Feature Show us Your Case Mods

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RAIDGoblin

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I helped work on a fun case mod this weekend, the PC belongs to my brother's friend, and the job was to install the BIGGEST FAN I HAVE EVER SEEN!

It's a 1990's hot swap server case that now has a 200mm noctua fan and a matching freshly cut hole in the front (I wish I had took some before photo's)

coDxkPo.jpg


there will be a grill to protect it, but we didn't have one at the weekend so for now, people will have to keep there fingers out :p

The other thing we added is a green glowey panel switch to replace the power switch on the front of the case, the green light is 12V and powered from a fan power adapter, here's the whole case finished:

yr1Hi9l.jpg


the build as a whole was a bit random and un-planned, but that was deliberate, he wanted it to look like it had been modified many times before (as it has) and it ended up having a very industrialist/utilitarian look to it, I think it turned out really cool :D


Specs: (or as many as I know)

Motherboard: asus prime x570-p
CPU: Ryzen 7

hdvoBOZ.jpg
 
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Karadjgne

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I helped work on a fun case mod this weekend, the PC belongs to my brother's friend, and the job was to install the BIGGEST FAN I HAVE EVER SEEN!

It's a 1990's hot swap server case that now has a 200mm noctua fan and a matching freshly cut hole in the front (I wish I had took some before photo's)

coDxkPo.jpg


there will be a grill to protect it, but we didn't have one at the weekend so for now, people will have to keep there fingers out :p

The other thing we added is a green glowey panel switch to replace the power switch on the front of the case, the green light is 12V and powered from a fan power adapter, here's the whole case finished:

yr1Hi9l.jpg


the build as a whole was a bit random and un-planned, but that was deliberate, he wanted it to look like it had been modified many times before (as it has) and it ended up having a very industrialist/utilitarian look to it, I think it turned out really cool :D


Specs: (or as many as I know)

Motherboard: asus prime x570-p
CPU: Ryzen 7

hdvoBOZ.jpg
Next mod would be to encase the sides of that beQuiet cooler, fully, and stick that Noctua fan on top in pull orientation. Get some real airflow through the stack. With as close as the fan is to the gpu, it's most likely starving for air towards the base.

That 200mm is about as good as it gets for intake in that case, as old as the design is, it's realistically 2nd cousin to a toaster. And good idea to put fan up on the psu. Heat collects at the top and there's enough space for suction above the psu, that'll help promote airflow better than fan down and leaving the top to cook. 👍
 
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RAIDGoblin

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Next mod would be to encase the sides of that beQuiet cooler, fully, and stick that Noctua fan on top in pull orientation. Get some real airflow through the stack. With as close as the fan is to the gpu, it's most likely starving for air towards the base.
I did wonder if that would be a problem, but it's not my build, I guess if his thermal profiles are OK then it won't be worried about

I might say that he should move the fan to the top of the cooler so it has a bigger gap to draw air through and see if it makes a difference to the temps
 

RAIDGoblin

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Hmm, that's why I suggested blocking off the sides of the cooler, force pull all that air down a tunnel instead of allowing it to draw from the sides where there's little resistance.
yep, I asked the owner of that PC if the temps had been OK with the new mobo, he said they had been so far, and he rejected the idea of closing the sides of the cooler and moving the fan to the top because he said that would make the cooler more noisy, and I guess that's a fair point given that it's a "be-quiet" cooler and avoiding noise is one of the main reasons he bought it

if temperature becomes a problem he might change his mind tho
 
yep, I asked the owner of that PC if the temps had been OK with the new mobo, he said they had been so far, and he rejected the idea of closing the sides of the cooler and moving the fan to the top because he said that would make the cooler more noisy, and I guess that's a fair point given that it's a "be-quiet" cooler and avoiding noise is one of the main reasons he bought it

if temperature becomes a problem he might change his mind tho
Couldn't just rotate the CPU cooler 90 degrees so it blows toward the rear exhaust?
 
May 30, 2022
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This thread is dedicated to showing off your PC case mods. We're looking for tricked out, custom built cases that show off your style and taste. Simple modifications such as a new paint job, airflow modifications, mods in progress, or anything done with a dremel are also welcome!

These case mods will be posted on the Tom's Hardware home page in an upcoming feature. So if you want to get on the front page post your mods here!

Rules
■Tom's Hardware's ToU and RoC always applies.
■Everyone will respect everyone. Flames will not be tolerated at all in this thread.
■Please limit your gallery to 1 post (4 pictures and if more pictures are needed, please post a link).
■When commenting on a system gallery, please type the poster's name in your response. Do Not quote their gallery in your response.
■Please keep resolution of pictures under 1024x768 in the thread (up to 1920x1080 if a thumbnail).
■Please state your system specifications.
I bought a mesh front for my NZXT H510 Elite since with an AIO the airflow isn't great for the CPU.
LEP8HHj.jpeg

I bought it on Etsy for $30 and am really happy with the final product! All I had to do was take off the current glass panel and the mesh attaches to the case using magnets, and my cpu temps have been way lower!

Would definetley recommend to people to have the H510 Elite, here is the link to the store if you are interested. Link (Note, does not work with the H510 or H510 flow)
 
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kuhne

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Not nearly as cool as the stuff some of you guys are posting here, I am jealous of both your style and ingenuity.

I built one a few days ago after a few years of having the same machine, that one stayed mostly the same minus the CPU and GPU upgrade over the course of 8 years, so it was time to splurge a little bit, especially since my kids are a bit older now and I wanted them to have the cool memory of building a PC with their dad, even if they mostly ignored me and just posed for pictures then went back to doing whatever it was they were doing.

This is my favorite case and I had been wanting to build on it for a while, I am 42 but I never outgrew the red and black color combination for anything, they are still my favorite colors and I wanted them to be the theme throughout the case, the problem with this case is that the massive RTX 4000 cards, such as the 4080 or 90, with their massive coolers, do not fit, especially if you want to use the vertical bracket to show off the fans, not only does it not fit on top of the bracket but the weight of the card is so much that the bracket would bend and eventually break, so that's where some creativity had to happen. I had some high-resistance zip ties that I didn't use for an electric bike I assembled, I used one of the posts of the case to hang it from the other side and floated the card just enough so that there was room under it to connect the riser cable but not so much that the ports wont be usable on the back.

Another piece of modding that I like o do, if it counts, I've always relied on wake on LAN, I like the ability to turn on my computer wherever I am, even inside the house, but WoL is not very reliable, depends on your ISP if you will be able to use it properly or not, I changed ISP a couple of years ago from one that had a public IP to a shared IP and all my WoL super powers disappeared, while there are ways around that (tunneling, etc.) it's not the most elegant/stable solution, plus depending on your mobo, if there's a power outage in your home, WoL won't work when the power comes back on, you would have to manually turn on your computer once before WoL works (some mobos only)

So I use these for many home automation things around my home, its basically a small square-like device you glue to a surface and it pushes things at your command, light switches, thermostats, etc. it connects via wifi and then you can control it with siri, alexa, etc.

I stuck one of these right over the button, https://www.switch-bot.com/

just as I had with my older pc, and then configure the button push to match the pc perfectly, so no matter where you are in the world you just have to go "hey Siri turn on my computer" and it will be like someone is manually turning it on for you, instead of having to go through the WoL nonsense that has historically always been a pain in the butt for me.

Another interesting thing that took me a while to figure out was the RGB, I had this idea that I wanted red light to start from the left and sort of travel from the keyboard and the monitor to the mouse then the mother board, pump, ram, cooler, etc.

The problem is they are all different brands, keyboard corsair, mouse Logitech, display dell, mobo MSI, etc. There is software that is supposed to detect all your rgb stuff but that wasn't working properly for me, so it took some tinkering and creative synching in other to get that effect more or less the way I wanted it, it was obviously not perfect but it worked out well, it was the dell display that ended up giving me some serious pain in the butt as the alienware software does not control the rgb lights on the back of the monitor so it has to be done with the monitor buttons, which normally would be better except every time the monitor went into stand by and came back the lights reset to their original color. Apparently it was some windows feature causing this, took me some googling to figure that one out.

Anyway, in the end it all came out pretty cool, please do not stop uploading your machines, I don't post in this forum often but I come a lot and love seeing what you guys do.


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0WyjQuX.jpg
 

Karadjgne

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Interesting build, I like the overall affect, and your mods work well for your intended purpose, so you are all good in my book, but gotta say, best part of the entire process isn't what you've done, but what happened when doing it. Very few of us get even a single excited helper, and you got two of them. That, in a word, is Priceless. 👍
Not nearly as cool as the stuff some of you guys are posting here, I am jealous of both your style and ingenuity.
Perspective...
 
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kuhne

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Interesting build, I like the overall affect, and your mods work well for your intended purpose, so you are all good in my book, but gotta say, best part of the entire process isn't what you've done, but what happened when doing it. Very few of us get even a single excited helper, and you got two of them. That, in a word, is Priceless. 👍

Perspective...

thanks man I appreciate it, yeah as it is the case with most mods these came out of necessity so not a lot had to be done, and the kids well… they “helped”
 

mickrc3

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I just made the tiniest of case mods. I have a couple of DIYPC TG8 ATX cases (one red, one white) purchased nearly 2 years ago from the Egg. They were set aside for builds for my nephew and niece. The kids wanted cases that still had those legacy optical drive bays. When I began the build process this month I recalled that the airflow is not ideal with this case since the sides are glass, the front has a glass panel, and the top has a glass panel. The front and top panels sit about a quarter inch up from the case body to give some airflow for the 120mm fans that are mounted in the case. But I felt (and others here gave similar inputs) that the airflow was not going to be enough. So I took the top and front pieces off and found that the glass panels were attached with common short #6-32 screws (same as used to mount hard drives, expansion cards, and power supplies). I took some 14mm plastic spacers and some 7/8 inch #6-32 screws and attached the panels using them. The air gap around the panels more than doubled and the fans can pull a lot more air.

 
I just made the tiniest of case mods. I have a couple of DIYPC TG8 ATX cases (one red, one white) purchased nearly 2 years ago from the Egg. They were set aside for builds for my nephew and niece. The kids wanted cases that still had those legacy optical drive bays. When I began the build process this month I recalled that the airflow is not ideal with this case since the sides are glass, the front has a glass panel, and the top has a glass panel. The front and top panels sit about a quarter inch up from the case body to give some airflow for the 120mm fans that are mounted in the case. But I felt (and others here gave similar inputs) that the airflow was not going to be enough. So I took the top and front pieces off and found that the glass panels were attached with common short #6-32 screws (same as used to mount hard drives, expansion cards, and power supplies). I took some 14mm plastic spacers and some 7/8 inch #6-32 screws and attached the panels using them. The air gap around the panels more than doubled and the fans can pull a lot more air.

General rule of thumb I use: You want roughly the same opening area as the fan frame occupies if you want to achieve 100% airflow. Math and such, but even high static pressure fans don't have a significant amount of static pressure to overcome much deficit in opening area before they lose CFM.
If you have a fan or a line of typical 25mm thick fans with a planar obstruction in front of them (glass panel), you want a 25mm air gap around the edges.
120mm Fan diamter area (unobstructed) = 11,310mm2
Surface area of 120mm fan frame = 120mm x 25mm x 4 edges = 12,000mm2

Filters and mesh (instead of purely open) obstructions in that air gap also need to be accommodated for. If the air gap doesn't cover all 4 edges of the fan or fan group, additional gap is needed.

Some companies will provide a CFM vs static pressure graph if you want to try and figure out how much CFM you're losing. Most people don't bother with the math. Heck! Most case manufacturers don't even bother with the simple math outline above, let alone relating it to the fans they're using!
noctua_nf_a12x25_pq_compared.png


Let's just say, I embarked on a mission a while back to build a PC inside a fire extinguisher (pretty much the exact size of 2 metal coffee cans stacked). Came to find out through calcs and prototyping that there's a very good reason the Apple Mac Pro uses a centrifugal fan.
 
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mickrc3

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Thanks for the analysis. In the end I decided to take the top glass panel off completely since the case has a mesh cover below the glass. However the front of the case has two large circular fan-sized holes so if I take the glass off I would have to put fan grills on the cover somehow. Instead I will use different screws and standoffs to increase the gap from its current 7/8th of an inch to a full inch. I can't move the heavy glass any further away from the case with the spacers and screws I have on hand. I still have to figure out how to install filters on the front fan openings. At least mesh anyway.

I've test-fitted a 240mm AIO in the case. It won't work on top due to some braces that run below the top fan mounts. In the front it barely works with the hoses at the bottom and no fans connected to the radiator, relying on the two fans mounted on the front of the case. Though the fans are only separated from the radiator by the thickness of the metal frame I wonder how much TDP that gap loses for the AIO. Sadly, the hoses are only just long enough to go to the CPU socket on a direct path, making the pump the highest spot which is bad. If I rotate the radiator then I can put the fans on it or the front of the case or both and still have some slack in the line to be able to keep the pump from being the highest point.

All that being conjecture because I haven't installed any components in the case so I don't know if the GPU and optical drives will affect the hose paths. Since the CPU set aside for this case is only a Ryzen 7 5700X I don't really need the AIO, just happen to have a couple on hand. I have a couple of Thermalright Assassin X120 heat pipe air coolers so I could use one in the case instead.
 

Karadjgne

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only a Ryzen 7 5700X
You cannot over-cool a cpu. You can supply enough cooling that it becomes redundant. There is a point of diminishing returns where the difference between 2 amounts of cooling becomes fractions of a degree, given identical parameters.

You'll see a somewhat large difference between the TR Assassin and the 240mm AIO, you'd see essentially no difference between a 240mm and a 360mm aio and zero difference between a 360mm and a 420mm etc.

It's the relationship of effective efficiency to capacity, the TR Assassin being @ 150w capacity vs the AIO @ 250w, loads on that 65w cpu will affect the aio far less than similar loads on the air cooler with temps at max load being directly due to the effective efficiency of the coolers, fans, airflow etc.

In a case with miserable airflow, the effective capacity of both coolers may only be @ 50% of actual capacity, and that puts the 150w TRA at a distinct disadvantage vs the AIO. For instance a 65w cpu under a Noctua L9 series will have no real issues on a test bench, but put that exact same setup inside the fantastically miserable airflow of a Dell Aurora chassis and it'll have no issues hitting 100°C instead.

You worry about structural strength because of a support brace interfering with a top mounted aio, but consider that the aio radiator IS a structural support, there's 8 mounting points to provide whatever would be missing if that brace was removed.
 

mickrc3

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You worry about structural strength because of a support brace interfering with a top mounted aio, but consider that the aio radiator IS a structural support, there's 8 mounting points to provide whatever would be missing if that brace was removed.

I should have been more specific. On this particular case the two fans on the top sit in a tub that is only a bit longer and wider than the two 120mm fans in tandem. Not even big enough to hold 140mm fans. It is about 2/3rd as deep as a 120mm fan so there is less than an inch clearance between the bottom of a fan and the top edge of a motherboard. I'm not ready to cut apart the top of the case in order to let the radiator sit higher.

The next cases I buy for family builds will have the necessary room for proper cooling as the first priority.
 

Karadjgne

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so there is less than an inch clearance between the bottom of a fan and the top edge of a motherboard.
Plenty of room. Stick the rad up top, slap in some Noctua A12x15 or Arctic P12 Slim, they are only 15mm deep vs the standard 25mm. The rad can sit in the 'tub', the slim fans will clear the 'less than an inch' the motherboard requires.

As @tennis2 implied, it's case modding 101. Anything and Everything is fair game, within the bounds of ability and aesthetics. It's great that the 'next' case will have better cooling options, but that's next, not this.

Considering your speech mannerisms, you seem somewhat more educated and refined, not the type of person to 'hack' apart anything, but rather would take the time to do the job well, if not with aims of semi-perfection. But as with most things, there's more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes, so if you want the cooling, you'll figure out a way I'm sure, even if it means your version of 'hacking' apart the case.
 

mickrc3

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Considering your speech mannerisms, you seem somewhat more educated and refined, not the type of person to 'hack' apart anything, but rather would take the time to do the job well, if not with aims of semi-perfection. But as with most things, there's more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes, so if you want the cooling, you'll figure out a way I'm sure, even if it means your version of 'hacking' apart the case.

I guess by job definition being a retired computer programmer I am/was a professional. My entire career was spent in the Department of Defense supporting the US Air Force, first as active duty enlisted, then government contractor (Lockheed Martin), then finally as a government civilian. All of that served to shape my interaction skills with others.

I haven't been much for case modifications in the past. My first attempts were mounting 80mm fans in two floppy bays in an ATX mid-tower to provide some airflow. Then I cut holes for mounting fans on the side panels of a few cases. This was all in the early 2000's where a typical case would have at most a single fan on the back, usually a 80mm. I had to paint some DVD drive faces black when friends I was building for wanted to carry over their old drive to their new case as the era of beige cases finally reached an end.

I am considering what I have to do to remove the section of the front of the fan tub, which looks like what I will need to put the radiator in place of the current fans. Doesn't look too hard, maybe a few minutes with a hacksaw to cut it and more time to sand down the rough edges. I will order some low profile fans to give enough clearance.

I did a parts survey and found out that I had accidentally ordered two white AIO units instead of one white for the black/white case and one black for the black/red case. Well at least the white won't show much after the mod in the black/red case.
 
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This build is all about the case and not very sexy hardware. Vintage-inspired office PC in a reproduction 1930s Zenith Radio (Art Deco). I can't seem to upload images and they are not housed anywhere. I guess I will have to fix that issue. But you can see the build here. https://dovetailsandstitches.com/wooden-pc-case/
Ay!!! Someone else doing a radio computer!
(my profile pic is my Crosley D-25 radio converted to HTPC, link in description)