Project: Toxic Tower

[Diamon]

Changed name of the project to RGB Tower! Since it will have red, green and blue lights. EDIT: The blue lights broke ^^

Pics of the finished case:

Potentiometer for controlling the fan speeds:

The buttons for the LEDs:

Night pics:

Hello everyone!
I'm going to make a custom pc case. This will be my first modding project so we'll see how it turns out but i have high expectations. I've previously made a thread in the "Your mods" section where I've gotten some really helpful feedback and suggestions on the design and now I think the project is ready to be started, here's how I have it planned:
First a pic of the blueprints:

I guess most of it is self explanatory, the motherboard connections are facing the front, there's room for a cd/dvd reader as well as a memory card reader above it. The black box at the bottom is the PSU, the white blocks are the hdd's, the grey boxes are rads and the copper colored boxes are fans. The 4 fans at the back suck air out of the case, past the hdd's and through a radiator. The rest of the fans blow air into the case.
It will be made in clear plastic with some discrete aluminum strips along the bottom to hide led's and to keep it together.
The dimensions are 413x450x200.

As for the color scheme it will be purple led's along the bottom illuminating the inside of the case and the sides, hopefully all that plastic will act as a huge prism . I'll add some toxic green led's to the fans and some red led's to the res and hopefully it will all look really "toxic" ^^.


I ordered the plastic yesterday, made the strips today and bought 2x second hand 120x2 rads. Pics will be uploaded when i get the stuff home

-Diamon

[x88x]

Good to see you starting work on this.

Looking at your updated design, I would recommend dropping one of the side-panel fans in the interest of leveling out airflow. The ideal airflow situation for any case is to have a pressure equilibrium, or the same amount of air flowing into the case as flowing out. This makes sure that air is constantly flowing over everything in the flow path. If you have more air going into the case than coming out, you have what we call 'positive pressure'. In this situation, air pockets can form in some areas of the case, and air will be pushed out any cracks it can find. If you have more air going out of the case than coming in, you have what we call 'negative pressure'. In this situation, air will be pulled in any cracks it can find, and you won't get as much airflow as you may have planned over components in your planned flow path.

...and, it just occurred to me that your PSU probably has a fan in it, which might make my whole speech there pointless.

[StormRider]

It's still a good explanation, so it's worth something.
I'm glad you are finally getting this started. neat idea. maybe you should get some toxic fan guards

[x88x]

Hmm, actually... I might be heading over to Microcenter later this week. Do you want me to check the $2 Bitspower bins for plexi biohazard grills? Here's a good example of them; I think they have them in 80mm and 120mm in a few different colors. Blue, green, and red if the website is to be trusted.
http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0295390

[StormRider]

you have that kind of job? lucky.
Anywho, if you do go over there, I might be interested in some acrylic fan grills. depends on what's available

On topic: maybe using red fan covers over your green fans might look kind of toxic.
or make your power/hdd activity LEDs red, kind of like a warning light

[x88x]

Actually my job has nothing to do with that...I just do it for fun.

It is a 30-50 minute drive, and I'm not over there regularly anymore, so unless you let me know something you'll concretely interested in, I won't pick it up, but let me put it this way; they have two bins, about 2'x2'x3', mostly full of acrylic fan grills of various sizes and designs, thumbscrews of various designs (in this style), fan size adapters, sleeving kits in various colors, and wire wrap in various colors (the solid kind that kinda spirals around the wires), all $2 each, all bitspower. I think Microcenter is trying to get rid of a lot of their more esoteric stock, which is a shame really. It's been so nice having somewhere (semi)local that I could just go and pick up random stuff.

Let me know if either of you want me to pick anything up and I can ship it to you at cost.

[Diamon]

My psu does have a fan but thanks for the explanation anyway
I was originally thinking of using some metall minimalistic fan grills, kinda like these ones: http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0253059. But having some "toxic" fan grills might be really cool. And you can never get enough thumb screws, it'd be great if you could pick up some of those for me, about 10 should do nicely.

[x88x]

What size/color/quantity? And for the thumbscrews, I'm assuming you wanted the biohazard design, and 10 screws, not 10 sets (they come in sets of 4)?

[Luthien]

Toxic sounds fun. Can't wait to see more pics.

[Diamon]

Thanks for the offer x88x but I've taken a look at the local computer shops and they seem to have pretty much everything I need, it's a bit more expensive but the shipping from the US isn't cheap either. The only thing I haven't been able to find here is 120mm radiation fan grills: http://www.ipcs.be/IPCS/images/rm038_b.jpg. If you find 5 of those in the 120mm version in metal or plastic, color won't matter since I'll probably paint them black anyway. It would be really great if you could pick them up for me . It would look really nice to have a green light glowing out of those.

P.S. If you do manage to find 5 radiation fan grills could you please pick up a 10-pack of these for me as well? http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0260736