Zebracorn - The Xbox in a PC Case Mod

[SchaibleTech]

A client called and asked if I could fix RROD's for Xbox 360's. I said yes. She said can you add LED's and paint it? Maybe a new, high performance fan so this doesn't happen again? I said yes again. She said 'I want to have something different." I said I was down for whatever idea she had. Well, she couldn't think of what she wanted, so I said 'What about putting it in a different case? It'll be bigger and painted and lit well, with extra fans for better cooling. She said 'that sounds awesome,' so here we are!

My name in Nicholas Schaible, and this is the Zebracorn.

She wanted a orange, green, and purple case, so that is what she is getting. I asked what kind of design she would want, and jokingly offered unicorns and rainbows. She loved the idea's of unicorns, but wanted the unicorn to be a Zebra and have stripes. I thought it was cool so I agreed.

Basically what i'm going to do is mount the motherboard with her hard drive inside the case. I bought three push-button switches to extend the Power, Eject, and Sync buttons to the front of the case. I'm also putting a fan in the front and back, and creating an air duct on the inside that passes right over the xbox motherboards heat sinks. So it will be intake, long tube, exhaust fan at the rear of the case. That way air is blowing in and out constantly.

Also soldered a 4pin Molex connection to the 12v on the xbox motherboard for 3 120mm fans and 2 12' Green cathodes that will go in the air duct.

And as a last touch, installing 4 acryllic green LED case feet for that extra bling.

Here some pictures to start of what I'm working with. I still have parts coming in the mail from MNPCtech and Frozen CPU and Newegg, so as soon as I get those in, i'll update the worklog.

Happy Modding!

Nicholas Schaible - SchaibleTechSolutions - ApolloCustoms.

FIRST. Lots of candy.

[SchaibleTech]

Purchased all needed parts today! Now just to wait till they get shipped! The only thing left to do is get the sheet metal sized for the rear I/O panel, and the turbine wind tunnel for the xbox heatsinks.

x3 Scythe Slimstream 120mm

cheap fan controller, sunbeam 4 channel 20w.

x3 (WHAT I THOUGHT WERE FULL SWITCHES...turns out its just the cable...I need to find cheap push button switches. Suggestions?

x2 120mm fan grill

16x screws for fans and case, also grommits courtesy of MNPCTECH.

TURBINE TUBE!!!

replacement xclamp parts for xbox 360 heatsinks.

and of course, plastikote primer and filler.

I definitely spent 3 times what I planned on, but this is going to be fun as hell.

We begin modding next week! I'm going to solder the switch wire earlier in the week, so i'll post that update soon.

Later!

[SchaibleTech]

Started working!

First was soldering to the Sync, Power, and Eject buttons and testing switches to make sure everything working properly. Once all tested, Hot glued them down and giggity giggity!

And this is soldering to the 12v source on the motherboard so I can add my 3 molex connections.

I suck at soldering, but you should have seen me 2 weeks ago...still works!

Splicing to the molex.

Tested and everything works! All lights and switches are good to go Except for that RROD....

And as I was ending my night, i wasn't looking where I was grabbing and grabbed my soldering iron...

prob one of the worst burns I've experienced. And without a left pointer finger and thumb I can't do much, so all work is on standby until my new parts come in.

thank you for looking!

[SchaibleTech]

I'll definitely pick up some flux then. I've seen it on the shelves in the soldering section, but never knew what it was. Thanks for the tips man I appreciate it.

And yeah they are both starting to blister...couldn't hold me back from working tho!

I finished cleaning up the switch wiring and the molex. So here are the leads for all those.

Also had to extend the DVD drive power cable to that I could have the drive in a 5.25 slot bay in the tower. This alone took me about and hour and a half to finish, and i plugged it in to test and all it did was buzz. I flipped out cause I thought I may have switched some of the wires around on accident. But then realized I grabbed a DVD drive with a dead motor...Curse me having boxes of xbox parts...

I'm not exactly sure what I want to do next. I could get a head start on painting the chassis...but on the other hand its 15 degrees out and I want to be out there as little as possible. Haven't succeeded on getting my dad to heat the garage yet...one day...

I think i'll wait for all the rest of the parts to come in to start working on this. Get everything organized and what not. Might be a few weeks cause Bill is in Vegas for a few more days.

Thanks for looking guys!

[SchaibleTech]

Hey guys! So it may not look like it took as long as it did, but I spent about 4+ hours working today on this bojangles. I made decisions and took action then changed my mind...so indecisive today hahah. But hopefully I ended up with what with look best.

Ok so first off, I was thinking that I was just toing to mount the motherboard right to the case chassis. And then after staring at these xbox parts for a while, I realized something. Ok so maybe Microsoft didn't cool their chips well enough, but they had a sturdy design for venting. I liked how that white plastic piece created a vent between the fans and heatsink. So I wanted to stick with that. Also, I though it would make the rear I/O shield in the rear. So, I decided I would mount the motherboard to the xbox tray, and then mount the tray to the case chasis.

**and just so you know, the motherboard I used in these photo's is a different motherboard than the one I'm using. With the constant in and out the motherboard was going to have to go, I didnt want to risk damaging the clients board, so I have been using my own for the time being.

So this is what the original xbox motherboard try looked like.

I cut the front I/0 panel off because there was no clearance inbetween the motherboard and the tray, so the wires that i soldered on could not fix. So I just cut that part off.

Cut chassis is on the left.

I also wanted minimal resistance of airflow, so I cut out the xbox motherboard tray fan filter.

I ended up cutting out that middle mesh piece cause I though it looked horrible.

here is what the front looked like with the front I/0 shield cut off.

SO. This was the issue that I did not expect. The connection for the HDD is flimsy. I really wanted to avoid using the whole enclosure. So I did what I do best and took it apart.

So I took out this metal cage that the hard drive mounts to, and I'm going to screw this to the bottom of the case. So when and if the hard drive ever has to come out, just take out 2 screws that hold the HDD to the metal cage, and it will slip right out. The metal cage will be secured to the chassis. This worked out because now there is no stress on the HDD connection, and switching it out will be way easier.

Random top shot.

Alright so I got the motherboard in the cage, and now I'm testing out how i want to mount it into the case chassis. This is so I can figure out where I'm going to drill for my motherboard mounting screws and where I need to cut out of the back I/0 shield.

First cut out.

Just to get an idea of height, I put motherboard spacers in below the xbox motherboard tray to get an accurate reading.

Now the green tape resembles what the custom sheet metal plate will cover in the back. So mostly everything will be covered except the xbox connections in the back. Going to the sheet metal place tomorrow to get pricing.

Colored fan wires and fan stickers were making me angry, and so was all the dust on the fan blades. cleaned. Also cut out the middle part of the metal mesh.

Officially mounted!!!!

This is me getting an idea for what I want the fan duct to look like.

I did another cardboard cuttout of something a little more simpler, but left the house and didn't take pictures. So tomorrow is going to be getting price quotes for these two sheet metal contraptions. That's it for now because I have a presentation for work I need to prepare. Till next time, thanks for looking!!!!

[SchaibleTech]

Looks like a great build. My only suggestion is don't use engine enamel for paint. Duplicolor will work much better if you're going with spray paint. Any suggestions or good resources for those rrod's? I have about 5 systems I can't seem to get working.

I've always had good luck with engine enamel paints. Any particular reason you don't like them?

Plus, already bought the paint...so I'm gonna use it hahah. But I do appreciate the advice!

Start here:
XBOX Error Codes

This is the only method that worked for me without reballing or reflowing:
Ultimate X-Clamp Fix

You can also review:
Fix Red Ring without Towels

If you have the tools necessary, you can try:
Reballing XBOX 360 GPU

Looks like he beat me to it. It really depends what motherboard you have, because different xbox's have different model motherboards. Some, once you RROD you are kind of ****ed, but others you can do the xclamp/thermal past fix and be good. I'd say half the time you need to add more cooling fans because once they RROD once, they are much more susceptible and sensitive.

All the towel trick does is overheats your xbox and does a hardware reset. Its a temp fix and wouldn't recommend it.

I was able to get you guys one picture!!

[SchaibleTech]

Sent ya a pm, doooooooooooooood.

Alright guys here is an update! Not a huge one, but it's about 8 hours of work. Thanks again to Bill Owen of MNPCTECH for some great parts!

Luckily this cut didn't have to be perfect, because I didn't have a hole saw to cut out the front panel and the chassis. The plastic duct will be covering the jagged edges so it wasn't a huge deal.

This is after cleaning it up a little bit.

Here is the front panel with the fan duct from MNPCTECH.

here is the 3rd coat of the fibergalss filler. I POOPED ON MY FRONT PANEL.

Here is the computer case panel, which is the left, top and right side all in one panel. Kind of inconvenient but whatever. Sanded and primed. On the right we have the chassis with the hole for the fan.

5th coat of the fiberglass filler.

purple fan controller! (and orange knobs, which are not pictured.)

Looks mad red, but it's the lighting. it's orange.

MNPCTECH Fan grommits! WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Fan mounted and mnpctech tapered screws in!

This is the 2nd to last coast. I'm going to sand this down to the shape i want, prime it, and then will prob have to do a final coat to clean up some holes and gashes. That is going to take some time.

Tried this fitting,and i'm going to have to sand down the fan duct a little more so this is flush. However I might just remove the black 120mm fan grill instead. Don't know yet. Can't decided if i like it with or without the fan grill.

that's all for now! Since I'm painting in the garage, I'm giving the obejects im painting overnight drying periods because it's so cold. So tomorrow is final coat of orange on the case top/left/right panel, clear coat on the fan controller and knobs, sanding of the front panel and hopefully priming. We're moving on along!

Thanks for checkin this out! Nackers OUT!

[SchaibleTech]

Got the first coat of the fiberglass filler on today, and primed it too see where I needed to touch up. I got pretty damn close on the first coat, but it needs work. Still need to figure what I'm going to put in the 3.5' drive bay so sanction my 2 usb ports and power, reset, and sync buttons. Any help appreciated.

[SchaibleTech]

Why don't you make a small panel to include all those, Nick? You use something like vandal switches...Also, which fibreglass did you get?

Lookin' good btw

Yeah I'm just trying to think of the best way to do it. I don't have any of the 5.25 bay covers, so it's gonna have to be a custom job. I already have purchased the switches I'm using. I still need to buy the USB cable extenders. There are x3 5.25 bays open...one is going to be the dvd drive, one holds the fan controller, and the one in the middle is going to house the switches and usb ports. I was thinking that i could take a old cd drive and gut it, make a custom faceplate and drill holes for the switches and usb ports. that way the case fits snug into the drive bay and i can remove when necessary.

I gotta think about that one lol. The fiberglass is Dyna-Tron Dynaglass. Works pretty well, the only issue i'm having is smoothing out the line between the plastic and the fiberglass. But that's because I didn't sand it before applying like a loser.

It looks great, but...
It just keeps staring at me with a surprised face...

THAT'S HIS O FACE!


Thanks for looking guys!

[SchaibleTech]

Teaser photo! Here is the first coat of paint on the front bezel. Custom switch plate up top.