4472 Deluxe - personal rig worklog - updated

Grez

I've been so busy building rigs for other people over the past year that I really haven't touched my own. My primary gaming rig had some good components, but it was still housed in an old case (Inwin Q500 - full tower steel server case); basically, it was beige and ugly. Despite the fact I really wanted to mod it, I just didn't feel that I had the time. But circumstance conspired to get me started on it (although this will probably not be finished for another month or two)...

For those of you who kept up with my previous worklog, you may remember that my Dream of the Blue Turtles project was for my brother, who is definitely a gamer, but not hardcore. Given his budget, a 6600GT video card was perfect for him in terms of price and performance. I was running exactly this card, and was looking to bump up to the 7800GT. So, he got a deal and I got some money to put toward a new card. Here is where things start to get complicated.

By bumping up to the 7800GT, I needed a PSU that had the 6-pin PCIe power lead on it (I don't like converters if I don't have to use them). While my previous A+GPB 500W thermostat-controlled PSU was rock-solid, it didn't have the PCIe power leads on it, and so I opted to pick up a new PSU. I'd been drooling over the MGE XG Magnum for some time, and so I decided to pull the trigger on it. It is an amazing PSU (I like it better than one of my previous 500W Enermax units), and I'll blab all about it at another time (in another thread, most likely), but here's the real kicker: it wouldn't fit into my old case properly. Yep. See, the Magnum is a "radiator" cooled PSU...it's completely silent, with huge internal copper heat sinks attached to an external cube of copper fins via heatpipes, and primarily uses ambient air to cool itself (it does have an 80mm silent fan that will kick on if the temp or wattage pull spikes up). This works amazingly well, but it also means that there is a large radiator unit sticking out of the back of the case. While this fits just fine in most newer cases, the Inwin Q500 is an older case and the cutout for the ATX PSU just doesn't have enough clearance to install this beast.

So, here I was, with a non-functioning primary rig, a 7800GT (just itching for some game time) which would solve my graphics card problem, but which needed a new PSU to function, which I had, but which I couldn't install until I started chopping on my case. What to do? Say "oh, hell with it" and start the modding process, that's what!

So for now, I concentrated on all of the things I needed to do to get the system back up and functional (and keep me from having to tear it all of the way down again). So we'll call it 50% complete. The name this rig, by the by, is the 4472 Deluxe, which is what I named it years back when I did my first build in this case...it's just a dumb reference to my birthday. Spelling "Deluxe" with an "e" on the end was just an attempt at making a witty reference suggesting some anachronistic mechanical device. Whatever.

But, first things first. For those of you who have never seen an Inwin Q500, it's huge (22"-23" tall), beige, and made of sixteen gauge plate steel. Yep, that's right -- about double the thickness of normal steel cases. It's built like a frigging Sherman tank. This makes modding challenging, but certainly not impossible. I did make one decision, though: this is not going to be a windowed case. Some of the mods I'm planning may not be conducive to a window. I'm going to have a few cool glowy effects on it, but no window. Unless, of course, I change my mind. I'm also not setting out to make the most extreme mod, just one that I'll be happy with. I just figure that it's about time that I spend some time making my own gaming rig look as good as the ones I've been building for friends and family.

So, here's the behemoth I'm starting with:



I KNOW that someone right now has to be going "dude, is that a freakin' 5.25" floppy drive?!?" Yes, indeed it is, my friend. I bought it for $3 to convert some old programs from when I was just a kid. Unfortunately, it's getting the axe after this build, because I need its slot for the fan controller, and I'm using the remaining empty slot for a Thermaltake X-Ray.

So, it was time to part this bad boy out and tear the sucker down to the cage:

My box o' parts


It's a bit hard to see in this shot, but you'll notice that this cage is so sturdy that it has steel braces along both side, rather than just one side, like most cases. It makes it strong, but it also means you can't sneak wires up across the back of the thing either...nightmare wire management situation. You can also see that I've already cut a blowhole in the top panel at this point.

Things that I planned after a bit of thought:
1) Enlarge PSU port in back to house Magnum PSU
2) Add more airflow! This giant case only has a single 80mm intake fan mount, and only two 80mm rear exhaust mounts. It does have nice vents, but especially since my new PSU is not going to exhaust air, this had to change! There will be a top blowhole added, two additional 80mm front intake fans (that serve another purpose...see below), and a 120mm side intake. I want some positive pressure in this case (not too much, just a little), as my computer room tends to get dusty, and I want to end its tendency to be a dust-sucker.
3) Create a built-in hard drive cooler. The one intake fan is actually below the 6-slot HDD cage on this beast (remember, this case is big). This creates a hot spot around the hard drives. I want to blow some air through there. The problem is that in new cases, a fan is mounted inside of the main steel cage but in front of the HDD cage. The HDD cage in this case fits flush with the front of the main steel cage, so no dice there. However, I measured the clearance between the steel cage and the plastic front bezel, and found there was enough clearance in there for a fan. I measured the HDD cage, and realized that it is just a little taller than two 80mm fans. So, I will have a custom, built-in HDD cooler in this puppy sandwiched between the outside of the steel cage and the inside of the plastic front bezel.
4) To make the above HDD cooler mod work, I'm going to have to chop a big hole in the plastic bezel, which means a custom fan guard(s) of some kind.
5) A badge light to function as an additional power light (to cover the ugly 1X1 indention intended for a case badge that all old cases used to come with).
6) Front USB/Firewire ports. This is an old case...USB wasn't yet a ubiquitous interface when it was manufactured. I'm putting the ports in the side of the front plastic bezel, using a set of ports that came with the mobo that are intended to mount into a PCI slot in the back of the case.
7) A flame paint job (and perhaps some flame-edge light effects...we'll see). I want to use a slightly different color scheme than is completely common, so I'm going with a metallic blue base with yellow and orange flames "bonfiring" backward from the front of the case. All interior parts, cables, etc., will be blue/orange/yellow as well, wherever possible. All trim will be chrome or black, depending on what fits each situation best. I want the whole thing to have an automotive feel without imitating any particular vehicle.

Some things may change (they always do, right?), but that's the basic premise.

Tools being used:
- Skill laser-guided jigsaw
- Milwaukee 7.5 amp hammerdrill
- Blu-Mol bi-metal hole saws (1 1/4", 3", and 4.5")
- B&D Wizard multi-speed rotary tool (heavy duty cut-off wheels, sanding drums, polishers, tungsten-carbide cutter)
- Nibbler
- Bastard (half-round file)
- Cold Fuzion soldering gun
- Sand paper (220 grit, 320 grit, 600 grit, 1000 grit)
- Automotive primer and paint
- Ratcheting screwdriver
- Many, many clamps
- Hammers
- Beer
- Patience
___________________________

Now, to make the first cuts...

Here's what the back looked like before the necessary changes for the Magnum:

Note that the lower 80mm fan cutout is really close to the edges (no slush space). That's going to make cutting it out a little dicey, and also make it hard to mount trim.

And here's the front of the cage:

You can see the rectangle of holes there...that's the area that the HDD cage gets mounted behind. I have to cut holes in it and make some fan mounting holes there as well (a little tricky having to set them inbetween the other holes already in the cage). Also, the bottom 80mm fan currently mounts into an internal plastic cage, which I don't like in terms of airflow or noise. So, it's getting pitched, and the fan will mount directly to the steel.

And here's the back after making the necessary modifications for the Magnum:

This is pre-clean up with the Dremel sander. You can see that it just needed a little bit of wiggle-room to get properly mounted. Five minutes of cutting with a Dremel, and we're good to go.

And here's the front of the cage after chopping out the three 80mm fan holes for the front intake/HDD cooler using the Milwaukee hammer drill and the 3" hole saw:

The edges are a little rough since I was cutting through a patten of little holes...no problem, as these will either be completely covered or edged. You'll also notice another 1 1/4" hole off to the side of the bottom intake. I realized with some of the lighting effects and the front USB ports I am trying to hide in the plastic bezel that I was going to need an additional place to run back wires from the bezel to the motherboard. So I made a nice hole to run all of that stuff through.

And here is the back again after getting rid of the pre-fab 80mm punchouts there as well:

You can see that I slipped while grinding on the PSU hole...this later got filled with JB Weld and sanded smooth so that it isn't noticeable after the paint job.

Some of the tools used for cleaning up/trimming the cuts (the brew is the most important, of course):


Just for grins...the metal holes I chopped out of the case with the hole saw:

Remember, I'm cutting through 1/16" plate steel...these suckers took about five times as long to cut as with a standard steel or aluminum case. They fall out of the bottom smokin' hot, and I'm unable to pick them up for at least a minute or two.
___________________________

Now that the initial cuts are made, it's time to paint the cage.

Despite the fact that this is not going to be a windowed case (at least not now), I refuse to leave the inside gray and boring. I want it to look cool when the side panel comes off. Also, even though the front of the cage will be almost completely covered by the plastic bezel, there will be a little space to see through since I'm cutting a hole for the HDD cooler. That, and high gloss paint makes a nice reflective surface as well (for the internal lighting I plan to put in there). So, I'm going to go ahead and paint the front bright yellow to match the front bezel.

Everything gets sanded with 320-grit paper, and then cleaned with denatured alcohol. Then, it's time to tape things off and begin:


Voila! Pretty yellow!

I couldn't find high-gloss automotive yellow in standard rattle cans, and wasn't willing to pay $75 per pint for the fancy schmancy stuff. However, I found high temperature engine enamel, which is sturdy and high gloss, and opted to use that. It takes a lot of coats to get it even, but it looks fantastic once it's done.

The HDD cage is also bright yellow to match the front:


The slide-out server motherboard tray is gloss Chevy orange:

Again, I had trouble finding affordable automotive gloss orange standard paint, but was able to obtain engine enamel in the desired color. Only downside: a seven-day cure time. But man, does it look good when it's done. The picture doesn't capture the shine fully.

At this point, my good Canon digital camera crapped out on me. The good news is that even though it's out of warranty, Canon is going to repair it for free (including shipping). So props to Canon. The bad news is that the only thing I had available at this point was my POS camera phone. So, I apologize for the quality of many of the following pictures, but that's what we're stuck with for now.

Anyway, I got the rest of the cage painted the metallic blue that I like so much...I used the same Dupli-color Intense Pearl Blue that I used on the Dream of the Blue Turtles project. Love this color:


And, the two-tone yellow on blue:

It's hard to see in this picture, but you can kind of make out the dual side rails that make this cage so strong. You can also see why it's such a WM nightmare, as anything other than very small cables can't sneak up behind the motherboard, but must instead be routed through the large hole provided in the middle of the cage. Also, since the case is so tall, this makes for long cables being used. You can see why this (among many other reasons) made me decide not to build a windowed case, but try out different things to make it unique instead.

Here is the paint that was used:

Yep, almost five cans of paint, and 2 1/2 cans of primer, and I haven't even started on the outside of the case (although I've sprayed the front panel, which will be in the next section of this work log). But it's worth it...this thing looks really, really good so far.

I have more done, but couldn't start my worklog until I had my machine up and running again (some of my initial pics were on this rig)! So, there will be much more to come very soon in another post, after which there will probably be silence for a couple of weeks, and then the really fancy stuff will start. Stay tuned, y'all...

CreatedMind07

Dang thats gonna be nice. Man... Havent seen a 5.25" floppy drive in years...

AS45-70

Im diggin the Yellow and Orange, its bright and not the norm.

I look forward to seeing more.

Thx for sharing

CreatedMind07

Whats that Orange called? Its bright as hell....

AS45-70

probably this color

CreatedMind07

Lol... Teach me to read...

AS45-70

You must have got soem high quality Humbolt weed to miss that one.

RedRoseWolF

looking good, i still have some 5.25 floppy discs in my closet, no idea whats on em, can only go by the titles, those two pics make it looks like they're glowing...or was this done after taking the picture?

CreatedMind07

Nope, just didnt want to read the long worklog. Lol...

Grez

Thanks, everyone. Nope, I didn't doctor the pictures at all...the gloss is high enough on those parts that they created their own glow off of the flash...they're that shiney (I'm assuming we're primarily talking about the mobo tray...that thing practically looks like it's lit from inside). The engine enamel is a little tough to work with, as it doesn't seem to atomize as finely as standard paint, and you have to put it on a little more "wet" than regular auto paint. But with a little patience, it creates a really nice finish.

imput1234

Looks good so far. Dang that case is humungous

Grez

Patience, young Padawan, patience...

Thanks, man. Yeah, it's pretty dang huge. But I really like it, which is why I decided to mod it rather than just buy something new. The only case I've seen (that's even vaguely affordble) that is bigger than my Q500 is this one:

http://www.xoxide.com/chenming901.html

It's like 1" bigger. But it holds fewer 3.5" drives. Go figure. Not like you need that many (six) anyway! Still, at only $40, I'd like to see someone pick one of these up and do a big case mod like the one I'm working on. It would be great to compare notes.

Thanks...yeah, I wanted to pick a different color scheme. Lots of people (including me) have a black case laying around. Black/red is popular, silver/red is popular, silver/blue is popular, monotones are popular...I just want something that is different enough to be original without looking like I'm trying too hard.

jay.scratch

nice case to mod but must be hard to make cuts on tha steal
keep it up

Grez

It definitely is. Because the cage is so big, I braced it in my B&D Workmate portable workbench, and had to climb on a small two-step ladder to get high enough to use the hole saw on a couple of those cuts (and I'm 6'2"). Well, that bad-@ss Milwaukee bound up on one of the cuts (hole saw teeth must have grabbed one of those little holes in the punch-out), and it damn near ripped my arm out of the socket. The hammer drill went flying across the room, put a chip in the cement garage floor (the sucker is heavy), but the steel cage didn't even warp. Not one millimeter. I'm telling you, it's like cutting through armor. But at least I never have to worry about damage to components once the thing is together!

R.Carter

I hate it when that happens.

That is one big fuggin' case. How wide is it?

Glad to read that you will be window free.

Can't wait to see the project unfold. You do great work.

Blazin Trav

http://www.xoxide.com/chenming901.html

^^ Looks like that case. Great modding potential. I'd like to see how the PSU does I have a MGE with fans, not as expensive as the slient one. Are you going for a silent case?

Grez

Yeah, the cases are similar, but different manufacturers and mine's older. But the dimensions are only about 1" off (see above post). I keep hoping someone will pick up one of the Chenmings and do a mod, and let me know how they are to work in...maybe I'll pick one up if I ever want to mod another really big box. The price is certainly right.

The PSU is friggin' magic. It's super-stable, and of course deadly silent. I'm not going for a silent case, but I do want to quiet it down a bit...I had some noise and vibration issues in there before, and I think one of the culprits was the PSU fans causing a lot of the vibration. Plus, it just looks heavy duty, industrial, and cool. It fits with my automotive feel that I want this case to have. There's also an LCD right on the back panel of the Magnum so that you can watch your 12V rail, temps, and wattage draw. I played HL2 on 1600X1200 6X/8X (I have a 7800GT in here), and the wattage draw was only around 180-190W, even with all of my fans and lights. Crazy. I really like all of the MGE XG PSUs (I've installed the Vortec, the Vigor several times, and now the Magnum), and have never had a single problem with any of them. They are crazy stable and really affordable, not to mention good-looking. So long as they're available, I'll probably never overpay for an Enermax or Antec again...don't get me wrong, they're fabulous PSUs, but when I can get the same quality for about 2/3 the price in an MGE XG, it's easy math for me.

As for the cost, I got a sweet deal on my Magnum from eWiz.com...they had them on sale for $95 at the time. Considering the retail on this bad boy is about $150, that was a steal. They're hovering around $100-$120 right now in most places. But I've been running my (unfinished, but fully operational) box 24/7 since I bolted it back together a few days after Christmas, and this thing hasn't blinked yet, even under load.

Grez

Yeah, that was a scary power tool moment. I had borrowed my buddy's drill (I asked for one just like it for Christmas...got it...score!), and he doesn't know where his additional handle is for it. Since I have my own now, this will not be a problem (I'm anal retentive about keeping track of that kind of stuff). The perpendicular handle will definitely make for a better grip and avoid this going forward.

Heh heh...yeah, it truly IS a big @ss case. I just measured it...looks like 7 3/4" wide.

And yes, there are just too many complications to make the window work well. I'm planning on using LED bolts on the blowhole fan guard and for the side intake. With all of those little wires that need to be routed, it would look sloppy mounted into a window...no where to hide 'em. Plus, because the case is so bloody tall, there are a lot of wires that just don't come in longer sizes, and therefore can't be hidden and have to route up through the center of the cage. Again, I can make it cool enough looking for when the case side panel is off, but all I would hear is "WM, dude, WM!" if I had a window there. People loooove to gripe about wire management even when they don't understand the challenges of a case. Oh, I know I could splice and solder more wire in there for many things, but for stuff like audio cables, you don't want to degrade the signal any more by making them longer if you can help it. So I decided to focus on other design aspects and save the window stuff for another mod.

Thanks, man. I promise that I will try to use a Sharpie or some chrome tape somewhere on here! (For the rest of y'all's benefit...that's an inside joke between myself and Sr. Carter here.)

Grez

Well, now it was time to start working on modifications to the front panel.
(Again, I apologize for the crap camera phone pics...can't wait to get my Canon back...who knows how long that will take.)

Here is what I started with:


Next, I used a basic power drill with a spade bit to punch a proper-sized hole so that I could later mount my badge light:


Next, it was time to cut the custom hole for the built-in HDD cooler. In this pic, I have flipped the panel over and cut four large pilot holes to give me a good place to start with the jigsaw:


Unfortunately, because of the size of the jigsaw, I had to do several large portions with the Dremel as well, snap off all of the melted plastic by hand, and then use the Dremel sander to even things out. But it turned out just fine. Here's the rough hole:

It's pretty symmetrical for being done by hand, and my trim should take care of any further issues.

Next, I used the rotary tool to cut out my small side hole where the front USB/Firewire stuff will go:

It was a little tricky cutting this one by hand. I got a little bit of waver in the lines, but again it's not an issue since I will be trimming this bad boy up.

Next, I cleaned everything (especially to get that adhesive residue off from my 1X1 "brag" stickers that were on there before), and primered everything with white primer:


Some faceplates and my LiveDrive sound unit faceplate:

It's hard to make out in the lousy picture, but I very carefully used auto trim tape to cover the labels on the LiveDrive faceplate that tell you which ports are which, and then used an X-Acto to cut closely around them. This is really the only way to keep all of the labels (which are necessary) and still get the custom yellow on there later. You'll see a little beige behind the letters, but it actually looks pretty good in any case.

While I'm thinking about it, some advice: always keep all of your little screws, washers, etc., together in a bag when you part out your system. You will thank yourself later that you didn't get into too big of a hurry and lose half of your little (and important) parts:


Another update to come this afternoon or evening!

imput1234

Nice progress. Cant wait to see the final model