The Mini-Rat Small PC.

Finally some Sunshine today! After two and a half weeks of wet or cold and overcast days.

It meant I could get the first of the painting done inside the case.

I stripped the front panel down to nothing ready for some camo green, but the can of spray paint was a dud and wouldn't work. So I'll go and get a new can soon for it.

The outside will be done the same as one of my bikes is.

The bike is a Yamaha TDM850 called Mr T. I've changed it slightly...

Here's mine:

Here's a standard one:

And yes, it has eyes on mine...

Smallish update. I stripped the case down and painted the insides green, ready for reassembly once the outside bits are finished.

Green drive cage:

The chassis and MoBo tray:

I've also given the side panel a quick sand, and put some bondo on to cover the side vents and the iCute logo.

And bondo!

I also stopped at the electronics shop and bough various switches, plugs, sockets and LEDs for this mod. More on that when I start building it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Computer-Geek

how do your paint jobs end up being so glossy?

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Good paint and good technique. That is how it looks after the paint has dried. I just clean the inside of teh case and then spray. No sanding.

Another update. You can see here the colour scheme I'm going for. Bright green inside, with flat red oxide and flat black on the outside.

I also have the top fan in too.

The fan guard isn't really finger proof, so I added some aluminium flyscreen between the fan and the case:

Here's some of the stuff I bought today for wiring up the fans and lights and the control switches.

I couldn't find any cable sleeving around at the local stores, so I decided to improvise for the fan wiring.

$5 got me a 5m USB cable, which happens to be the exact size I need to put the 3.5mm stereo plugs on.

So now I have 5 metres of pre-sleeved cable to play with and it should look nice and neat.

Doing work on this case is fun. The small size makes for some challenges as far as wire management goes.
I really like it and decided I would put my good stuff in it, assuming it will all fit. The 600W PSU length and the length of the 8800GTS had me thinking they might clash, but as you can see there is some space to spare.

I also did a test fit up with the front panel to make sure the DVD drive would work.

So rather than being a media PC, this will be a gaming machine, but otherwise the idea remains the same. I'm not doing much more than paint on the outside, but on the inside is where the magic will be.
I've been getting a lot better at cable management and I have some ideas I want to try out.
I plan on being the wire Nazi. I don't want to see anything I don't really have to, and what does get seen is very neat and good looking.

All the case fans will have a switch so they can be turned off, or run on 5v or run on 12v, so I'll be able to change the speeds depending on what I'm doing.
All the fan switches will be hidden behind one of the flip down panels on the front of the case.
I'll also have at least 1 green CCFL in the case which will also have a switch on the front panel.

Just a small update. I've made up the video card power cable from a shower hose.

I'm just doing the wiring in small steps, making sure I do it right.

I did the fan wiring tonight for the CPU cooler.

Here's what the intel heatsink looks like with the fan off:

Getting ready to solder. You can see the section I cut out of the wires.

The fan reinstalled with the shorter, sleeved wiring.