This is the first mod that I feel like its something different,kind of special. Not that I’ve done a lot of system mods,in fact this would be my first complete system. I’ve tinkered with case windows,blowholes and painting parts etc. but that went stale…quick. So,what to do? Well, what you will see next is my answer. This thing has been in the making for about 3 months and thankfully they were winter months,or I’m sure Mrs. Mike wouldn’t of been so patient with me spending so much time on this. My skills as a cabinetmaker were all tested during this project,even though I was dealing with plastic and plexiglass and aluminum. Actually, I use these materials all the time in my trade,and once a builder,always a builder. So,here it is. Enjoy.

I started with this monitor(Samsung 17″) which i quickly gutted in about an hour.I advertised for a dead monitor on a newsgroup,and got a few responses.I chose one that had a relatively flat face,and one that had room for the drives along the bottom and top.

Next step was to configure my drives,fan controllers etc on the face.Once it was decided where everything was to go,out came the dremel to rough cut all my slots and holes.I had to get all my drives mounted first because once that was done , I could see where i could place the mobo,psu,etc.

I built cut out jigs and placed them over the exact location for my cut out. You can see the pencil lines in the pic above. Here’s the jig for the 5 1/4″ drives and the finished results after I used a router with a top bearing to trim out nice , clean openings.

Here’s a look with my original configuration, but that changed as the project went on.Anyways,with this done, I could see what space was left over for the rest of my parts.

The next step was building supports/brackets for my drives and motherboard.I made these out of aluminum leftovers laying around in the shopThe cd-rom and writer are held in place with frames made out of aluminum “L” which clamp the drives at the back.The mother board “chassis” is made from some square tubing with a plate on the bottom,then screwed to the bottom of the monitor housing.Then I used some 1/8″ plate,cut out most of the middle to lighten it,and bolted it to the tubing.I’m using a micro atx motherboard,so I cut out the motherboard panel from a micro atx case,and made it so it attaches to my “chassis” with one bolt with a wing nut, creating a removable motherboard tray. Worked out well.

A quick look with most parts installed.The holes you see down the right side are for fan controllers.The piece of aluminum you see running across the top(inside) is for supporting the top drives.

Now,because of the the short space between the monitor(page3) and the video card,I needed a shortened cable but I also had to have the connector at a right angle,so I cut and hacked away a vga cable and came up with this. Effective,but not the most beautiful cable I’ve seen.Oh well,its not too visible anyways(the modded end that is)

Now for the scary part, spending some $$$ on an LCD and then tearing it apart,piece by piece. Definitely new territory for me.What could possibly go wrong? lol Anyways here’s the monitor,and guess what,its a Samsung too(Syncmaster 570V)

To my surprise,the LCD only consists of two basic parts. The screen itself and a card.Otherwise just some metal housing to hold it all together.Bonus! It was just too easy.

The screen was slightly smaller than the crt’s opening,as you can see the metal edge around the LCD.I’ll deal with this later.Same with the curves in the crt’s housing as you can see in the bottom pic of these two.That gap between the LCD and the housing will have to be dealt with.

This is the control panel for the LCD. Since its so long,there’s no way I can put it where the control panel is on the crt,as you can see in the above pic(between the cd-rom and cd writer) So I’ll have to do something with the old control panel and something else with the new one.

Heres how I outsmarted those problems.I cut up the housing of the lcd monitor,just so I could use the control buttons. I traced it out and epoxied it into its new location from the back side. On the exposed side, I filled it with fiberglass resin,sanded,used some fine compound filler to smooth it out, and voila,side mounted control panel.

The toughest part,the lid. Yeah,I know. The lid? First look at the problem. I cut a large opening into the back of the monitor,and of course this had to be covered.Every side was curved,even “ess” curved along the sides. How the heck can i do this?

So, I researched on the ‘net and came upon a site where this guy slumped plexiglass for his light covers on the wings of his small plane.I built a form,placed the plexi on it and into the oven it went.Of course I waited for Mrs. Mike to go shopping first because it got a bit smelly. It took a few tries but finally one came out with potential. I trimmed it and cut it to size. The magic numbers were 275 degrees fahrenheit for 20 minutes.

Holes for cooling were next 4 x 80mm fans. There are also 2 x 80 fans on the case,as well as 2 x 60 fans.The lid ,which is frosted 4mm plexi glass,will be hinged at the top.

I finally got started on the finishing aspect and its a slow and painful process. I sanded with 220 grit then 320 to prep the plastic. .Then I sprayed a plastic etch product which is supposed to pepare the surface for primer. I then used a filler primer,mixed with a catalyst,and sprayed a coat,sanded,resprayed,and sanded again. Finally I could apply some color and I used an enamel based product. Here are some pics with the first coat of color. It takes several days between coats,so while was waiting for it to dry, I attached the cooling fans and lid to get a glimpse of things to come.

And down the home stretch. Someone was glad I was finished on the dining room table.

That’s it! Here’s a few specs as well.

CPU: Pentium 4 1.6A GHz @ 16*133= 2.13 GHz

CPU Cooler: Spark 7(TT)

Video Card: Radeon 9500 Pro

Motherboard: AOpen MX4GR(micro ATX)

RAM: 512MB Samsung pc 2700 , Active TT cooling

# of Fans: 8

FanBus: 2 Hardcano 8′s

O/S: Windows XP Pro(legit)

Storage: Dual 10k 18gig SCSI drives on an Adaptec 29160 pci card

Sound: Audigy Platinum 2

SCSI burner,52x cd-rom,Shuttle 6in1 card reader
(powered by internal USB),zip,and floppy

Linksys Wireless Ethernet Bridge to Onboard Lan(hence the antenna)

Power Supply: 350 watt Antec

Monitor- Samsung 570V
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