Project: Armour V2.0

[Luigi]

A few years back I modified my thermaltake armour, spraying the internals black and cutting a few water cooling holes.

I then sold the pc to my brother, but a few years on he no longer uses the case and it has come back to me.

So today I set about breathing some new life into it, which resulted in a complete dismantal and sand down ready to be painted.

The Internals have seen a right battering, so they will be getting a full re-spray, although this time I will be doing things properly.

Here's how she looked:

Then stripped down:

And Sanded (some of the paint came off painfully easily, but patches were still there good and strong and refused to come off).:

Im a massive formula one fan, and with the arrival of F1 2010 this project just wouldn't be proper if It didn't have influences from my favourite team: Ferrari. So a few red highlights will be going in...

I also plan on watercooling the rig with a triple rad up front.

Hardware will be the following:

Phenom X6 1090T,

8gb Corsair Dominator 1600mhz 8-8-8-24,

Asus 5870 v2,

Asus Crosshair IV Formula,

Enermax Modu82+,

OCZ Vertex SSD.

For those of you wondering why Im recycling the old case, this is what my rig looks like at the moment:

Stay tuned, I should have an update by tomorrow!

 

[thestepster]

oooh nice! glad the case gods are payin you a visit

 

[Luigi]

First coat of red has gone onto the back plate

 

[killablade]

I'm liking the red

 

[Luigi]

And the case lords said... Let there be darkness:

First coat of 3 or 4 has gone on. Ill be sanding it down tomorrow and applying another coat

 

[thestepster]

lookin good mate

 

[Luigi]

Update time! And lots of images.

I finished spraying the main parts of the chassis, and have put it all back together. Unfortunately my rivet gun was being a right gay so I think Im going to have to drill all the rivets out again and start fresh, which will endager my lovely paint!

For some reason when I converted all the images to a forum size some of them grained up a little, so apologies for that

anyway, here are the glory shots:

What do you think?

 

[VonBlade]

Looking good Tom.

 

[alienware]

Very nice mate ! The case gods have indeed laid their blessings on you

 

[Diablo]

Looking good, nice to see a case having some new life sprayed into it. What colour are the panels going to be?

 

[Luigi]

Looking good, nice to see a case having some new life sprayed into it. What colour are the panels going to be?

Panels will probably stay the same colour - repainting the external would be a lot more tricky due to quite a large proportion of them being plastic etc

 

[Luigi]

So today I decided to drill out all the rivets that went from the other day, which was a right PITA. I managed to chip the paint as well, so I will need to do a bit of a patch up on the red PCI bracket

Anyway, whilst I was at it I decided to clear coat the whole case - I didn't originally intend on doing this but I decided to do it in the end whilst the case was apart once more.

It was only done about an hour ago and still hasn't fully dried, but here's how it looks:

I also had the Tooless Drive bay holders sprayed with a little black:

The Meshed drive bay covers for the front will be dismantled in the coming days and the mesh part painted red (once halfords stock the paint again- I ran out!)

I will be using Red Enermax Magma's all round, with red cable braid to cover the cables.

I think I was quite unfair on my current case with the rubbishy photos I took of it, so I took some to show it off in a better light (it's still crap mind..).

That's all folks.. What do you think? I want to start ordering in the water cooling this weekend

 

[Luigi]

So halfords finally got the paint I was after in stock, and I was able to continue with the mod.

I also bought in a few extra pieces from Scan, to round things off nicely, which I've done an extra few photos of.

It's such a relief to finally have my pc in a case that does it justice - no more tacky plastic frontage!

What do you think?

mmm... Nickel plated Vented back plates... Only a pack of 4 though.. which is gay!

I'm really impressed with these.. Excellent build quality and perfect fitting.

I always thought people that bought these were cheating.. But then I went to start braiding my 24 pin and gave in.. God this saved me hours!

I also sprayed the top mount for the USB and Firewire ports.. It probably won't be visible but I thought i'd give it a spray whilst I was at it.

Fan controller was just a cheapy that was left over. Still.. didnt come up too badly (it will be replaced regardless though).

Dammit! The case was too big for my white background, so excuse the cream background in the corner. Still, looks pretty good!

You can really see the red hightlights at the back

Nice shot of the fan controller

I LOVE YOU ASUS! What an awesome card..

I quite like the lighting on this one.. no particular aim to the image but the braid looks epic!

And one last internal shot.

There's still a long way to go on the build.. However, things will be taken a lot slower from now on, now that I have a fully working rig theres no pressure to get things done.

I will be braiding the remaining bare cables and working on the cable management as and when.

What do you think?

 

[alienware]

Nice, very nice ! but FFS ditch those green cable ties they completely ruin the look.

 

[AMDFTW]

why is your cooler leaning,and i would move the cpu fan to the otherside it looks abit messy

 

[Luigi]

Nice, very nice ! but FFS ditch those green cable ties they completely ruin the look.

I didnt have any red or black cable ties at the time - it's now been rectified though

why is your cooler leaning,and i would move the cpu fan to the otherside it looks abit messy

It's not leaning :S.. It's just the design of the cooler, so it can allow for tall ram (by putting the side furthest in the air over the ram), but fortunately my ram is far enough away for this not to matter. However, I cant get a fan on the front side of the cooler because of the ram.. that's why there's only one pulling air through.

 

[Luigi]

So today I had a go at overclocking the rig - to see what I could get out of it. I think the figures speak for themselves really:

I was shocked with how cool the CPU remained. Even after a good 30 minutes of Prime it didnt go above 55 degrees, which is astonishing. If only there was room to run Push/pull on the CPU cooler!

I also overclocked my 5870 - a fairly reasonable 25mhz memory overclock and 100mhz core overclock have given it a reasonable boost - I did have to add another 120mm fan directed at the card though to keep it cool.

What do you think?

 

[alienware]

AMD cpus are not designed to get very hot dude. As soon as you come within the thermal limit it's game over tbh. Very impressive overclock though !

Edit. And spill the beans on where you got that ATX braid thinger.

 

[AMDFTW]

oryt it just looks like its not attached properly but cool beans.

hmm i cant see the image

EDIT yes i can lol,nice OC i reckon if you had a better cooler you could get some more outa it

 

[Luigi]

I read a lot about the low thermal limit of the CPU's.. Im well under the 65 degrees that everyone said you should try and stick below.

They're from scan, just search NZXT 24pin and it should find it. They do them for all sorts of connectors, sata etc, quite cool.

AMD cpus are not designed to get very hot dude. As soon as you come within the thermal limit it's game over tbh. Very impressive overclock though !

Edit. And spill the beans on where you got that ATX braid thinger.