switch, cathodes/switch, front USB/firewire, front panel lights, power/reset, speaker, etc). There was no place, and I mean no place to hide the additional rear USB and firewire port wires (see those big @ss connectors...no way is that wire going to bend enough to get under the panel), so the best option was just to run them straight across and get them as neat as I could...ended up looking ok, nothing to gripe about considering everything else got hidden.

By now, I had at least moved from the cold garage into the house (yea!), but what a mess...


By this point, the rig was starting to slowly take shape:


The last thing I did that night was stealth both of the optical drives. After lots of carving of plastic and some fancy velco work, I had two very pretty stealthed drives, and I tested their functionality by plugging their power leads to one of my other functioning PCs. Here's one:


Unfortunately, I had to scrap the stealth job. They looked great and worked...until you put them in this case. Again, the case was attempting to p0wn me, as the designers made it so that the slot covers were kept more tightly in place by actually putting pressure on one another. Thus, the drives wouldn't function properly with the stealth covers in place. Grrrrrrr...I swore a few furious oaths, picked a plan B, and got some three-in-the-morning shuteye to prepare for the next day.
________________

So, the next day, I woke up early and started painting the drive covers themselves to match the front of the case since the stealth thing didn't work out:

This ended up looking just about as good (that paint is good stuff) and I was able to still use one of the bay covers on the bottom even without its tabs by just using some masking tape back in there. Magic!

Just to help you further appreciate the challenge of wire management in this cramped case, here's a shot of the back where I had to cram all of the flippin' wires that couldn't run across the bottom:

You can see that I was able to sneak one of the unused power leads behind the mobo tray through the notch I cut out in foresight. Everything else had a molex on it, and this meant that everything else was too fat to fit there! So, it all had to be stuffed behind the drive bays. It looks like a rat's nest, but I promise that it is very carefully controlled chaos, with lots of ties to get it all spread out and laying as flat as possible. In fact, I think I have something like 40 twist ties in this case! There are also quite a few wires running inside of the horizontal brace and up the vertical channel to the left just outside of the area where the rear panel has to latch. Wire management in this case took about 4-5 hours to get around all of the challenges.

Here's a look at the wire management with the side panel off:

As much as possible, when wires had to be exposed, I put them in the corners so that the case panel would cover them up fairly well when it was on. I will make you a certain promise right now that there is no possible way to hide more wires than I have in this case. None. No flipping hard drives around, etc. Trust me, I looked at all options and planned very carefully (I guess this makes up for the old jungle vine look from the first page of this worklog - LOL). So if anyone has any "dude, do some more WM flip the hard drive or sumthin you can hide more" comments, I will know they didn't read this, and I will personally drive to wherever they are, rip off their arms, and beat them to death with them like a wookie.

And here's the wire management with the panel on (notice how much more is hidden this way):


A shot of my nice, clean case floor hiding more wire mess:

Baby, check out that flo, it be clean fo sho fo sho!

And finally, this baby gets turned on for the first time:


No sooner do I prove that it works ok then I have to hook up my bro's old hard drive and transfer over files. Everything was wired so neatly that I didn't know how I was going to reach it at first! But, I remembered I had a 36" PATA cable and with the help of a power splitter used as an extension, everything worked out fine:


And then it was time to get some more shuteye...and beathe a sigh of relief...
________________

So today was the day to install more software (including Far Cry and Doom 3 so that my bro can try this thing out properly) and then just take a bunch of glamor shots. So here are all of the pretty pictures of the finished product. I hope y'all dig it. I'm pretty happy with it.

Daylight shots:

Windowed side panel:


Corner shot showing full side panel (and that nice gloss white paint...yummy):


The top window in the daytime:


Corner shot showing the window panel:


Shot from the front:

I don't know how well you can see it in the picture, but if you notice, I painted the inside door of the floppy drive metallic blue to match the rest of the panel and offset the bright white of the floppy drive itself. Details, details...

The back (everything needs to be pretty in my book):

Note the anodized blue thumb-screws to offset the white casing. Again, details...

And a shot with my two-year-old boy, Ian, 'cause he wanted to be in a picture too (never too early to learn):

And yeah, he spilled orange juice on his pants right before we took the picture FTW. LMAO

And now, in-the-dark light up shots:


Oooooo...preeeetttttyyyy...

The top with turtle etching:

You can see the nice blue glow lighting the turtle...that's from a 3-LED laser light stuck between the top DVD drive and the case top...it fits exactly (no extra room). The other issue with mounting it there was that the molex connector couldn't squeeze through the opening to the side to get it near a power source. So, I had to remove all of the wires for both connectors (this one is a pass-through), slip the bare wires through, and then put them back together once they were routed in order to get them where I needed them. But, it was worth the trouble, as the end effect is truly cool. Also, I'm happy with the chrome effect on the top DVD, as it makes an excellent reflective layer.

A side-panel close-up:

Here, you can see that the intake fan I chose for the side is one of the stove-style fans, where the LEDs actually spin with the fan blades, creating those pretty concentric circles. They should up great through the symmetrical hurricane-style fan guards. You may also notice in the bottom right-hand corner, a lighted molex. Due to wire length constraints, this plug was going to have to be exposed in the corner rather than hidden behind the drive bays. I figured that if it had to be exposed, it should at least be pretty, so I added a Firefly molex light inbetween to light it up and make it part of the show.

A further-away shot from the side:

This shot is good for showing the eight-pattern Sunbeam lighted case feet. I like always-on mode, but if you like yours all flashy, it'll do that too (or you can shut it off entirely). It's a nice ground effect for the case, not to mention these feet got the case off of the ground further so that the front intake fan wouldn't be such a dust-sucker.

From the side, looking toward the rear:

This shot shows off both pretty stove fans and also the very slick (all chrome and lights) MGE XG Vigor 500 PSU (best affordable PSU on the market, hands-down). You can also see the blue LED cannon near the PSU, which has a little buddy further down on the rear panel that you can't see in this shot...they help light up the intake fan turtle. This is also a good place to see the big 90mm fan the on Star Ice cooler. When it blows through that big cube of copper heat fins attached to three heat pipes and a copper mount, it keeps things nice and cold...27-29 degrees C at idle and normal operation. I haven't tested it under load yet, but last time I checked, those were practically water-cooling temps (I'm sure the Arctic Silver 5 didn't hurt, either).

From the front:


Front and top:


And a shot from the top toward the bottom (how you usually see the case while standing up) to see how nice that false floor makes thing look under lighting:


Home at last (a couple of pics once this bad boy got delivered to my bro's house...home sweet home):


And with some lights:

________________

And so ends this very looonnnggg saga (was supposed to be about a week...ended up three or four). I know there are many more extreme cases out there, but I'm just really happy with how this one turned out. I was going for a clean look that fit my brother's tastes, and was also trying to do the mod on a small budget, and I believe I accomplished both things. For turning the boring into the beautiful, I don't believe I've been more proud of any of my previous mods than this one. The Dream of the Blue Turtles is complete.

Parts I used (off the top of my head):

Gigabyte K8NF-9 motherboard (nForce4, AMD socket 939, SATA, 7.1 surround, spdif in/out, PCIe, Gigabit ethernet, 10X USB 2.0, Firewire, not to mention a pretty blue color to match the rest of the build!)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 939 chipset
Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT
Front USB 2.0/Firewire unit
1 Gb Corsair PC3200 ValueRam (dual channel)
Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 160Gb SATA
MSI DVD ROM
Previous CD Burner
MGE XG Vigor 500W PSU
Zalman ZM-MFC1 Fan Controller
Asus Star Ice Universal CPU Cooler
2X Stove-style fans (side intake, rear exhaust)
1X Silent blue LED fan (top blowhole...not so noisy this way)
1X CoolerMaster Rifle bearing blue LED fan (front intake)
Dual blue cold cathode kit (Logisys)
2X blue LED cannon
1X blue 3 LED laser light
1X Firefly molex light
Sunbeam lighted case feet
Blue anodized thumb screws
80mm vibration dampeners
PSU vibration dampener
3X hurricane laser-cut fan grills
Top window kit
Acrylic and tubing for custom side window
3X Dupli-Color Truck, Van, and SUV paint (Intense Pearl Blue)
2X Dupli-Color auto High Gloss White
1X Krylon Fusion High Gloss White
1X Dupli-Color White Primer
2X Dupli-Color Gray Primer
Automotive chrome 3" trim tape
Scrap Metal

Total cost of build: about $800, give or take $25 or $30. Pretty good.

I have a couple of possible future upgrades, but I can't list them, as it may ruin Christmas and birthday ideas for my brother, who will surely read my geek log here. But one small thing (although a big effort in this case) may be to some day remove the green power LED that came with the case and solder in a new blue LED. But we'll see about that.

In any case, I'm putting this one to bed for now. And speaking of bed...I need some sleep myself. Nighty night, kiddies. I'll see ya around the next build.

Grez out

R.Carter

Awesome! Nice attention to detail.

Looks like your PSU is chromed. How does it look next to the chrome tape?

Dr_Doom

Flippin amazing Grez. You have given me plenty of ideas for my own mod. :) I am getting more and more fascinated by the window etchings I have seen lately. I will have to do a search for a good tutorial some time. I want to stay up and work on my own mod now but alas I don't have nearly any resources to change out with, and my body actually feels like it is shutting down (See: Muscles tired). Only a few times in the past has this happened to me, that I actually felt like there was no solution but to go to bed :/

Blazin Trav

I would have painted the white a lighter metallic blue color, but other than that looks good.

Grez

I thought about something like that, but I really wanted more contrast, and so white ended up being the right answer. But thanks for the love, anyway.

Grez

Heh heh...well, get some sleep, man. I'm glad you like it, and hey, if it helps you out with your ideas at all, then I've done my job in this worklog. As far as the etchings go, it's really more about patience than anything else.

The basic steps of etching are:
1) find a pattern you like
2) Print it out as a mirror image
3) Tape it to the outside of your window (assuming you're etching a window)
4) Now flip the window over and trace the image onto the inside of the window with a Sharpie (or thin Sharpie if more detail is needed). Regular water-soluable markers won't work.
5) And now you can just etch until all of the marker is gone, filling in other spots where needed. Voila! You have an etching.

Things to remember while etching:
1) While tracing, if there are areas inside the etching that are not going to be etched, make sure you make you marks completely outside of that area (i.e., don't trace too far inside of an eyeball, etc)...be sure that your marker borders but does not encroach upon the area you want to leave pristine.
2) Have a couple of different etching attachments available for your rotary tool. I have a flat 1/8", standard round 1/8", and a 1/16" detail etching tool. I did almost all of the turtles with the 1/16" because I wanted a lot of little detailed grooves in there, but most of the time (and most people) just use the round 1/8" tool. So, it was nice to have a couple of options. If you want to get really crazy, a 1/32" is also available.
3) Always, always, always put a soft cloth underneath the other side of your acrylic that you're etching, or else you'll end up with all sorts of little scratches on the outside of your window. This is definitely not the effect you're going for.
4) Take your time and be patient. If you slip, you'll screw the thing up and have to throw out the whole window (unless you're into having a ghetto-looking window in there with obvious mistakes).

There ya go...that's my two cents' worth...hope it helps. And thanks again for all of the nice comments, dude.

Yep, the PSU is chromed, and it actually looks really good opposite the chromed-via-auto-trim-tape DVD ROM. Actually, the match is so close that you probably didn't even notice that I put a piece of chrome tape on top of the PSU. They put the spec sticker for this beautiful PSU on the top of it, and it (again) looked ugly through the window. So, I cut a piece to just barely cover this area (in case I wanted to remove it later to help my bro sell the PSU or something and still wanted the stat sticker on there), and it blends almost perfectly.

I'm thinking about taking it off of some sweet jumps later on.

Thanks for the compliments, man!

keyoshi

looks awsome. I like that false floor. Looks really nice..at first it didn't look so good to me, but then with the window on and the computer on it looks 100x better. I take it you guys like gigabyte?? BTW, nice tsunami :D

Grez

Thanks, man. Yeah, you can't really appreciate the floor when the case panel is off and you can see underneath it to all of the junk...but once everything is buttoned up, you can see what a huge difference it makes.

And yes, I like Gigabyte boards quite a bit. They're on my short list of mobo manufacturers (along with Asus, DFI, and MSI). I've seen some people complain about them, but I can't figure that out. I've installed about 10-12 Gigabyte boards (several different models), and never had a problem with one of them. They've all been feature-rich, fast, stable, and well-priced (with perhaps the exception of my K8NXP-SLI, which is so cool that I didn't mind paying for it). Frankly, most of the time when I've heard guys complain about those boards, it seems like PEBCAK (problem exists between chair and keyboard) rather than the boards themselves. But maybe I'm just lucky. In any case, I've had nothing but success with Gigabyte products, and I plan to keep buying from them. Although, I will concede that their customer support sucks (had a GPU BIOS flash issue...took a long time to get resolved). Other than that, though, really good stuff.

Oh, and the Tsunami case is for my multimedia PC. I really like that case...easy to work in.