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| Made some big changes: Fixed the cable management issue:. There is no longer a nest of spagetti infront of the cable management openings in the back of the case. Replaced the two 120mm fans on the door with NZXT 120mm Orange LED fans. Also replaced the front 120mm with an NZXT 140mm Orange LED fan. Replaced the Nvidea 420 with Zotec Nvidea 550ti, and detailed the card with additional orange trim to tie it into the case. To help hide the power supply and wires, I made a 'Gaming Grid' cap out of left over orange acrylic and lit it from underneath by rerouting a few of the orange LEDs from one of the NZXT light kits and backing them with thin white sheet styrene. I then mounted a post through the base for the light up Rinzler figure to stand on. Looks MUCH better than the power supply label. Zotec 1GB NVidia 550ti video card NZXT 140mm Orange LED fan (front bottom) NZXT 140mm Orange LED fan x2 (side door) |
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| I found a matching TRON-esq mouse to
match the case and Steel Series illuminated Keyboard. Decided to make a few changes. I noticed that the heat sink to the left of the processor on the motherboard was getting very warm because it was blocked by the radiator sandwich. I also noticed that the hoses to the radiator where laying on and pressing down on the edge of the video card. It didn't cause a problem, but I was uncomfortable with it. So I removed the secondary 3.5 drive cage, drilled a few extra holes in the bottom of the case,and decided to move the radiator sandwich to the bottom of the case. To aid in ventilation, I bought 1/2" rubber feet to raise the radiator fans enough off the bottom of the case, then screwed them through the bottom of the case with custom cut 1and 3/4 inch screws. This mirrors the rubber stand offs the case has natively for the power supply. I then added a 120mm filter to the top side of the fan sandwich just in case anything should ever decide to drop onto the fan. And finally I added a standard 120mm exhaust fan where the radiator had been. The result is a wash as far as temps go give or take 1 or 2c cooler. But the radiator hosing is now in front of the video card, no longer touching or pressing against it, and clears it by an inch. And the heat sink that was getting very warm in the past is now cool and room temp. Case temp of 66F (19c) and CPU at 33c |
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| I wanted to do a theme case for
my new build. After looking around, I found the NZXT
Phantom. I thought it looked remotely Tron like and decided
to take things a step further. I started by modding the unused 5.25 bay grills by cutting out some of the grill work with a dremel and graphite cutting wheel. The first bay cap I turned into a back lit name plaque. The 2nd I decided to do build a side USB dock, so I could close the front door and leave thumb drives plugged it. I cut off most of the metal grill work and epoxied the back end of an old hard drive enclosure I had cut down. I then bought a sheet of 8th inch fluorescent orange acrylic and cut a piece to cover the back windows. I then mounted NZXT's internal USB hub through the side of the rear corner of the case. I added a little bit of detailing to cover the female USB ends. This allows me to keep thumb drives behind the closed door and still have access to the additional USB headers, should I need them, to be accessed from the rear of the drive bay. After installing the main components, I added the first of 2 of NZXT's 2 meter orange LED cable kits. And zip tied a Recognizer toy that had clear orange parts in the main body in the upper right corner. The Recognizer is zip tied in place with one of the LED's from the NZXT kit popped through the back to light up the clear orange bits on the toy. I installed a programmable usb LED fan with a 60mm to 80mm stepper ring. The one nice thing about Tron Legacy coming out a year ago is that the merch and collectibles can now be found for cheep. I did some scoping in a few hobby shops and discount stores and found the rest of what I was looking for. I found a figure of Rinzler from the movie. The figure could light up momentarily with a button on the back. To get the figure to stay on, I disassembled it and removed the tiny circuit board and battery case. I then dremeled out slots on either side of the back and touched up the paint on the front to only show light in the appropriate areas. The slots I made on the back of the figure allow the NZXT LED cable to pass though trapping one LED inside the chest and keeping the figure 'on' as long as the PC. I then added some orange trim on a few parts as finishing touches. I started detailing the left side panel. I cut 4 squares of orange acrylic to make the "T" symbol, and attached them with 5 min epoxy. For the "Identity Disc" for the right side panel. I cut a torus out of the 8th inch orange acrylic and painted the side facing the case white to reflect the most light. The stock lighting was be replace with 4 feet of the 2nd NZXT lighting kit. It is permanently screwed to the side panel with 6 screws and lights up with the case. After the 'Identity Disc' was mounted on the right door, I added orange trim to finish off the look. I hand cut a little light cycle at the end of the trim to finish it off. I want to replace the three 120mm fans with orange LED light fans, but when I called NZXT they are on back order until April. So I will swap them out later. PC Stats: Processor: Core i7 2600k, mildly overclocked to 4.2 ghz. Intel Liquid Cooling Thermal Solution 16gb Corsair Vengence 1600 ram Gigabyte Z68x-ud3h B3 motherboard Corsair GT 180gb Solid State Drive 2x 500gb Seagate hard drives for data storage in RAID 1 Sony Optiarc Blu Ray burner Sony 24x DVD buner Corsair AX850, 850watt Gold power supply Zotec 1GB NVidia 550ti video card nMedia ZE-C198 card reader |
