miXture

Update

In a moment I will continue with the fillports, but until then I want to show you a few pictures of the cutouts for the tubing of the radiator. It's not very special, but hey, it's progress ;)

For the tubing of the reservoir I drilled four 10mm holes:

There it is :) The center to center distance of the fillport block is the same as the distance on the reservoir to make the tubing straight:

If I wanna be able to use the fillports, I will have to cut a hole in the roof. And as anything with hex mesh looks cool, I made you a picture ;)

Instead of one big hole, I will make two holes close together:

Drilled, cut and filed. I really need a step drill :(

The result of the past few days, completely mounted:

I'll have to figure out what I will work on next, I think I will work on mounting the pump :) I will also have to start searching for a motherboard, so I can continue working on the side panel and the CPU cooler.

Very interesting I will be watching this one.

Those fill ports are slick looking. :up:

Update!

This is what the bottom of the case looks like right now:

Because I modified a few things on this case (that's an understatement ;) ), most of the holes can't be used the way they were intended to. On this picture, the PSU will be placed more to the right, the fan will be placed more to the left. So let's cover all that up with white acrylic :) Starting with the rough shape:

The rough shape is ready and was measured correctly, now it's time to make a few smaller cutouts:

The back fits now, hiding the mounting of the bars and some rivets:

Doesn't quite fit in the front though, there are still some nuts and bolts there:

I drilled a few shallow holes on the other side:

To make room for these protruding bolts:

I made some room for the nuts and bolts in the front also. I couldn't use countersunk bolts, so I drilled two holes that were slightly bigger than the bolt head:

Just a little filing left to do, on the edge on the left:

Done :)

I promised you that I was going to work on the pump, and I did. Before I could mount the pump, I had to make the bottom plate though. I still had this mini pump lying around:

When it ain't broke..... ;)

I has to be mounted right here, but sunk into the acrylic. That would set the inlet of the pump on the same height as the outlet of the radiator. I know it's more common to route the tubing directly from the reservoir to the pump, but I'm placing the radiator in between. I'm confident that will work just as well.

Cut and filed:

Nice, it fits :)

To mount the pump to the acrylic, I drilled and tapped two holes in the part that isn't in contact with the water:

I will mount it with this tiny part:

O RLY? That's what came to mind when I saw this next picture:

I will glue the plate later, once I cut all of the holes that still have to be cut. As I said, a power supply and a fan will probably be mounted there also. I will leave you with a few overview shots of the state the case is in now:

(much better than before, don't you agree? :) )

Update

It took me a while, but here it is. Only two more weeks before the deadline, that's going to be tough :(

A few posts ago, I was whining about needing a step drill. A few days later a nice guy named Mexel sent me a message, that I could have his. Have? Yes have. I gladly accepted, and sent him some of my products in return. This is the drill, it makes holes up to 22mm :)

In 2mm thick aluminum, the hole looks like this. Not perfect, but way faster then my previous methods:

Now it's time for my first sponsor ever. Cooler Master responded to my email and were kind enough to send me this huge V8 cooler. Exactly what I needed, thanks Marco!

Because I was looking for a big cooler, this one will fit perfectly. Well, actually it won't fit, but that's the idea ;)

Back to modding. This is the original left side panel of the Cosmos S, that will not be used in this case. The design is very clever, with multiple layers and bolt connections. I removed the lower part, that's the part that I am reusing right now. I may use the rest as a photo frame in the future :)

My new side panel has a weird shape, so I can only use a little part of it:

I wanted to bend the edges to add strength, but chose to cut a piece of lexan to size to reinforce the steel:

Fits like a glove:

I still need to remove a chunk because of the Nexus fan grill:

All bolted together, once again with M3 bolts that leave the front of the sheet flush:

I hope the next pictures show why I am using this. One of the nicest features of the Cosmos S is that the side panel remains standing when flipping the switch at the back. The same principle will work with my side panel now, only without the back switch:

Now that is sorted, I can more easily drill the holes for mounting that part to the case:

For now, the Lexan is still clear so the reservoir is easily visible. The side panel will be white later on though, so I needed to cut a window in my window:

Roughly cut:

Filed:

The second plate will have an exact copy of this window, only rotated, through which the reservoir will be visible also. I will use some thin acrylic for the windows itself.

Last weeked I was at The Party 9, a lan party for about a 1000 people here in the Netherlands. I brought Cubeleon with me to take part in the Casemodding Contest, but I was beaten by The Black Box and a cardboard box that was thrown together a day earlier. The only reason that I won a price, was because they put me on the website as a second place winner, which turned out to not be the case. Highflow got me a Cooler Master V10, the big brother of the cooler I just got straight from Cooler Master.

But I will still be using this one:

Nice progress and congrats on the sponsor!

A tip, to get rid of that ring of crud on that hole you drilled with the step drill, put the step drill through from the other end and run it just long enough to eat through the burs. As long as you have at least one step left, it'll work like a charm.

Thanks :) Yeah I figured that might work with the step drill, but this was the biggest hole for the test ;)

Update

We've got one more week to go before the deadline, so here is an update of a few days ago..

The first thing was to make a strip of aluminum to join the two major parts of the side panel, as I don't trust a glue joint alone. Fortunately, the test piece was glued very well, very solid. This is the 2mm strip:

A nice series of holes has to be drilled. At some places this isn't possible because other parts are in the way:

Drilled the holes and added a bending line. I grinded a line into the metal with a Dremel to be able to make a nicer bend:

Bent with the use of a wooden hammer while clamping halve of the strip. I used an angle measurement device to make sure the bending angle was the same all the way:

Now to something else, the second part of the side panel. That needed a window also, so the reservoir is very visible:

These two pieces of 3mm acrylic will be the actual windows later on:

This is how all of the parts mentioned above fit on the side pane:

The rest of the time was spent on mounting the PSU and the hard drive. The power supply doesn't fit in its original position anymore, so I decided to shift it back a little. It still needs to get rid of its hot air, so a few holes were cut in the back panel:

A short cable was created:

To make the big hole look a little nicer, I added some hexx mesh and glued it in with super glue:

The power supply will be mounted with two bolts and an Attila-style bracket ;)

With the use of some more white acrylic, I am making a compartment for the PSU and its cables:

I used some nice angles, that make the fit even better:

The thick piece of acrylic was added because this is a very short power supply. Most others are 20mm longer, and they need to fit also.

Now it only needs a roof:

Because I have cut away all of the drive bays and filled it with some weird shapes, there is not a lot of room to fit a hard drive nicely. This is how it will be mounted:

I am skipping the pictures of the drilling and countersinking the mounting holes if you don't mind ;) Here a test drive is mounted:

The last thing to do was to cut a hole for the hard drive cables. Unfortunately I also had to cut off a part of the compartment, otherwise the side panels won't fit:

I will probably glue these parts together, or bolt it if there is no other way.

To fill the case, I ordered some new hardware. An Asus P8P67 motherboard fitted with an Intel i5 2500K unlocked processor. The memory is a set of 4GB Corsair Vengeance boards. I will probably use my old graphics card for the final pictures, as I can't afford to buy one right now.

Some more work has been done by now, but I really need my time to finish the case ;)

Very nice work. Looks great. :up:

In a few hours, the deadline for the Cooler Master competition will pass. These are the five picture I have sent to them. I'm sorry for the big gap between the updates, I will make it up to you :)

Good luck to all the contenders, but I hope to beat at least some of you ;)