Project: Phoenix (PC-101 Orange Case Mod)

[gvblake22]

Updates, updates updates! Well, not really too much of an update, but at least I've got some pics...
Over the past weekend I was able to get these pieces fashioned for covering the optical drive trays on the front panel. They are similar in construction to all the other design pieces I've been making:





The major difference though is that they do not screw to the case...


Instead, they will have long screws that reach back through the front panel and screw into the tray of the optical dive:


I plan on drilling and tapping two holes in the end of the trays on each optical drive that these pieces will thread right in to.

Then, when the drive tray is ejected, the whole thing will move out as one piece.

I also got in what I hope is my last parts purchase for this case:


Lots of goodies there, including:

• Two 120mm Yate Loon fans (to be used as the two front intake fans)
• Three 120mm PWM Arctic Fans (two will be used as the top and rear exhaust fans and the third will hopefully be used on the CPU heatsink)
• Three 16mm black switches with an orange LED dot (two to be used on the top of the case as remote eject buttons and activity LEDs for the two optical drives and the third to be used inside the case as the HDD activity LED and reset switch)
• One 22mm black switch with orange LED ring (to be used as the main power on/off switch on the top of the case)
• Two 24" black SATA data cables (to be used with the HDD's)
• Two 8" black SATA data cables (to be used with the optical drives)
• A black Sunbeam Rheobus (to be used to control all the previously mentioned fans as well as all the LED lighting inside the case)
• One hundred 5mm orange LEDs (to be used in various places around the case for lighting effects)
• Fifty plastic 5mm LED mounts (to be used to mount the orange LEDs, obviously)
• Two digital temperature disaplays with orange backlight (to be mounted in the bottom area of the case to display interior temperatures)

The Rheobus will be mounded at the top front of the case behind the front panel with only holes made for the knobs to fit through (the rest of the unit will be hidden behind the front panel). There will be no cutouts for the LEDs either, so in order to mount it behind, I needed to remove the LEDs...

This turned out to be a very quick and easy task thanks to the socket mounted LED legs and a pair of needle nose pliers! Again, there will be no LEDs used with the final installed Rheobus, it's more of a "set it and forget it" accessory. Two of the channels will be used to control fans (one for the intake, and one for exhaust) and the other two channels will be used to control the LED lighting.

[micmac]

Heck yeah, it looks so good! You'll be done by the end of the month for sure. And then you'll get to paint ;)

[g-relk]

man this is gonna look sa-weet. keep it up blake!

[gvblake22]

A little more work got done over the past weekend; I'll start with the front panel...
With the Rheobus stripped of its LEDs and knobs, I drilled four holes in the front panel and mounted it.


As you can see, it has to stick out so it comes in contact with the new front panel, so I just drilled and tapped two holes (one on each side) in the back edges of the Rheobus. Here's what it looks like with the other drive bay pieces in place:



Yeah, pretty close call there, eh?! It looks a little too close to make me happy, but there's not much I can do about it now!

Heres what it looks like behind the front panel:


The two fans are actually almost flush with the edge of the case (which is nice):


And this is what the fan positioning it looks like from inside the case:

...the top fan blows in over the motherboard while the bottom fan's airflow gets directed through the hard drives and toward the PSU. Then it all meets somewhere in the middle and gets exhausted out the top or rear of the case.

Speaking of top exhaust fans, I finalized that setup too. As you can see, the piece of orange acrylic needed to be trimmed:


So I just cut a notch out of each side so they fit together:


Then I had to figure out how I was going to mount the fan. These Arctic Cooling fans are somewhat of an anomaly in that their mounting holes do not go all the way through the fan. Add that complication onto the fact that I wanted to use the same small 3mm button cap hex screws that I was using all over the rest of the case exterior and it was a bit of a head scratcher. This was my solution:

A bit of hot glue and a washer made a nice new mount that seems to hold surprisingly well...


So then I just cut a new piece of mesh that went all the way across the whole area and I think I'm good to go!




The fan actually takes up the first add-in card slot, but I really don't care about that.

Should actually work better since it will be closer to the passive Accelero S1 I have on my X1950Pro and hopefully keep it nice and cool!

That's it for a while though, I'm flying across the country for a job interview this weekend so don't expect much of an update (if any)...

[Yellowhello]

Looks amazing as usual Blake!

[gvblake22]

Small update today. Got a bunch of holes drilled for LEDs. I'm using these simple plastic LED mounts...
First up was try try an idea for mounting some LEDs inside the case. For this I just used a heat gun to bend a strip of the thin black acrylic in a 90 degree angle and drill some holes; there's one for each side of the drive cage:






And yes, it is bowed a little, somehow the bending process did that and I'm not sure why. I'll probably use double sided tape to secure it to the case, but may also use screws (which would help straighten it out a bit).

Once those were fabricated, I went on to the LED mounts along the front of the case. I started with six on each side, but decided eight on each side fills it all in more evenly so I went with that:

[Parker]

Looking good Blake, looking good!!!

Keep workin at it!

[Sumgai]

Nice ideas Blake, very original.

[Yellowhello]

I like! Keep it up Blake!

[dttuner]

Wow! Man, you're going all-out!
It's really morphed into something completely different.
Nice work!