A while back I got to talking to a friend, we got talking about case modding. I had come up with an idea that I thought would be really cool to do as a case. Actually I came up with two ideas, but this is about the first one.
Originally I was going to take a case, repaint it, cut a window in it and put some decals on it. However I don't have the time for that. So one afternoon I was in a computer store looking around when what do I see? The case that I was going to mod, but it was already modded. It was in the color I wanted, and it had the window already. What luck! I looked at the price tag, and said, well I will have to save up some cash before I can do this. I then went looking on the internet and found it for cheaper even with shipping from Newegg.com. So once I had the money, I went to Newegg's site and ordered it online. I ordered it on a Tuesday. On Thursday morning the case, and other stuff I ordered was sitting in my office at work.
For the theme of the case I also needed some decals and I thought a applique for the window would also be cool. So I found a place on the web called The Shattered Web. I picked a Transparent Red Autobot Logo in 7.5" size. I also got a 3.5" one for my car. I ordered this on Wednesday and had it in my hands by Friday. The product is very nice. On Sunday while my son was taking a nap, I put the applique on the window. It looks nice and it comes with very nice directions.
I also picked up a set of Case Badges from Pham Computer. Again I ordered these on Tusday and had them on Thursday. This came in a package without any instructions. But you can find those online. You get 6 in a package, and your graphic needs to be 1" sq. in size.
I also got a set of decals for the other side of the case from Sticker Girl. The only problem I had getting anything so far was from Sticker Girl, but even then it wasn't really a problem. When I ordered my stickers/decals, I was paying by PayPal. Well thier link doesn't really work. So there was a bit of confusion there. But we got it taken care of. I ordered this on Wednesday also, and got it on Wednesday on the next week. They were packaged in an envlope with a hard piece of cardboard behind it. This decal went on very easy, and it looks very nice.
So last night I put the machine together. I moved the Motherboard over to the new case, put in the rounded cables, and the Cold Cathode, and everything else. Now all I really have left to do is put in the switch somewhere so I can turn the cold cathode on and off easily. I think I might use one of the face plates from an unused bay for this. I also need to wrap up the cables nicely. I should have gotten shorter IDE cables, but I will get those eventually.
Other than that, I want to get the blue faced DVD, CDRW, and Floppy drives. This would also mean I could get rid of my SCSI card. I was not able to find at a decent price a rounded SCSI cable.
With this project I added in a few other things, a 3.5" USB hub into one of the drive bays. I use a digial camera that takes pictures on compact flash cards. I have a USB compact flash card. I use this to take files back and forth from work and home. Well it is a pain to try to reach around back and unplug the reader, so the USB ports up front are nice. I thought about modding the case to put those in the side so it wouldn't take up a bay. Maybe later.
I also added in a new video card. I went from a eVGA GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB DDR card, to a MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200 128MB DDR card. So far so good.
Last thing I put in were clear fans at the back. They look good in there. I left the black fans that came with the case up front.
So my machine is the following now:
Small Photos of the Case in various stages
Large Photos of the case in various stages