Compaq-0 ||| XRay-1

[xrdotimcr]

Well, when I built my friend a system a long long time ago, he gave me his old Compaq Presario. It was built for an AT board. But with a little bit of drilling(lots of it) and a little bit of dremeling(even more of that) It fit's a full size ATX motherboard, a Floppy/Media reader, a HDD, and soon a small shuttle like PSU. There will be no optical drives in the tower itself because this is going to be under my desk hidden from view pretty much, and I'll just have an external DVD drive on my desk looking sharp and all. This will be hooked into a KVM so it will run on my current monitor/mouse/keyboard. I put this in the worklog section because it's not completely done yet. As you can see I still need to find a place to mount the HDD. And then buy a power supply. And do some minor cuts. Well here are the pictures.

Before I touched it with a tool(gutted though)

And this is what I have now.

Kind of dark but showing the mobo standoffs and the clearance it has.

Front of the box.

Case all together

Floppy/Media reader, and the red dot is my newly relocated powerswitch.

That plastic piece that used to be the front bezel, will not be attached. I like the plain look of this. I'm going for no effort and no money put in it except components. Tomorrow I'll get on it and mount the HDD and find something to cover the 5.25" slots.

EDIT: Just thought I'd post the specs.

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
ThermalTake TR2TT HSF
ECS Skt A Motherboard
512mb of DDR-400 Geil RAM
ATi Radeon 9200se 128mb
Hauppauge WinTV 2000
160 gig Hitachi SATA HDD
External 16x DVD Drive
Pimped out Presario Case



xrdotimcr

 

[xrdotimcr]

Ok. Today I found a way to hold up my TV Tuner card besides ziptying it to the video card. Heres a picture of it. I also did some more cutting on the back of the case.

I also got the hard drive mounted. Good thing I didn't remove the piece of metal the powersupply was on originally.

And a shot of the insides

I'm going to mount the powersupply to the back of the case externally. There's just no room in this case to mount a regular size ATX PSU. I decided to go with that because of the cost. I'm just going to pick up a 20 dollar 400 watt of Newegg or something, I don't need anything great.


xrdotimcr

 

[sabrewolf732]

ghettooooo

 

[Captain Colonoscopy]

where's the duct tape and cardboard?

 

[Elysian]

i think thats more ghetto than my external water cooling solution based on a roughly similar compaq case

 

[Retne]

What happens when someone else in your town needs zip-ties?( j/k)

 

[xrdotimcr]

I know some of you have those giant Newegg.com stickers that you don't know what to do with. Well this is how I used mine.

It's nothing magnificant just showing some love to the Egg. Getting ready to buy myself a new PSU for my other mod DOOMINATOR-Resurrected, then moving the current PSU in there to my sister's computer "Gateway To Glory", then moving that PSU to this Mod. Then the computer will be done. All I'll need is a nice external enclosure, or something cheap so I can paint.



xrdotimcr

 

[xrdotimcr]

**11-15-05**

Ok, I've finally decided to do something with this case. I've been working on it for 3 days, and this is what I've gotten. This is my first time bondoing, so this is what i have right now, still have to sand the last bit of bondo, then sand it down with 600grit, and then primer and paint it. I'm not going to reveal anything about it right now, besides that it will be painted white.

Here's the I/O ports area, all cleaned up and cut bigger so I can actually access them.

Before

Now

It also made room for the Expansion cards.

And here's the front so far, just have to sand and paint it now.

And a picture of the intake hole I made, with a jigsaw, came out pretty good in my opinon.

Today

I took a couple pictures of the Blacklight I'll be using and where it's mounted and the location of the computer.

Here's the front finished with the white paint. I think I did a great job for my first bondo job.

And here's the side/top/otherside panel ready to paint.

Here's a 50mm fan I had lying around. I hooked it up to a female molex connector and tossed it in the case, it blows on the video card to, well cool the video card, it's pretty quiet too.

And here is the front fan attached and spinning.

Here's the top/side/otherside panel painted white.

And here's the location of the power button.

Won't really ever be off so it'll be fine back there.

Still need to get a PSU and do something else. I've never seen it done before, so it'll be pretty unique (I think).


Until then.



xrdotimcr

 

[sabrewolf732]

Nice, looking forward to updates

 

[Fanatik]

DAMN! This is looking awesome. I love the curves of this case. It has a lot of potential (like you just showed). Are you going to leave it like this?

I hope you do because it looks awesome with the fan hole on top. It looks well balanced. Awesome job so far!!!

 

[xrdotimcr]

Thanks guys.

Yeah, that's it. It's done, I just need to get a PSU. And if anyone would like to get rid of a PSU, anything above 300watts, I don't care what kind or anything, just as long as it works. I'll pay shipping for a free PSU.

xrdotimcr

 

[xrdotimcr]

Ok, I screwed up the paint job.
Sometime this week, or the weekend, since school will be over. I will sand it down, and do it right this time. It will be done before Xmas, as the 25th is the last day to send in Newegg.com Case Mod entries. Updates between the 16th and 24th.

xrdotimcr

 

[Mohonri]

I saw the word "Compaq" in the title and started getting worried. But you've done a great job. I like the "smoothness" of the upper intake. Is there a reason you didn't use a nice big, slow-moving 120mm fan for that intake?

 

[mrweasel]

that's Ghettolicious!

way to make that ugly ass case a lot nicer! Love the fan...now make it glow!

 

[compslckr]

ghettotastic, but it is starting to look better. add some blue accents

 

[Killermac]

First of all awsome job I like what you have done with that ol CrapacQ case. Second what in hell kind of cooler is that on you CPU>>>??<< Just wonder it looks like an awsome blower.

KM

 

[xrdotimcr]

It's a Thermaltake TR2TT HSF

It's not bad at all. I've had this computer, I'm on the Compaq right now, I've had it running for a few hours straight, doing misc. thing. The temp is 34*C, so I guess that's what it's idleing at, don't know the load yet. But it never got above 41*C when this was my main machine. And it's only using the stock paste that comes with it.

The machine is now running Windows XP Professional Media Center Edition.
Everything is installed except for the TV Tuner, I'll throw that in when I do the final assembly. I have no idea how the PSU is going to get attached on the back, I have to come up with something. Like I said, Saturday, expect updates unless something stops me, which right now, it looks like nothing will.



xrdotimcr

 

[ShepsCrook]

The front of the machine looks good. But the insides looks like it's been barfing inside itself.
Keep up the good work...

 

[xrdotimcr]

Promised an update. Here it is. The case came out crappy again. So stripping it down to the metal once again. I'm not going to do the UV like I wanted to. Only to the fan and other little things like that.

And the fan, came out great.

Off

On.

 

[snoopy]

I really like how that fan turned out.


And thank you SO MUCH for not painting it bloo

 

[Hal]

that case is wild... to me it looks like the elite combine guards in white in HL2! awesome work

 

[xrdotimcr]

Ok, totally went a different direction with the paint. White was cool and all, but just wasn't cutting it. It was getting dirty too easily. So, I went with black. I've painted everything else in black, and so I figured why not this. I'm not going to UV the whole thing like before, instead just the fan and the flip open panel thing on the bottom of the front. And the External DVD burner I'm getting, will be painted with the UV hopefully. Well, pictures speak better than words.

Sorry about no flash, the battery was dying. Just wanted to get some pics up, will put on another 2 coats tomorrow and take pictures then. Case is almost done. w00t!

xrdotimcr

I can hear it now, Tim Mcgraw on Monday Night,
"Bolts beat the Colts at Indianapolis.."
Die hard Chargers fan since birth.

 

[xrdotimcr]

Wire job from Hell, this is where the PSU will go. It's nothign great, hell, it's not even attached to the case, but the case won't be moved so it works for me.

Paint looks really good, and the UV shit, well, that's just kickass.

 

[xrdotimcr]

No painting today. It's been raining since like 4 a.m. which is when it stopped snowing. And it doesn't look like it's going to stop. So, no painting today, or at least that's what the plans are now. Not much left to do but paint.


But have no fear, like I said before this case will be finished before the 23rd, because I want to enter it in the Newegg.com Case Mod Competetion. I already entered my other case, but I definatly want this one in it too.

EDIT, stopped for like 5 minutes, so I jumped on it.

FTW

xrdotimcr

 

[xrdotimcr]

The front is finished.
All painting is done, and it has been reassembled, the fan, the plastic cover.
Everything Glows as it should.
Pictures.

Here's the power LED.
With cover on.

Without.

With the glow.

Here's the fan and the cover glowing.
Spinning.

Stopped.

ERG, Photobucket just gayed out on me. More pics when I get that figured out.


xrdotimcr

 

[xrdotimcr]

Case is done, I have it all up and running and in it's new home now. This was an interesting case because, as I stated before, my first bondo job, and my first time experimenting with the "glow" effect. This case came out just like I wanted it to. I will be adding to this thread shortly though, once the external DVD burner I just ordered gets here. Thanks for all the positive feedback, and hopefully I've inspired some of you to go and mod your old Presarios. This case was entered in the last Newegg.com Case Mod Competition 5 min ago. Hopefully it does ok, hell even third place would be more than satisfying for me.

Here are some final shots of it. The flash killed most of the shots, so I just turned on every light I could and turned the flash off, it took away from the dark jet black that it really is.

And here's a final shot of the fan, it's the center of the case, so it gets the final shot.

Thanks again for following my worklog.



xrdotimcr

 

[Targ24]

Speaking of the newegg contest, do you know where they moved the link? I entered "Project Lego" in last month. Took 3rd place I noticed they didn't have the link on their front page anymore. Best of luck in the competition. I like the black fans that glow UV. slick

 

[xrdotimcr]

http://promotions.newegg.com/casemod


And thank you.