Well well, it's been a good weekend...
Got some good work done on my case mod. As usual, I apologise for the creally crappy photo quality, my HTC phone camera was all I had handy this weekend...
First things first, getting all my tools together, can't forget the coffee... It's a vital part of anything that requires thought:
I started by bending the mesh panel to shape and drawing the basic outline of the front panel onto the mesh, no big sweat here:
Next I tried to cut out the old front panel and use the edges as a 'frame' to mount the new mesh panel onto:
But that didn't work too well.
It broke when I started filling it back to mount the mesh:
So, I layed the mesh over the front panel, had a staring competition with my front panel (it won, by the way), and waited for some divine inspiration to hit me.
A cup of coffee and a smoke helped clear my head, and I decided to may use of the two silver plastic strips above and below my old panel to mount it.
The basic idea is that these two strips are actually screwed into the case from the inside, and they're not thin and flimsy pieces like the clear plastic panel was. So I cut two lines into the inside edges of these two silver pieces to slot the mesh into, then I cut out the corners of the mesh to fit into the slots I'd cut in the plastic... This took much tweaking and cutting and trimming and coffee and more cutting.
But it all paid off at the end! Starting to look like a fan cover now.
I got a bit worried at this point because I hadn't measured it against the actual front panel for a while, but when I put it back on, everything just fell into place and it lined up perfectly. I am going to be covering the left and right hand sides of this mesh at some point, I'll just strip some wire and put black wire insulation over the sides, but I didn't have any spare thin black wire lying around, so I'll do that next time.
Finally, I collected all the parts spread all over my double bed and put my case back together.. I must say, I was satisfied with the outcome:
Next was the side panel, I'll keep this part short though, this post is getting way too long now.
I started by cutting the basic shape of the mesh and lining it up. Did a bit of trimming on the edges here:
I decided to go with the idea of cutting awy the corners where the fan screws were, instead of tring to line up mesh holes with fan holes:
When I put it against the fans on my side panel, I found a few small corners that I needed to trim away a bit, but it was looking pretty good:
Once I was satisfied with the shape, I put my side panel back together:
And put it back on my case:
I'm not sure if I should put some sort of surround on the side fan mesh or not, perhaps do the same as what I plan for the sides of the front mesh? I'm not sure though... It's not vibrating now, but I suspect with the mesh being aginst the perspex side panel, it may start to vibrate in a few days once the screws start to settle a bit.
Also, I haven't done the cable sleeving yet, I'll sort that out when I re-spray my case... After all, my PC will be out of action for a few days anyway, and everything will be stripped from my case, perfect time to do sleeving. What do you guys think so far?
Hopefully I'll still be able to get the rest of the stuff I need with the maintenance and license costs my Camry is going to set me back this month.. But I'll find out soon enough, payday is less than a week away!
