Project Pioneer

Project Pioneer: Stage 1 (January 2007)
Over the summer of 2006, around the time I signed up to TBCS, I spent my free time getting into the world of modding. My old case was cramped, didn't cool well, and was a boring beige box. To fix these faults, I purchased a cheap, new case and started doing simple modifications to enhance its appearance and functionality. After a few months of use, I decided to post pictures of my progress thus far. This is by far not as good as some of the other mods I see on here, but I tried very hard to do the best I could with what I had.

I still have a lot of plans for the future but I wanted to get a general opinion of my progress now. If you see it, please excuse the dust.

I leave my computer on 24/7. Because this case lights up, I tinted the side window so I could sleep at night. I also put a black mesh filter over the side 80mm fan to help reduce light more and it helps with dust. The color RED was chosen because it is a dim color by nature and doesn't look as bright as BLUE at night, plus everyone seems to be doing BLUE nowadays. I have a few ideas for opening up the face and top of the case to help with air flow more, but that is for the future. I am satisfied with its performance at the moment.

The insides are nothing special. An AMD AthlonXP 2800+ mated with 512MB DDR RAM helps me do everyday tasks like watching television and Microsoft Office, and a ATI Radeon 9800 Pro EZ with 128MB for light gaming. The motherboard is an ECS, which it wouldnt be had I known more about motherboards before I bought it. It has 2 IDE channels, 2 internal SATA ports, built in megabit ethernet, AGP 8x, and 3 PCI slots. To expand on the motherboad, a Megabit NIC and USB2.0 card were added, and this is all powered by a 400-watt power supply.

I wanted a cool yet quiet case, so there are 2 120mm fans on the front and back of the case, as well as a 120mm adjustable fan on the PSU. The CPU fan was redicuously loud, so an 80mm fan plus 70-80mm adapter was added to the stock heatsink. The graphics card has its own fan, and 2 45mm fans as well as 4 60mm fans help to cool some of the hard drives.

Even though the CPU, RAM, and graphics card is less than amazing, I do have a terrabyte of storage available. The hard drives are as follow:

• 80GB Western Digital IDE
• 120GB Seagate IDE
• 200GB Maxtor IDE
• 250GB Seagate SATA
• 400GB Samsung SATA

The motherboard only has 2 SATA ports, so I have reached the maximum capacity of hard drives without a PCI RAID card or USB external enclosures. My Sony 16x DVD+-RW Burner will help to alleviate any future problems.

You also may have noticed the hard drive coolers. This is because after the addition of the 400GB Samsung SATA, all of my hard drive temperatures rose by 4 degrees and one even got as hot as my CPU (40 celsius). The coolers were given to me by a friend to help cool the drives, even if not that effectively. I also staggered a drive to help with airflow. My system drive (C:) sits inside the Hot Swappable rack you see near the top of the case. It is always the coolest drive.

The green thing you keep seeing in the lower right corner is a wireless XBOX controller adapter. It plugs into the internal USB port on the USB2 card, and lets me play games like Need For Speed Carbon, Madden 2007, and all those 16-bit console games with ease.

I also tried my absolute best at cable management. I've seen some cases on here where I see no wires and I really think I can still do a better job on my cables, but I am not sure where. Everything doesn't move and the cables at the back are flat against the case.

I know I didnt do much in terms of modding. This is far from a Crimson Sky or a HP Res 3, but to compensate I tried to make everything as clean and minimalistic as I could.

So thats my mod. I would love to hear feedback from all of you on what I could change, maybe ideas for future additions and changes, constructive criticisms, etc. Thank you for viewing this thread. 8)

EDIT: This is my 100th post!

-Cool-

I like the way it looks and an interesting idea with the x box controller but they make 360 controller game pads now. Overall Good Mod

Do you have any other plans besides opening the top and face of the case? 8)

A few other simple things such as cutting out the fan grills for better air flow and changing the power and reset buttons will probably be done. I'm taking my time and collecting ideas before I start with Stage 2.

-Cool-

Don't get put off doing simple things; as much as I love complete mods, there are many people (like myself) who like a PC to still look like a PC, just a much neater one :)

One of the simplest and cheapest things you can do is hide those awful multicoloured wires with some Cable Sleeving. It comes with some heat shrink tubing, which is an absolute godsend. But even small amounts of vinyl electrical tape can hide small areas of wire.

For a first build it's not half bad. I agree with F A F that cablesleeving would help with the wires a bit. I am no authority on cable management, but from what I have seen others do, I'd describe it as a test of patience. If you want to eliminate nearly all visible wiring, you need to get creative and have the time to plan out each wire from PSU to component and how you can run it so that it's hidden. This may require leaving the computer off for long periods of time while it's dismantled. I dig the xbox controller, nice addition. As for what can be added in terms of overall appearance or theme, well that's pretty much a question only you can answer. Just depends on what you want it to look like eh?

Hey that's pretty sweet, how did you tint the window?