Got a New Case!

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Thanks, Jack. If I decide to get a different PSU (which is looking likely), it will be the AX760 (non-I) and I've pretty much decided not to cut out the grill in the floor of the case. I've done a bit more work today; more on that later.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I've gotten some more work done. I decided to use a fan hub to provide an easy point to disconnect and reconnect the side fans when I remove the left side cover. I have something similar for my present case and it worked out great. I figured out the stock fan cables are long enough so I can plug directly into a hub. This is the smallest hub I could find:



I needed only two connectors and I'm too anal to deliberately leave two unused so I fed the little jewel through my little bandsaw and ended up with this:



There was another little problem as well. When putting more than one fan on a MOBO PWM connector, only one fan can be sending the rpm signal; otherwise the MOBO gets all confused. Unfortunately, the hub had the rpm pin for all four fans connected so I scraped off a part of the rpm trace from the PCB between the first and second plugs. I could have just snipped off that pin but this looks less rednecked:



One thing I learned about these fan hubs on my current case is they can easily get damaged if one forgets to unplug the fan cable before completely removing the side panel (don't ask how I found out ). I found that dabbing some brush on nail glue around the perimeter of each socket will reinforce them enough to help protect them small yanks. Nail glue on nonorganic surfaces takes forever to dry so I have the hub set to one side to dry.

On my current rig, I fastened the base of the hub to the back of the case using screws through standoffs the same length as the thickness of the acoustic foam they pass through. I'm going to do the same here but on the floor of the case where it will not get in the way (like the one in my present case does).

 

[Layback Bear]

I'm watching and learning.
Fan hubs are great things.
Does that fan hub have a 12v input?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I'm watching and learning.
Fan hubs are great things.
Does that fan hub have a 12v input?

Not exactly. It connects directly via a cable to a MOBO PWM fan header and the fans get their power from there. The hub in my current rig, however, runs directly on 12v via a 4 pin Molex connector. The PWM case fan headers on my MOBO can handle up to 1A and the PWM case fans I'm going to use draw only 0.30A each so I can easily put two fans on a single header (I could probably get away with three but I don't like to push my luck and, besides, I need only two fans on a header anyway).

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Here are the mods I made on the third HDD cage I'm adding. These are pictures of a stock cage:





The problem I had was the three tabs that stick out below the bottom of the case, making it harder to seal the holes where they stick through. this is a shot of the bottom of the cage with the three tabs sticking up. Take a good look at them because...



...they just went away.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

This shot shows the third HDD cage installed to the left of where the front two HDD cages go. I've already lowered the front two cages by shortening the base the cages are mounted on and moved them forward so they are the same distance from the side of the case as the third cage is. Basically, I'm fixing some poor engineering design on Corsair's part.



This shot shows the two thumb screws that secure the third HDD cage to the case. The back two corners of the cage fit into clips punched from the bottom of the case which keeps them in place. However, since I removed the tabs that secured the front two corners, the only thing holding them down is the front thumbscrew which doesn't secure the right front corner. To secure that corner, I drilled a hole in the bottom of the case inline with an existing hole in the cage and will use a screw and Nylock nut to secure it. I was hoping to keep the fasteners for the cage completely tool-free but that's the way the cookie bounces. I'm not likely to be removing that cage very often, if at all, so it's not that big a deal.

The little white arrow points at what used to be a tab that helps to align the case side panel. The case side has a V shaped trough that fits over the side flange so all the three tabs do is keep the side from moving fore or aft. Since the outside tabs can handle that job just fine without the middle tab and since the middle tab interfered with removing the bottom HDD tray from the third HDD cage, I removed the stupid thing (some Corsair engineer had her/his head up a dark, moist, and smelly place when designing that!). You can better see the nut that is securing the front bottom corner of the third HDD cage in this shot.



This shot shows why I lowered the front two HDD cages. Originally, there was no way for air from the front fan to flow across the front HDDs to the HDDs in the third HDD cage. Now that the HDDs are on the same level, some air can get to the top two drives in the third cage (fortunately, they won't need much). The bottom drive won't get any airflow but that's where my SSD will go so no worries. (Those HDDs are two of the three dead ones I keep knocking about to use for dummy drives for making cables, etc. rather than risk messing up a good drive.)



The horizontal arrows in this shot shows where the flanges I cut off the third HDD cage would have poked through the bottom of the case. Since they are no longer there, I can rivet some little aluminum panels (engraving tags, actually) over the holes to seal up five major air leaks. The vertical arrow points to where I drilled the hole to secure the corner of the third HDD cage.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The arrow in this shot shows the gap that now exists between the 5.25" drive cage and the top HDD cage. The base the two front HDD cages are mounted to is plastic and has only two little screws biting into the plastic of the base and a couple of loosey goosey plastic flanges holding the lower cage in place so there needs to be a secure connection at the top of the top HDD cage to ensure the HDD cages are secure. I lost that support when I lowered the cages so now I get to replace it.



The bottom of the HDD cages and the bottom of the 5.25" cage have pretty much the same connecting flanges so I cut the bottom off an extra HDD cage I bought for the purpose to restore the support I lost.



The diagonal arrows in this next shot shows the flanges that interlock with mating flanges on the top of a HDD cage. The vertical arrows show two notches I had to cut to clear the flanges on the top of the HDD cage. The horizontal arrow shows the tab that takes a thumbscrew to lock the HDD cage in place. I had to remove that tab from the 5.25" cage because it was no longer long enough to reach the top HDD cage.



The next shots show the cage bottom attached to the top of the top HDD cage for a trial fit. It's nice and snug, which is what I needed.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

The bottom row of holes (see bottom arrow) in the plate I cut from the bottom of a HDD cage are actually a form of hollow rivet made by punching a hole forming a deep flange that is then inserted into another hole and peened. I decided to use those holes to mount the plate to the bottom of the 5.25" HDD so I drilled matching holes on the other side of the plate (see top arrow).

I had the Divil's own time trying to figure out how to transfer the holes in the plate to the bottom of the 5.25" cage. What I finally figured out was to put some blue tape on the bottom of the 5.25" cage, mount the plate to the top HDD cage and install the cage, made sure the cage was exactly where I wanted it, then draw an outline of the plate onto the tape. After removing the cage and the plate from the cage, I positioned the plate on the bottom of the 5.25" cage, using the outline I drew, then marked the holes for drilling.



This shows the drilled holes in the bottom of the 5.25" cage. I will have to get some spacers and rivets to secure the plate to the 5.25" cage. I will have to use rivets because I don't have much room between the top of the bottom of the 5.25" cage to the bottom of any 5.25" device that gets installed above it.

 

[Britton30]

That's a lot of good sheet metal engineering Jeannie.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

That's a lot of good sheet metal engineering Jeannie.

Thanks! Daddy was a machinist and I've had some machine shop experience and training (albeit rather moldy). I've gotten a lot of my modding ideas from OCN forums. There's one forum there for cases and one thread dedicated to the 650D.

My biggest problems are being able to see what I'm doing (the old eyes aren't what they used to be) and my hands aren't all that steady anymore.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Great work LF. When you want something your way you really dive in the deep end !

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Great work LF...

Thanks!

...When you want something your way you really dive in the deep end !

What a nice, polite way of saying I'm OCD.

 

[Britton30]

My biggest problems are being able to see what I'm doing (the old eyes aren't what they used to be) and my hands aren't all that steady anymore.

I resemble that remark.

What a nice, polite way of saying I'm OCD.

OCD, a polite way of saying anal, I also resemble that.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

My biggest problems are being able to see what I'm doing (the old eyes aren't what they used to be) and my hands aren't all that steady anymore.

I resemble that remark.

What a nice, polite way of saying I'm OCD.

OCD, a polite way of saying anal, I also resemble that.

:roflmao: I've referred to myself as being anal a few times here. As Betty Davis said, "Old age ain't for sissies!"

 

[Phone Man]

I'm not anal, I am a perfectionist.

Jim

 

[Britton30]

I'm not anal, I am a perfectionist.

Jim

Yeah, yeah, that's me. No one else can do it as good as I can either.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I didn't get much done today but, at least, I'm finally covering holes instead of making them. I saw some black anodized aluminum engraving plates online that looked like they would be great for covering some of the odd shaped holes on the back and bottom of the case so I ordered them. They were what I expected except the edges were bare aluminum so I painted the edges this morning with a couple coats of black paint from a paint pen. Once dry, I started to go mark and drill holes in the case to install them but something told me to check my blind rivets first. It's a good thing I did because the rivets were just missed fitting in the prepunched holes. So, I dug a round jewelers' file and enlarged 20 holes. It didn't take long but it was a bit annoying. When I laid out and drilled holes in the case for the first plate, I drilled the hole 9/64" since I knew that 1/8" would be too snug for a 1/8" blind rivet. Again, the rivet just missed fitting in the hole. I must have gotten a batch of fat rivets. Again with the jewelers' file. Fortunately, I didn't need to file much but, still, it was a total of forty little holes to file. I'm laughing now but it was annoying at the time.

The first picture shows where I put the plates on the bottom. I had to play dodgem with the mounting flanges of the third HDD cage when deciding where to put the plates and rivets but I got lucky and everything cleared, albeit it a bit close.



This is the back of the case. The plates cover the long skinny holes. They has a flange that stuck into the case that would make putting in acoustic foam a bit more difficult so I cut them off first.

That large, weird hole near the top is where the 120mm exhaust fan used to live. It will be covered by a 140mm milled aluminum fan grill with the center cut out and the fan covered with a wire grill.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

After debating (more like agonizing) on multiple ways of enlarging the front fan hole I cut a bit undersized, I finally decided good old-fashioned filing with a half-round mill b@ast@rd file would be best way to do the job. After using small pieces of blue masking tape to show how metal needed to be removed, I used the flat side (yes, the flat side) to hog out most of the metal that needed to be removed (it goes surprisingly fast) and the half-round side to smooth it out down to the tape line. Occasionally, I would get a small "hump" I had trouble keeping the half-round on top of; those I leveled out with a small flat jeweler's file. Once all the filing was done and everything deburred, I put some rubber u-channel on the cut edge and tried to put the fan into the hole. Of course, it didn't quite fit. I used some more tape to mark the few problem areas that I could see and filed them down a bit more. The second fitting was much better but still no cigar. After a bit more filing in a couple of spots, the fan went into the hole. The first quarter inch is a bit snug but after that, the fit is as good as it gets.

Anywho, here 'tis:





The last piece of surgery (hopefully) is the top grill needs to go away. I don't want to start that until the top fan shroud comes in sometime this week since I don't want to remove any metal only to later discover I needed it for mounting holes.

I also ordered a 5 1/4" bimetal hole saw and mandrel for cutting out the holes for the two 140mm fans going into the left side panel.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I took a glance at the Fresh Hen Fruit company and found they had reduced the price of the Corsair AX760 PSU from $169.99 + 6.95 shipping to $159.99 and no shipping charges. I juggled some funds and just now pulled the trigger on it.

 

[Britton30]

Very pro looking fan mod Jeannie, good work.
I feel the need to say be very careful with such a big hole saw, it can transmit a LOT of torque to the drill and you hands, which you say you have Arthur problems with. It should be used in a drill press, be sure to hold down the case very firmly while drilling the 140mm holes.

I once let a big (3") hole saw get out of control, neither I nor the project was hurt, but it pulled the power cord out of the drill.