[The boy 4rm oz]

When stripping a case I find it best to pretty much remove everything that is held in by a screw first before grabbing my drill.

I started by removing the the drive bay dividers/supports as well as the HDD caddy.
Before:

After:

I then removed all of the body panels including side panels, top panel and front fascia along with anything else I could remove from the interior. Here is what it looked like after I was done:

I then took the case with me down to the shed and let lose with the drill. The first thing to come out was the drive bays:

A picture of the removed drive bays:

The next thing to come out was the motherboard tray:

A picture of the removed tray:

The last thing to come out was the PCI retention plate:

Now I'll explain why I removed these three key parts of the chassis. Because I intend to make a false floor so I can house the water cooling gear unseen these three pieces of the case had to be removed. The drive bays have been sacrificed so I can make my own to suit my needs, something smaller and something that looks a little bit nicer. The new drive bays will house both the optical drive and HDDs hence the need for the Scythe Himuro bay coolers. The motherboard tray was removed once again so I can make my own. The stock tray is too tall and would interfere with my radiators. It is also not long enough to cover the entire length of the case. Because I want to keep the project as clean as possible a new tray is needed to suit my needs. The PCI bracket was removed because it will be in the way of the false floor. This card has 8 PCI slots, most conventional motherboards have only 7, the extra slot is needed space so I am going to modify the original to suit.

Now that the case is a skeleton I am ready to start work on the case itself.