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Winners for Mod Contest #1

Our first Case Mod Contest was a tough decision as far as winners go. We had many great entries.

First place

Points:

Contestant: Paul Rea
Name of Computer: Blue Core Processor
Estimated Cost To Build: $700 dollars
Approximate Time to Mod: Nine Months
Original Case: The motherboard tray and drive bays came from a black Hydraulic?case.
Machine Specs: 800mhz PIII @ 800, 256megs of ram 2-2-3, Soyo 6BA+IV Motherboard, ATI Radeon 64meg VIVO, Creative Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1, Lynksis 10/100 NIC.
Comments:
This is the first contest the machine was entered in. Actually the contest was started about 2 weeks before I did the final touchups to the case.

This is the second case I have modded. For my first case I made custom flame decals and a blowhole on the top of the case for a 92mm. So this is my first major mod.

I started this case mod in January of 2000. I brought my LEGOS down from the attic to make a few little scenes. I then got the idea to make the entire case out of LEGOS. I had originally intended to make the drives on stilts of LEGOS but that did not work out as well as I had hoped. Over that first month I thought of several concepts and finally decided to build the case you now see in the attached photographs.

The following steps outline the procedure for this case made of LEGOS;

I started buying LEGOS in bulk directly from Lego. I began building the case as shipments arrived. Once the main box-shape was completed with the hole for the window and back panel, I started work on the window. I used a piece of Ultraviolet reactive PLEXIGLAS and screwed it to the window frame. This added support to the window and kept it from falling apart (which it had done a few times).

I cut a piece of LEXAN to fit the back of the case. This would add support for the removable motherboard tray and power supply, as well as the back of the case. LEXAN was also affixed to the case above the window area for added support. With the main structure completed, I drilled holes in the LEGOS and secured the fans and the drive rack to the front of the case. I then made the cut out in the LEXAN and secured the motherboard tray.

With the main case intact I started work on the top. I secured LEXAN to the top of the case and cut a 120mm hole for the fan. I then decided to build a LEGO castle scene on the top of the case, so I installed a LEGO base on the LEXAN top. The castle's torches are lit up using yellow and red LEDs and a decade counter circuit. I figured that when you look at a torch on a wall it is mostly bright and when it flickers it dims. I took this into consideration and inverted the output of the decade counter using a transistor switch. The voltage is applied to the LEDs via the transistor. The output from the decade counter switches them ON and OFF to give the effect of an actual torch. The wires for the torches are running inside the LEGOS of the castle. I drilled each piece to create a channel and routed the wires through the blocks to common points under the top of the case (this job took several days in itself).

I designed and built two other electronic circuits for this case. One is a decade counter that lights the blue LEDs on the front of the case giving the "knight rider" effect. The other is a multi-vibrator circuit that alternates voltage to 2 LEDs located inside the case. One is on the bottom of the catwalk and the other is inside a Lego computer console. The two electronic circuits are located inside the jail portion of the castle.

Throughout the entire process of building the case I had been working on the stealth drives, the floppy drive was tricky because it is a hard device to hide. I thought about not including one in this computer since I rarely use it, but I wanted the challenge. I came up with the idea of the swivel cover, which seems to work rather well.

The LEGO scenery inside the case was very important to me. I always liked to make stuff like this, so it was a must, but an important criteria was that it did not impede the airflow. So I did some research and found the cross-braced supports. They would let air flow freely through them. LEGO scenery and parts of the case that were long and flat were installed horizontally to provide a duct?to enhance the airflow. I even strategically placed some platforms in-line with the video card to provide airflow to it. The scenery only takes up the first 4 inches of the case, the air has 5 inches of free circulatory room on the other side of it all.

I assembled a three-channel electronic variable voltage controller with LED indicators. I have the option of 12volts (red LED illuminates) or voltage regulated (blue LED illuminates). I installed two switches on the right side of the bay. The bottom one controls the EL cable and the other controls the circuits mentioned above and the LCD display. The buss is fused on the 5 and 12-volt line on the off chance that the circuitry becomes faulty (I would hate to blow my ENERMAX 330 watt power supply).

The LCD is a Crystalfontz inverted red LCD. It is a parallel LCD but I used a serial backpack to make it able to connect to the serial port for data transfer. The LCD was then mounted in the LEGO castle.

I installed two sets of 90-degree MOLEX connectors to avoid the mess of wires. One was for the hard drive because I did not trust my data to the possibility of power fluctuations. The other set feeds the CD-Rom, DVD, Bay Buss, Floppy, and Live Drive.

The bay buss?was the third to last item to be built. Wiring the castle was the second to last, and the power connectors were the last other than re-arranging the scenery inside the case.

Well that is an overview of the last nine months of my modding life? I hope you enjoyed it, I certainly did.

Second Place

Points:

Contestant: Salar Madadi
Name of Computer: Skull-box
Estimated Cost To Build: $300 dollars figuring lucite, paint, trim, fans, electronics, etc
Approximate Time to Mod: 100+ Hours
(I was in school 12 hours a week, and away from my friends and family at the time, so I had a lot of spare time. )
Original Case: InWin Q500
Machine Specs: abit kt7-a raid, duron 700@1000, 30G Ibm drive, gf2mx, and sb live! value.
Comments:
Here's the list of mods I did: used bondo to mold plastic skull to front of case, cut 4 lucite windows and trimmed with chrome, cut 5 blowholes, added 2 blue cold cathodes, stealthed the cd-rw, cleaned up all the power and device cables, added a 12v/7v/off 8 port rca baybus and temperature probe, moved sound and usb ports to the front side bezel, rewired the lights and switches, and painted the inside and out. This is the second ! contest I've entered, with the other being the pcabusers.com contest. Other interesting things...I got the skull at a garage sale for a quarter, my dremel died while making this, and it's going to be in Atomic Magazine, and Maximum PC. It's also the second case I modded. The first one was done 3 years ago, and was a huge mess.

Third Place

Points:

Contestant: Steven M. Daniel
Name of Computer: None, just a wooden case project
Estimated Cost To Build: The estimated cost would have to be around $400. That is including the cost of the parts, tools, wood, and stuff that I bought that was intended to be used for/on the case but ended up being discarded due to better ideas.
Approximate Time to Mod: I started drawing up plans for the case back in October 2000. Then beginning November 2000 the company I worked for at the time decided to call it quits.

I probably would not have had any time to build this case if I had not become unemployed. It was something for me to do during the winter while looking for a job. I completed the case (its not truly complete ?still some final touches to do) sometime in January 2001, so overall it took about 3 months to build.
Original Case: I am not sure what model the case was that I originally used. It was some cheap full-tower case that I bought locally here in Cincinnati, OH. The case had a Windows theme going on ?ventilation holes on the side panels resembled the waving Windows flag, and the front bezel was done up in a similar fashion.

I originally bought this case for all the SCSI devices I had at the time. Any smaller case wouldnt be able to hold all the stuff I had. The case also sported a removable mobo tray, which I liked. It also had removable side panels.
Machine Specs: The case currently houses a Tyan S1854 mobo with a PIII 700 CPU, 256MB RAM, and a TNT2 Ultra.
Comments: The first thing I decided to do was to modify the full-tower case to a mid-tower. Looking back I would have saved a lot of headache and money by just purchasing a mid-tower case and going from there. I ended up chopping it down in height, and I also made it deeper by adding extensions. I ended up using a lot of Aluminum angle in this case.

A problem I had after completing the frame mod was where to place the PSU. The original location was now gone, and there was no place to put it in the back. So then I decided that Id put it in the front.

Another problem arose in the fact that I didnt want any wires coming out of the front of the case. The solution was to take the power cord receptacle and place it in the back of PSU. This allows the cable to plug into the PSU from within the case. The cable comes out of the case in the back.

I wanted to continue the retro look by replacing the Power and HDD LEDs. I decided to use analog volt meters that I picked up from a web auction site. I created a custom-made housing for the meters as well as the Power and Reset switches. I just used the leads that were for the LEDs that went to the mobo connectors. I had to use a resistor inline for the meters, otherwise the needles would immediately go to the MAX?position. There is a lot of needle travel when copying files to the HDD and when defragging the HDD.

Another touch that I used to complete the retro look was to cover the CD-ROM and FDD bezels with wood veneer. I found some Cherry veneer on a cardboard backing at a local wood shop. The cardboard backing allowed me to cut the veneer and run it through my printer. I used the printer to print cut lines and layout lines, as well as print symbols and text onto the veneer.

The retro look was completed by using metal cane weave sheet metal to cover the fronts on the fans and PSU.
Other Notes: The majority of this case was made using hand tools. The only time I used power tools was for cutting / routing the panels, and when using a cordless drill to remove rivets.

Honorable Mention

Points:

Contestant/Forum Member: ye11owpornstar
Name of Computer: FK w/ PlayStation

Points:

Contestant/Forum Member: lanjunky
Name of Computer: Brief case

Points:

Contestant/Forum Member: immortal
Name of Computer: clear case w/ liquid cooling

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