The Project - Breathing new life into an older case

schw32m

schw32m

New Member
Fall is here and the weather has turned bad. So to give me something to do and because I have been somewhat inspired by the "Frankenstein" threads, I decided to see if I can breath a bit of new life into older but sturdy case. This thing has been sitting in my shop for a few years. I liked the basic design back when I got it and it has gone through several changes in internals over the years.

But like anything else, I finally got to the point where I couldn't stand the color anymore (beige) and with the cooling requirements of newer equipment it eventually got retired. Since it was fairly well built I couldn't just regale it to the scrapheap like so many other cheap cases that have gone through my shop.

So without too much further rambling, I present "The Project"

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The top was partially removed at this point, but as you can see it is a bit rough looking and of course the 'beige' is pretty dingy. I hadn't really thought of a color set for it as yet, although black is always an option (can never go wrong with black).

Suggestions are open at this point.
 
The front is molded curved plastic so removal is going to be pretty much impossible to make it look right. Can't even machine it into something else without molding a new piece for it. So even though it is outdated, I have plenty of operational faceless FD drives to at least fill the slot properly.

EDIT: After consideration I might be able to close the floppy hole. Will have to do a little experiment with a leftover bay cover... just might be able to form something to cover that area.
 
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Now I have it broken down into its component parts. One reason to save it is all the edges inside are rolled.. Not a sharp edge in there. The frame itself looks to be 20 or 22 gauge and is riveted together.

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After years of use, no matter how clean the environment is the inside of these things get dirty:

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After dis-assembly of the entire unit, I ran the all the parts through the dishwasher (ahem, don't let your wife, mom or SO catch you doing this unless you live in a house like mine where running strange metal parts from equestrian gear in the dishwasher is the norm).

First thing to address is the restrictive airflow coming in from the front.

I understand that the louvers in the lower ports were to be both decorative, and to keep out rocks and low flying birds. But the design really sucked for airflow.

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So I set out to solve the first problem, open up the lower ports. Getting out the Dremel and exacto knife, making sure I had paid up the blue cross this month, I commenced to work.

The result here.

The rough cut:
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The final results:
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Haven't decided whether to leave the ports open as shown or to fit some black aluminum screen over the holes as yet. With the cut outs done as shown there is now a 3/4 inch clearance from the back edges of the ports to the steel on the front of the case.
 
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Bodaggit23 said:
Nicely done.

I would suggest a top mount vent/fan mount as well.
Click to expand...

Noted.. will come to that when I get to the portion where I work on getting the air out of the case. One of the things I'm considering is allowing the PSU to take some of the duties of exhaust. A lot of the older style PSU while they may have done fine for keeping themselves cool were not all that great in moving a whole lot of supplemental air out of the case.

So with that in consideration and the fact that I wasn't planning on running a turbocharged system in it (I have a couple of dual core boards sitting around the shop needing homes). I figured on letting the PSU handle some of the yeoman duties with exhaust.

This is what I was thinking for power:

Corsair CMP 450VX
or
Rosewill RG530

Both are +80 certified and should be more than enough for what I'm planning on doing with this thing. Both use 120mm fans and will move quite a bit of air in and of themselves while being rather quiet.
 
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Personally, I would mount the PSU upside down and cut a hole in the top so the PSU can get fresh air of it's own, and let case fans take care of the airflow.
 
Aside from the restrictions of the front panel, one of the next things to deal with are the restrictions to the front intake fan. The original mount is for an 80mm fan in a clip-in housing. Not too bad all things considered since the housing comes off rather easily, holds the fan tightly and allows easy service or replacement of the fan without having to remove the front panel. The issue to address here was the efficiency of the intake and how much restriction and noise due to the proximity of the sheet metal occurred there.

So dusting off my geometry, I did some quick calculations on the area of an 80mm circle.

Comes out to 502.4 sq cm. After counting and measuring the holes in the grill it calculated out to 135.4 sq cm. At an almost 4:1 ratio, the air movement is not very good. It would be rather like sucking a nerf ball through a 2" pipe. The original thought was to increase the fan size to 90mm (and that is still an option) but since I wanted to retain the original mount and didn't want to cut the front sheet metal any further I decided to just open up the existing hole.

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The resulting rough cut and fitting:

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I'll still have to debur and clean up the opening a bit more but the basic idea is done on the stock mount. After the back fan hole is done, I'll brush the chassis down and repaint it flat black.
 
I am going to sub this one...I'll be watching;)

***Gets popcorn and kicks feet up on computer desk***

BTW...turn your 80mm fan so the wires come out the back side and are hidden from view:D
 
It's looking good

I love watching these kind of builds

It's amazing what a little bit of work can do to an old case
 
From the previous picture of the back. The exhaust fan was a little better for ventilation, having 97 holes as opposed to the 69 in the front.

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This still left about a 2.5 to 1 ratio in area. Removal of the grill was called for.

Rough cut of the opening:

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Fan fitting:

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How these will come out with wire grills fitted. I didn't have an 80 mm grill so I used a 70 mm and a 90 mm just to get an idea of how these will look. I'll probably use black grills but for photo purposes, chrome ones work for now.

Back port:

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Front port:

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Even though the front fan port is behind the faceplate, I still would want to keep sticks, rocks and low flying birds out of the fan. That will come later when I decide what I'll do to gain additional airflow from the front.

What I'll need to do next is work on a scheme for adding airflow into the HDD bays since that part of the case is very tight and somewhat enclosed.
 
Finally got a chance to do some more work on the case today. Figured out that the HD bays didn't need any additional work since the face plate has enough clearance from the bay port and with the front fan opened up I should get a nice cross draw along the inside of the face plate. So with that in mind I headed out to give the chassis a coat of flat black.

Results of first coat:

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Didn't turn out too bad for a first coat with a rattle can. I'll have to do some second coating to the visible surfaces to make sure I didn't miss any spots (these things are difficult to hit all the nooks and crannies in). Would have been nicer if I could have set up the compressor and sprayed it that way but alas I don't have proper ventilation to do that here. When I get to the finish coats on the outer panels I may have to rig something up or wait until a nice day to do the paint outside.
 
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ScOuT said:
BTW...turn your 80mm fan so the wires come out the back side and are hidden from view:D
Click to expand...

Was planning on that one... actually when I bring the front panel wires out I was planning on putting a zip-tie anchor on the MB plate and routing the wires through there. Also planing on putting all the wiring from the front inside either 1/4 or 3/8 corrugated black loom.
 
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