Snafu's first case mod

[Snafu]

I built this case for my daughter - her first computer (she was 5yo at the time). I thought it might give you some ideas for your cases.

I started out with a plain jane case from I dunno where or who (I think it was a MDG case):



And ended up with this:





The case was broken down to individual pieces by drilling out the rivets and each piece painted.

I went with a blue/UV theme inside to compliment the purple exterior:



In the front panel (clear grey plastic area) I put in 5 LED's to light it up (making the harness for it).



I have a blue cold cathode and a UV cold cathode to light up the inside along with blue LED fans:



I need to take another pic of the front in the dark but this is the best one I have:

[3 of 7]

Wow, good job on the paint! I like it.

[Soultribunal]

Wow SNAFU, that is a wild Paint Job on that Case.
You did good to turn an ugly white case into something sinister looking.
Whats Lurking inside of it? (system wise)

Regards,

ST

[Snafu]

Thanks. The case colour is actually more purple than burgandy. Somehow the flash changed the hue slightly. The paint is Metal Cast from Dupli-Colour (found at the local CT store). I fell in love with the colours they had and just had to try them out.

The guts are pretty bland. This was built for my daughter who had some old Win98 games (and I could also play my old games too the odd time). So it is running Win98SE as the OS. I may update it to WinXP Pro one day but then the old games won't be playable.

It has a PIII 1GHz salvaged from an older system. The only decent socket 370 board I could find at the time was a DFI CA64-TC board. I had some 256mb of ram I had salvaged and put it on the board. ALso it has a 40gb drive (another salvaged part). I can't recall the video card but I think it might be an older 9200 with a Zalman NB cooler on it (the cooler's colour looked good with the system).

Some other pics which I hope you can see:

The blue cold cathode was really too white so I added a couple of layers of the purple over it. Worked like a charm. It is just hanging in the pics until I added the chassis so it could be glued to the top.



I didn't like looking at the PSU sticker through the window so off it came. I wrote the values on the top side for future reference if needed.



Of course the galvanised look of the PSU through the window was lame too. So I polished it up for a cleaner look (the other sides weren't done but probably should have).

[sswilson]

Looks awesome!!!!

Where did you find "curved" screen for the rear fanguard and top blowhole?

[Snafu]

Thanks!

Those screens were taken from old box speakers I had. I painted them up to match. I tend to keep little things like this around for future use.

I want to look into how much it would cost to do powder coating instead of paint. Paint is susceptible to scratches so I thought powder coating would make it tougher.

[Squeetard]

Love it man, the colors look great together.

Powder coating can be quite costly. And Aluminum needs to be anodized, costlier yet.

[Snafu]

Thanks!

There is a local place that I need to check out for cost. They did the exhaust pip and manifold from my sled for $150. So I am hoping the cost will be under $200 (preferably less - lol). If anything I would like to have the inside chassis done. For the life of me I cannot figure out why manufacturers still leave the inside the drab grey. Especially the higher end cases with windows.

For cases to put under the gun, I have a TT Armor, CM 690 and a CM HAF932. Haven't decided and need to look at cost.

The hardware inside this case is low-end but maybe one day I will let her upgrade to some of my hardware.

Thanks again.

[miggs78]

Snafu.. aweesome!!..

Some paint job you got there. Looks very kool

[Phobia]

am i the only one who can't see the pictures :(