Tazz

Meshie

Category

Case Mods

Status

Ready for Battle

Deets

Meshie started out to be a mod geared toward Modders-Inc. We had planned on taking it to QuakeCon with us for display purposes. Well a long story cut short. The mod got put on hold for several months before I even had a chance to start on it. After dealing with that problem I finally started on the mod in early July. I had just over a month to do what I had planned. Well being busy with the site and daily life the design had to be altered.

The new mod was going to be a little simpler in design to accommodate the 1 month build time. I still had to figure out what hardware was going in it and how I was going acquire it :D.

I did one of the common mods on the Chieftech style cases by replacing the front louvers with mesh and was going to use the brushed aluminum affect that the Aluminus had to my advantage. I pulled the stock harddrive cage out and built a new support brace to support the motherboard tray. The hard drives where then mounted in the 5.25” bay areas using a couple of 3.5” bay conversion brackets. I then cut a couple of new mesh pieces to replace the stock grills on the window.

After I had most of the panels made and fitted I gave them all a light sanding to give it a brushed look to match the brushed aluminum panels on the Aluminus. I then sprayed all the parts with Dupli-Colors Red Metalcast paint. I installed a custom Red Ultra X2 PSU that I had acquired early on for the mod and then modded it with 4 red LED lights to replace the stock UV lighting it had.

At this point I started working on acquiring the hardware for the build. I did some web work in exchange for a CPU and board that would fit nicely in with the colors. The Sapphire Pure Innovation board paired with a FX57 processor was also going to be bumping me up a stage in performance compared to my old XP 3200+ I was running.

I manged to get everything installed and lacked one simple part from being able to call it done for the flight to Dallas. I scrambled around for about the last week or so trying to find the correct mounting clip for the water block. Unfortunately, I was not able to find it in my rats nest of old computer parts. Planning on making the trip without a complete running system, I checked with some of my friends that I knew would be at the event to see if i could borrow a cooler for the event. I finally decided with a few days to go I would simply do it ghetto style and make a clip to allow me to run the water cooling (I wanted the extra Red in the case). I pulled out a piece of scrap plexi and started trimming it up. I then popped a few holes in it and the stock CPU bracket and bolted it in place. I then needed to figure out how to fill the gap between it and the block. I started off cutting up small pieces of double sided tape to place in the center of the plexi. I built it up high enough to allow it to apply enough pressure to the block for proper cooling.

The next issue was getting the rig to the event. I was slated to be flying down and really didnt have the extra cash to ship it down separately. The final decision was to check it as luggage :(.... Man what a mistake that was! It got beat to death on the way down to Texas, but I was lucky enough that I was able to flex things back into shape for the show. On the trip home it took even more damage. Unfortunately that was the last to be seen of that case. I did manage to salvage all the hardware and some of the mesh work.

At the event we teamed up with CPU Magazine to build the Ammo Case thats in the 2nd shot to give away at the event that year. We did a simple random drawing for it. We had several attendees asking if they could have a chance to win my rig instead which did make me feel good. It was a common question and I actually discussed it with AmericanFreak. In the long run I decided not to. I had all our site back ups on the hard drives and really didn’t feel like formatting the drives and losing the data.

You can check out my full log at Modders-Inc.com.