miXture

Hi all :)

A while ago, I started building a case with a friend of mine. We chopped up his Cosmos S in the first weekend, and rarely spoke since. The case has been on a shelf in my house ever since. About two weeks ago I wanted to get rid of the case, so I gave him a call but he didn't want it back. A few days later, the Cooler Master contest popped up :)

This is the case we started with, a CM Cosmos S:

The first thing we did was to remove half of the drive bay mounts:

The red lines show what is going to happen to this poor case:

Yep, that's where we chopped it, Leepu style!

Without giving everything away, this is a sketch of what will happen to the left side of the case. The right side will stay completely stock, to give as much contrast as possible 8)

The plastic parts had to be cut sometime, so we're starting with a rough cut. First the drawing:

Then the cutting :dremel:

There's no way back now ;)

Update

Today we are working on the top of the case, which holds a few metal and plastic parts that needed to be cut. The first thing I had to do was to draw a line, with a little help from my laser :)

The cutting line now looks like this

It took a little while to get it right, and I used multiple tools, but at this pic I finished this part:

The big piece of mesh was a lot easier after that, I only had to use a Dremel. A few years ago I didn't really like the tool, but now I am able to work with it I use it very regularly :)

This piece of plastic holds the back piece of mesh:

All together, to assembly looks like this:

I made this assembly just for fun, it's made of all the parts that were cut off :D

To finish off, some overview shots with the modded parts :)

The left side panel is up next, or more exactly the plastic parts of the side panel. That's going to be hard to get right :(

We fast forward to last weekend, when I gave the case a good stare down. It was time for a new approach and new plans :)

I decided the first thing to do was to reinforce the case a bit, since we've cut out so much of the frame. The side panel will be made of 8mm Lexan, so that will be a little heavier than the original side panel. I started with a 2mm black alu panel:

And after a lot of cutting and fitting ;)

Before I was able to mount it to the case, I had to get rid of all the bumps that are in the top panel, like this one:

So I grabbed a hammer and a piece of wood, and start hitting the poor thing. This is what happed to everything that was standing on my workbench :P

But it worked very well and I was able to mount the black plate to the case:

I hope you're liking what I've done so far, but there will be a lot more where this came from :) There is still a lot of work ahead of me, so we'll meet again next time!

The second bullet on the list was the reinforcement of the back. As you can see, it has a lot of non-usable holes, for a 120mm fan and the power supply. Also, I won't be using that single watercooling hole.

Again, I'm using black 2mm alu:

The rough shape was made to fit the back of the case, which was pretty hard to do nicely. Then I drilled a few holes to mount the plate:

After which it was much easier to cut the other lines:

It has not been bolted to the bottom of the case, because I'm not sure if I am going to place the PSU there. The case is much more solid already, and the back looks way nicer now :)

Update

Slowly but steady I'm working towards building the new side panel. This is gonna be one hell of a job, but we'll see how it goes. For now, I need to remove some more plastic from the old side panel:

A few rough cuts with the Dremel left me with this:

At this moment I forgot to make a few pictures, but the end result isn't very much different from the picture above. I did still make a hole to bolt the plastic to the case.

But before I can mount a new panel, the case needs a few more mounting points. I am using these two pieces of angle aluminium that were laying around, as was everything I've used so far. The sizes are different but that doesn't matter:

After an hour of cutting, drilling, measuring, drilling, fitting and bending, this is the result ;)

Like a glove :D

The strip at the top was a little easier, because there's no bend in it. So I was able to mount it after just a little work. To mount it at the right place the first time, I took a scrap piece of acrylic that automatically gives me the right angle of the side panel:

For that I used a few pieces of double sided tape:

Four drilled and tapped holes later, I am able to mount it to the case. Now it looks like a side panel can me mounted to the case :)

I know the angle bars don't have the exact angle of the side panel, but I will be working on that in the future. Also, I don't know how precise I have to make everything to be able to mount the side panel properly, still have to figure out that part.

This is it for now. This is the work I've done in the last few days. I want to update this log at least every week to keep everything going, and hopefully there won't be a lot of work left at the end of the contest period. Fingers crossed, and see you next time ;)

Update

The (still unknown type) GPU will be watercooled in this pc. To do that, I will be using this old radiator I had lying around. The white residue appeared during high temperature testing, it's probably water scale. As you can see, a few sheets of white paper do wonders for a clear image.

I will sacrifice the bottom three bays for the radiator:

Once again, I will be using 2mm aluminium for constructing the radiator holder:

Just to make sure the holes were drilled well, which was the case fortunately :)

This is what the plate looks like after bending, drilling mounting holes and cutting out slots for other parts of the case. Removing the protective foil is always nice :)

This is what it looks like after putting it in the case:

For now, this is the complete assembly, of course the fan is still missing. If the aluminium is still visible through the front, I will be painting it black or white in the future :)

These two colors make it really easy to go to the next part, the reservoir. The other seven bays will be used by my very own production reservoir, Liquitwist :) Orders can be placed from now on, see my website http://brinkofmodding.com for all the details :)

Whoa!!!

So far.... I like :D

the only thing i'm not sure about is that the case itself is quite rounded and the mods are very angular. i'm not sure how much i like that. but the work itself is awesome.

I'm really liking how you cut away half the case at an angle. Interested to see how this thing ends up. I also have a question about the Cooler Master competition. If I was modding an Xbox 360 case to put PC components into would that be in the scratch build category or in the tower mod one?
Thanks in advance and looking forward to an update.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AmEv

Whoa!!!

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fuganater

So far.... I like :D

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Thanks ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xr4man

the only thing i'm not sure about is that the case itself is quite rounded and the mods are very angular. i'm not sure how much i like that. but the work itself is awesome.

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Well, it is a mixture of styles :) We'll have to see how it turns out, I hope we'll both like it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by biggoofy

I'm really liking how you cut away half the case at an angle. Interested to see how this thing ends up. I also have a question about the Cooler Master competition. If I was modding an Xbox 360 case to put PC components into would that be in the scratch build category or in the tower mod one?
Thanks in advance and looking forward to an update.

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Thanks :) That would definitely be a scratch mod for that compo, since the tower mod category is for Cooler Master cases only.

Update!

Yesterday was the day I started building the new side panel. I will be using an old 8mm thick sheet of Lexan. The protective foil was severely damaged, so I didn't want to sell it anymore. You never know how damaged the actual sheet is when the foil is damaged. This is the better side of the sheet ;)

The first thing to do was to remove the protective backing. The design is so complicated that I can't work with the non-see-through foil. Fortunately the sheet didn't have a lot of scratches, very few actually. I put it on the case to draw some rough cutting line:

The first cut:

Second cut:

This is how it should work in the near future ;)

Before cutting the second part, I needed to adjust my jigsaw to cut under an angle of about 20 degrees. Fortunately, this jigsaw lets me do just that:

The second part is cut and filed to shape:

The third sheet is the hardest, since we've cut off a little too much of the plastic side. I will have to fill that gap later on. This is the shape for now:

And to finish off, a nice overview picture. It starts to look really good I have to say :)

There are a few problems that I have to solve. I need to join the three panels of Lexan together. Metals plates will be used on the back, but I have to fill the gaps with some plastic kit or glue. Bondo will not work, that will crack due to the flexibility of the panels. I could still use some tips on how to solve this issue.

The other problem I have is that the top of the case was also cut a few mm wrong. One possibility is to buy a new top panel, but Cooler Master doesn't sell it in the shop anymore. The other option is to bolt some aluminum plate to the Lexan to fill the gap, since the gap is about 2mm wide across the whole top.

What I will do next time is unknown. I wanted to work on the side panels some more, but I may have to finish the radiator and reservoir assemblies first. You'll see ;)

Update

Maybe the new shape of the new side panel wasn't clear yet, with the case laying down. So I put it back on its feet. This went well for a few minutes, but then the tape broke ;)

Before I will continue with the side panel, I have to have a better view of what the inside will look like. In this update, I will show you how I made two compartments, one for the radiator and one for the reservoir. It all starts with this sheet of 5mm white acrylic I had left:

I cut it under an angle of 45 degrees to make it flush with the case :)

To be able to mount the side panels, some more material had to be cut off. This picture also shows the second part I cut and bolted to the case:

I need a strict separation between the two chambers, so the air of the radiator will not pass through the whole case. To determine the shape of this part, I made a cardboard model first:

To mount the big plate in the case, I used two captive nuts that were attached to the bottom of the case. These will soon appear on my website, because they are so nice to work with :) Otherwise I would have needed to tap a thread in 1mm aluminum, of use a normal nut, which is no ideal solution.

All of these parts will be mounted with black hex bolts, they will be replaced by countersunk ones later on. You probably won't be able to look into the radiator compartment, but I will paint the angle profile black anyway ;)

And then the moment was finally there, I could mount my Liquitwist reservoir :)

The reservoir will be visible from both the side as from the front. I will be using the standard front plates (and still need two more), but I still have to choose if I'll use the plates with or without the fine mesh:

Through the focus of the camera, I can't really compare the result with these photos, but I'll just decide later on :) I hope you're liking the results so far, but more will come ;)

Update

The side panel will be painted white, once the three parts have been joined together. All that white needs a black fan grill :) This hole will serve as an intake for the radiator. The outtake will be in the front, so the dust will not get stuck in the front mesh. I will be using a Nexus Beamair, which was designed to improve airflow on fans. No fan will be mounted to it this time, but I finally found a nice purpose for it:

The nice thing about 8mm Lexan is that you will have to spend a lot of time on filing if your cuts aren't perfect :p On this picture it needed no support, but it didn't quite fit yet:

A little while later:

It's almost flush with the front of the Lexan, I'll make sure it is in the final product :)

To prevent a clogged radiator, I will make a dust filter for it. And as any woman would say, layers do the trick ;) This assembly now has a layer of Lexan, a layer of Beamair, Hexx mesh and a finer mesh :)

All of it is mounted with four M3 bolts, with threaded holes in the Lexan. The holes are blind, so they won't be visible from the outside :)

See you guys next time ;)

Update

I want to have two fillports at the top, one for the water going in and one for the outgoing air. There's only one problem, there is not enough space to use a standard fillport or a weird construction with fittings. So I went for my standard solution: "When everything else fails, build something out of 20mm acrylic" ;)

First up, a 1:1 scale sketch of the piece, with the same 42 degree angle as the big white sheet:

Next step: cutting a chunk out of the big sheet of 20mm acrylic. I had to cut it by hand to prevent it from melting. The holes were drilled with a 12mm drill, in one time. To make sure it wouldn't crack I clamped it in multiple ways and I had to cool it repeatedly. The holes were threaded with a G1/4" tap:

The plan was to not drill the holes completely through, but I had to do that so I could tap them. The result is that I need to put in even more stops. This is how the complete assembly will look :)

At the case, it should look something like this is the near future. I will cut a hole in the top of the case for the two fill ports. When in use, I will only have to slide off the top of the Cosmos to reach the fill port:

It ain't much this time, maybe more next time ;)

I'd think you'd invert the res, to create more of a waterfall look.

My $.02.

This is going to look beautiful. When it's done it's going to have a super clean look, at least that's what I'm expecting. Can't wait for the next update.

Wow, great work. :up: Kudos for having the balls to cut up a Cosmos like that. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AmEv

I'd think you'd invert the res, to create more of a waterfall look.

My $.02.

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If I would flip the reservoir, no water would flow as both the intake and outtake are located at the bottom ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by biggoofy

This is going to look beautiful. When it's done it's going to have a super clean look, at least that's what I'm expecting. Can't wait for the next update.

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That's what I am aiming for indeed, let's see how it works out :)

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Originally Posted by x88x

Wow, great work. :up: Kudos for having the balls to cut up a Cosmos like that. ;)

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Well it wasn't my case when I cut it up, but the guy who let my cut it up sure had balls :rolleyes:

Oh. I thought the intake and fillport was at the top, and the output was at the bottom.

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 ;)

looks awesome! very unique :D

Huh... not what I was expecting, but I love it. I love the compartmentalization of the internals!

that is so wicked I really like the finished product.

Thanks guys :) I hope you like it so much you would like to vote for me ;)

http://casemod2011.coolermaster.com/....php?u=123&c=1

Update

Although you have already got to see the end result, I will update you on the progress of building this case. I will write it in present tense, that feels more natural. The side panel is the biggest feature of the case. It is a complex part, made of e few bigger and smaller parts of polycarbonate, it has windows, and intake and soon an outtake. All of that took a lot of time to build :) Since it needs to look like one part, I have glued the parts together:

(Oh I forgot to update you on the painted frame, won't happen again;) )

I kept the nicest feature of the side panel a secret for a long time. I will add three black strips of 8mm Lexan. This is a fuzzy picture of the rough shape of the first one:

After a few drawings, I drew a nice fillet on the front:

This is how the three strips will have to fit later on:

The top of the side panel still has to be reshaped. It still has a straight shape. Before I do that, I drilled a few mounting holes for the side panel so I'm sure they line up.

I also mounted this strip to the side panel more solidly now with some new bolts:

And then I am finally able to cut a nice curve out of that sheet. Once again I cut all of it at an angle, to make the top line horizontal:

The most recognizable feature of the Cosmos cases are the tubes at the top and bottom, so I will mount all of them in the end result. The side panel needed a modification before that was possible though:

Of course I won't leave the end hanging in mid air, I need to cut it :)

My hardware order has also arrived. First the motherboard, an Asus P8P67. There are about seven versions of this board, I got the one with the easiest name ;) I would have liked a Z68 chipset board, but I needed it a few days before it came out.

The fastest Intel i5 sandy bridge processor, the 2500k:

And a set of memory sticks, unfortunately with mesh stickers :P

I didn't try the boxed cooler, I just went straight for the big one :)

Hmm, doesn't fit!

But we'll work around that. Don't tell this to anyone, but it has always been the plan that the CPU cooler wouldn't fit ;) How do you like my new dishwasher?

After I cut a rough square, I created the exact lines with tape:

That's it for now, more about the side panel next time. That will be a big update :)

For now, I can still use your vote for the case in the Cooler Master contest. I'm in the 10th position or something, in the Tower category. I hope to rise a few places within the next few days, but I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. Remember, you can vote once in each category.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by brinkz0r

Although you have already got to see the end result, I will update you on the progress of building this case.

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For many of us... it's more about the journey rather then the destination.

Thanks for updating us, and good luck. Killer build!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OvRiDe

For many of us... it's more about the journey rather then the destination.

Thanks for updating us, and good luck. Killer build!

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Thanks, and I totally agree. The finished product is just standing there, and everybody is telling you that you should be proud of it. I am usually more like "yay, it's finished, now what".


Update

For the Cooler Master contest deadline, I could only send in five pictures. And even worse, they had to be resized to 355x267, which meant that I had to throw away 17,9 megapixels of every picture. Since I have made many more, I am sharing the best of them with you. I haven't polished them up in any way, just resized and bordered them.

Clickable for 2000 pix wide :)

And my favorite :)