Dell mATX case mod? Dude, I got a Dell..

Sleeved the wires..


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Here is a front shot of the external enclosure that will house my cd/dvd-rom and hard drive.. (it came with its own little power supply but I gutted that out already):


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Here is a picture front the backside.. Notice that fan opening.. 80mm's.. Ugh. That's going to have to go.. I've begun measuring for a 120mm. Look at the 80mm fan. It was hard wired into their little power supply. I happily un-hard wired it.


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Out of curiousity, about how much is it costing you for the powdercoating? Trying to get an estimated of what I can expect to pay when I can find a powdercoater locally who isn't a complete dick.
 
Hahaha.. I totally understand. For my case and a few misc "small" parts, he is charging me $75 dollars. Since I have powder coated TONS of stuff, he gives me a small break, here and there.. So $100 would probably be the going rate.
 
And as usual, marty, your mod is looking great :D Love the molding work ya do bro! Cant wait to see the finished product...

Oh btw, I left you a voicemail after I got back.
 
RX3 said:
And as usual, marty, your mod is looking great :D Love the molding work ya do bro! Cant wait to see the finished product...

Oh btw, I left you a voicemail after I got back.
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Thanks bro.. I will try to call ya sometime today, if I get a break. I went to that gaming clan's website and liked what I saw. I ran into a TcS guy today on COD4. Anyways, that for another discussion. As for my project, I received a call this morning that my first round of parts were ready to be picked up.. Here they are (if you own a pair of sunglasses, you might want to put them on now.. LOL). The powder coating came out really good. I am happy with the results..


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Pulled out the little rivet tool and I have begun putting things together.. Here's the fan bracket and fans in place..


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That green is fucking amazing! Snap some pics with the fans on if you get a chance. "Plain Dell case make Officermartinez case mad!!! Officermartinez case smash puny, plain Dell!!! RAWR!!!"
 
nice, so now how are you going to mount the motherboard into the case??
 
KrylonArt said:
That green is fucking amazing! Snap some pics with the fans on if you get a chance. "Plain Dell case make Officermartinez case mad!!! Officermartinez case smash puny, plain Dell!!! RAWR!!!"
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Hahahaha... Thanks everyone. Here is an updated picture of the case on the inside. I will throw the front case cover on (temporarily) to give you an idea of what the end product will look like..

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As for the motherboard.. Dell has a tricky lil motherboard mounting system. If ya notice that little metal piece (almost a rounded shaped "L" piece), it pushes up against the edge of the motherboard. In the mean time, the little metal "hooks" on the motherboard tray area holds the motherboard in place.. Kinda weird but it seems effective. No screws! Simply remove the little level on the front part of the case and the motherboard comes loose. I kept that mounting setup in place because it makes removing a motherboard VERY easy.. I will snap some pics of that too to show you how it works.
 
That is actually a pretty sweet mounting system, makes swapping out boards a breeze. Also pulls a Las Vegas magic show act and makes the board hover in the middle of the case!
 
wow dude, that green is awesome!!! very nice job! i cant wait to see the final project
 
Got a shot of the power supply installed.. I also fabricated a PSU support rail from some a small basic piece of right angle aluminum (had some laying around). I had it powder coated to match and simply riveted it into place. It looks like it turned out pretty nice..


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I used to have a Dell much like that. I painted it with bedliner and sold it on eBay. I like where your head is at, and the case looks awesome so far.

/subbed
 
OK.. the build is coming along.. I decided to re-apply MX-1 paste to the NB.. I pressed the stock heatsink in and felt that it was uneven (the NB copper block felt loose). So, I decided to take it apart and give it a look over. Not bad. But, I felt the stock thermal interface material was a tad on the sub par side, so I scrubbed it and applied the MX-1 paste. In the long run, I don't know if it will even help or not.. Oh well.. Only time will tell.


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Next came the CPU and Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 fan.. The 9500 will BARELY fit in my small case and it's not critical that I run this setup at 3.8ghz. Since it's a HTPC, I would be happy at 3.0ghz. I have different thermal pastes lying around so on this first try, I applied AS5. We shall see the temps after everything is up and running. If I am not happy, I have some MX-1 paste and some Asetek Thermal Paste (used on my Vapochilled QX6700 Lian Li setup). I also have some AS Ceramique but it's not the best stuff on processors (but it works like a champ on my NB and SB on my watercooled parts on my other builds).


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As you can see, I will be running 2gb's of Corsair Dominator PC8500C5D 1066mhz DDR2 ram.. Should be fast enough for my needs on this project.
 
Getting late.. I think I am at a stopping point for the night. Here are the some more pics.. the wiring is not 100% in place but it gives you an idea of where things are going to be routed.. (Wow, I have TONS of power supply wires.. hahaha)


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Here are the final two pics for the night.. With as many unused wires that I have, I zip tied them together and they pretty much will NOT be visible when everything is all together. In these two shots, the Zalman 9500 AM2 cpu heatsink fan is really close to the edge of my case (only a few millimeters to spare). The two front 120mm fans are pretty much obstuction free and will take in A LOT of air (about 150 cfm total).. That should really help keep a nice fresh supply of cool air blowing directly at the RAM, CPU HEATSINK, GRAPHICS CARD, NB and SB. That big hole in the back of the case should be plenty big enough to expel all of that air.


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wow thats a tiny ass case.. i see what your saying about nothing fitting.. lol its really kind of to bad, with that big PSU, you have alot of potential for a very awesome pc...

have you considered a custom bracket, laptop HD's and raid 5??? :D

/edit, just by eyeballing it, you should be able to get 6 laptop hds in there mounted under the pcie vid card, even if you use a 2 slot card (would only need 4, but a spare would be nice)

/edit again, im only suggesting this as a means to keep some media local (like quick access dvr functions), and use your other enclosure as a NAS or something for your larger files (nas/firwire/usb2)
 
thore said:
wow thats a tiny ass case.. i see what your saying about nothing fitting.. lol its really kind of to bad, with that big PSU, you have alot of potential for a very awesome pc...

have you considered a custom bracket, laptop HD's and raid 5??? :D

/edit, just by eyeballing it, you should be able to get 6 laptop hds in there mounted under the pcie vid card, even if you use a 2 slot card (would only need 4, but a spare would be nice)

/edit again, im only suggesting this as a means to keep some media local (like quick access dvr functions), and use your other enclosure as a NAS or something for your larger files (nas/firwire/usb2)
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Good suggestions but I am staying away from the laptop HDDs.. For now, I am going to slap my 500gb Seagate HDD in since it has Vista Ultimate x64 already loaded. I am going to have to boot it in safe mode and delete the previous nforce drivers and a few misc drivers here and there (realtek drivers come to mind). My other enclosure will be actually very simple as I will have a couple of Sata cables coming out of the back of this case and going into the little enclosure. I still have to buy the external sata outlets but those are only a few bucks. I will also have to purcase a couple 3 ft Sata cables.. Again, minimal cost.. I purchased one additional AC Ryan green fan for the little enclosure and trashed the supplied 80mm fan. I was able to cut a new mounting plate for the rear which will hold that 120mm fan in place as well as the power plug and Sata connectors coming into the little enclosure. Once everything is up to par, I will rivet the back panel in and take it over to the powder coater and have it powder coated NEON GREEN to match my bigger case. I would like to do a side window in it but there won't be much of a view as the internal brackets block EVERYTHING inside..
 
Too bad the CNPS8700 NT isn't available with green LEDs. I think that would be a pretty good HSF for this mod as well. I am really interested in seeing how your drive enclosure is gonna work. Is it going to be powdercoated to match or a different color since it is a separate box?
 
bicycle_wreck said:
I think it looks great man.
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Thanks! I appreciate all this feedback. I did promise a picture of the front of the case with the front case cover on.. Here ya go!


KrylonArt said:
Too bad the CNPS8700 NT isn't available with green LEDs. I think that would be a pretty good HSF for this mod as well. I am really interested in seeing how your drive enclosure is gonna work. Is it going to be powdercoated to match or a different color since it is a separate box?
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Yeah.. There were a few other HSF's that I really wanted to work with but my options were extremely limited. As for the other little enclosure, it's going to be a matching color theme but I don't think I am going to paint it since it's already black. The metal portion of the case however, is definately going to match. LOL!


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Wow, this little case is coming together :D

I'm very interested in the temps from that 9500 on a quad - it is way shorter above the socket than a 9700, and I have a similar narrow case project in mind. Hopefully it proves to be a winner with all that airflow.
 
Any plans to show this to your coworker? He's gonna be sick to his stomach when he sees what you turned that case into. Good job all around, can't wait to see how it all comes together.

 
looks great so far, the dual 120mm's upfront are sweet...

makes me want to dig around for that old dell clam shell i have laying around!
 
Thanks everyone for the compliments.. As for my co-worker, he will be SHOCKED. I've been working on an internal wiring issue.. I've been playing around with hiding as much wire as I can.. I had those fans wires just sticking out and they were driving me nuts! Pics soon to follow.
 
officermartinez said:
Thanks everyone for the compliments.. As for my co-worker, he will be SHOCKED. I've been working on an internal wiring issue.. I've been playing around with hiding as much wire as I can.. I had those fans wires just sticking out and they were driving me nuts! Pics soon to follow.
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Shove fan wires up from under the motherboard through an unused standoff hole maybe? Would have to take the molex off the end of course.
 
silent-circuit said:
Shove fan wires up from under the motherboard through an unused standoff hole maybe? Would have to take the molex off the end of course.
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Well I thought this was a really good suggestion so I tried it. No matter how many ways I tried it, it would not all fit through that tiny hole.. Sooo.. I even stripped the sleeving off and still a no go. After a quick re-sleeve, I think I am going to have to settle for this:


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It came out OK and the wires do not detract from the rest of the components. My main thing is that I will not see a "GLOB" of wires when I look through the fans or when I look through my side case window. It should be ok.. For a little added help, I bought a HSPC ATX control kit.. I will not use all of the supplied connectors, but the reset button, HDD LED and speaker connectors will get used...


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I'm now just wondering where are you going to put the harddrive? Are you going to mount it to the bottom of the case and not worry about the PCI slot?
 
crazjayz said:
I'm now just wondering where are you going to put the harddrive? Are you going to mount it to the bottom of the case and not worry about the PCI slot?
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On the original case, the hard drive is mounted where the bottom 120mm fan is currently mounted--obviously no longer an option.

He could always get one of those PCI brackets and mount it vertically.
 
silent-circuit said:
That little kit is kinda neat. Never seen that before.
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Yeah.. I know Xoxide.com carries them but I actually found these at my local Microcenter. It was the last set they had. They really come in handy when working with a bench setup.

Living Weapon said:
They're designed for benching
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I really need to build myself a dedicated bench area with as much as I work on computers. Sitting on the couch and scratching up my coffee table is getting old.. LOL!

crazjayz said:
I'm now just wondering where are you going to put the harddrive? Are you going to mount it to the bottom of the case and not worry about the PCI slot?
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The hard drive is actually getting mounted in my little seperate enclosure with my DVD/CD-ROM. I need to purchase two internal to external standard sata pci slot mounts along with (2) three feet sata male to male sata II cables. The little external drive case has its own miniture power supply (capable of powering any two drives plus a case fan. That is coming along also.. Since I have been putting most of my time into this old Dell case, that external drive enclosure is sitting on the back burner for the moment. But don't worry, I'll pimp that thing out a little too (to match with the overall theme of this Dell case.
 
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