My new Case!

[Uncle Bob]

Whoo, I spent ALL day Saturday putting this together, and it's my best work as of yet. I started with an Antec Performance Plus1080AMG, added a P C Power & Cooling 400 Silencer (awesome power, a man's man PSU!), added 1 Panaflo 120mm High (110 CFM) fan, 4 Vantec Aluminum 80mm (65 CFM) and an 80mm Blue LED Clear fan (55 CFM). That pretty well took care of all the blowing and sucking. To control it I put in a Digital Doc (20 watts per 8 channels and 8 temp sensors). The rest was "stock": my Chaintech 7NJS, XP 2600 333FSB, Danger Den Maze 3, Corsair 3500, etc. I know you want the pics, so here you go:

First, I had to "demo" the old time worn case, a Blizzard 360 that only had 3 5.25 bays.

[Uncle Bob]

Next came the building. I won't bore you with it, but I paid particular attention to keeping all wiring enclosed and out of the way. I am an old electrician and now I attacked the project with that in mind, I was wiring a panel. The back is just as important as the front. All wiring comes in loom and is contained and therefore the rats nest clutter is eliminated.

[Uncle Bob]

Now, the old Blizzard sat on a drawer I built in the desk and the new Antec was taller! I had to make a custom steel (chopped and lowered, mon!) drawer and then cut the last 1/2 inch off the top of the desk opening where the PC slides in, just to fit the new box in there! Man, nothing is ever simple.
Here is a close up of the drawer:

[Uncle Bob]

It slides right out of the desk. It appears to be sitting on the floor, but it's not. The sliders are rated at 200 lbs! The steel??? Well, much more, ok?

[Uncle Bob]

From a farther distance you can see how handy the arrangement is:

[Uncle Bob]

It slides right in with little room to spare. There is plenty of room on top for the air coming out of the top blow hole.

[Uncle Bob]

Open the door and all the necessary "stuff" is accessible.

[Uncle Bob]

Now, on to the real meat of the subject, huh? The Mods! Here is the side window view, you barely can see the blue LED fan. I'm still learning my way around this camera!

[Uncle Bob]

Let's start at the top, huh? Here is the blow hole. The grill is hiding my rather shakey jig saw job!

[Uncle Bob]

A closeup of the blow hole showing one temp sensor. Hey, when you have 8 you can put them all over the place, so lets keep track of the air going out the top.

[Uncle Bob]

Are you dizzy yet? I disconnected everything and took the covers off and put it on the desk so you won't have to crane your neck. Ok, here we go to the back. I had to put a piece of 1/4" bar stock aluminum on the inside of the case to beef it up where the water hose quick disconnects are. I cut the holes to maximize airflow out of the PSU. You can see two sensor wires that monitor water temp incoming and exiting. There is about a 1.5 degree F rise at full load.

[Uncle Bob]

Wonder where all the wires are? Well, some of them are behind the motherboard. Out of sight, out of mind, I always say!

[Uncle Bob]

Here is a closeup of the wiring for the Digital Doc fans. All the wires feeding the fans are encased in shrink wrap and the connections are soldered. I had to add an rpm monitoring wire to the Panaflo and, lo and behold...it worked! I still surprise myself daily, I swear.

[Uncle Bob]

And now for the inside. I took great care to hide all the wires, using a combination of glue on tiewrap attachments as well as a gluegun (of all things, I was amazed how well it worked.)

[Uncle Bob]

Here is a closeup of the same side, showing the fan wires. I had to add about 3 feet to all these wires to reach the back side where they plugged into the Digital Doc. I made a connector (anchored with glue and rock solid) for the window fan, it's just visible on the bottom corner of the case, a white connector.

[Uncle Bob]

A close up of the back, showing a temp sensor monitoring the air temp out of the back case fan air. Gotta love that glue gun, man!

[Uncle Bob]

Last but not least? Here is a close up of the Danger Den Maze 3 and tubing. Came out a little dark, I'm afraid. It has a temp sensor touching the CPU die, there is another on the Northbridge heatsink, another on the side of a memory stick. All neat and clean.

[Uncle Bob]

Well, I hope you enjoyed this, I don't mean to toot any horns here, I could never have done any of this without the help and support of all youse guys! Thanks for all the ideas and help.

[robbie]

That was SWEET man!!!!! Really sweet.
Rob

[cloasters]

Impressive!!! Breathtaking, even.