Project: Harmony

[Lancer]

Well it has finally begun. I got the case in today and it only survived the knife long enough for me to eat dinner before tearring into it.

Breif description of what is going on. This is going to be my HTPC for the living room. Melissa built one for our bedroom and I decided it is a must have for the living room.

It's a Lian Li PC-V880 and is a very well built case. (well was before I started tearing into it. ) The interrior hardware has not yet been decided as I am working on a few things and will need to see how that turns out. The case itself will be painted black, and will recieve a good dose of reflective plexi to the outside.

On the top the Kanji for Harmony will be cut out and a sanded peice of plexi will be placed behind it. The plexi will be lit by blue LED, and then masked off so the blue light does not get into the rest of the case. Once that's done the top will be covered with a piece of reflective plexi awaiting the system to be powered up to show of the glowing Kanji goodness.

The inside will be lit by whit cold cathodes and I am in the middle of cutting out the sides so that the interior will be lit up through the reflective plexi panels on the side. The front wil also recieve the plexi panel with a slit to accomodate the slot load dvd burner (thank you DFWDepot.com) and in the other 5 1/4 bay the lcd display will be behind the plexi and will display info for tracks and channel info. There are a few more goodies planned for this including a modded xbox 360 controller for it as well. But enough of this and on to the pictures.

Here is the case in it's virgin state.




Hard to see in the pic but I marked off the cuts for the side


Yay for goggles!!!


Here is is after the rough cut, I spent about 2 hours after that with a file smoothing it out.


Well I ran out of time for today so I will try and know out the other side tomorrow. and I will start drawing out the Kanji on the top to get it ready for the cut. I'm excited it's good to be working on a case again.
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Recent Projects:
Harmony
PNY CES 2007

[Tech-Daddy]

CH-CHING!!!

Money!

Going after a brand spankin new Lian-Li wit ha Dremel!!!

YEAH BOY!!!! YEAH!!!

Gonna love watching this come together!

[ZapWizard]

Ate dinner first? Tisk tisk...  

That is one nice case to start with.
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www.ZapWizard.com

[PoMan]

Agreed, If you start with a cast that looks good, When you are done it has to look awesome. See: Fanatiks MiniG sized

[Lancer]

Aye I loved that case when I saw it and knew it must be cut into. it is a little nerve racking to make that first cut into $130 case oh yeah and ignore the blood in the last pic. just initiating the case
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Recent Projects:
Harmony
PNY CES 2007

[Spyd3r]

Looking good Lancer!

and I think the blood really is the way to start off the mod!  LOL!!

I will keep a close eye on this, this looks like an awesome mod.

Oh also, I actually was thinking of getting that very case for my HTPC.  How about a mini review before you tear it up too much?

thanks!

-Spyd3r

[Mickey21]

Nice.  Slice and dice!  Pretty nice case.  Yeah kind of nervous cutting into cases at first, but then you just gotta finish.  Keep us updated.
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I just love Steam sometimes, dont you???

[Lancer]

Oops sorry spider I've already cut it cut and gutted it a lot. I will give you my initial analisys of it. Excellent construction, and sharp finish to the out side.

There are a few problems though. Getting to your 5.25 drive is really more of a pain than they should be. You almost have to dissasemble the entire front just to revove the drives. This means you also have to take your power supply out to get to them as well. I think this could have been fixed with a few tooless options. Also to take the drives out you have to fully remove the entire drive cage, which is 6 screws by itself.

I am not sure how cooling would be with the stock options, it has 1 60mm fan installed in the back, and the power supply exhausts into the inside of the case. there is a mesh across the front I'm sure to let it exhaust but it's not large enough to let all of the hot air out. There is a duct installed on the air hole above where the proc would be, I think a regular fan in it's spot would be more effective since it's so large you are going to end up taking it off to fit a good aftermarket cooler in there.

Most of the case has holes to allow air to escape and let cool air in but to me that just scream "hey! listen to that big ass cooler you just put on your video card beacuse it was over heating!" Even with all of it's problems it is still the easiest to work inside of all the HTPC cases have I have messed with and gives lots of places to hide cables. I would recommend it for someone who is looking to easily assemble a computer once then leave it that way.
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Recent Projects:
Harmony
PNY CES 2007

[Lancer]

Ok so here we go.

First started today out with removing the other side and filing it down.


The I removed a few more unneeded pieces... destroying them more like it.... What? I couldn't get to them because of rivited pieces. (no I'm not taking the rivets out I would never get this thing put back together.)


The mesh on the front I mentioned in the quick mini-review had to come out as well. But it was held in with these annoying sticky strips, I had to use my finger nail to slow get it off.


Next came getting the top preped for the Kanji.


Before I cut it out I need some opinions. since the Kanji is hand written it can't be easily duplicated and I had to resort to drawing it by hand. Let me know if what I drew
1. looks like the picture of what it's supposed to look like.
2. does it look good enough to be cut out.

Here is what it's supposed looks like


And here is my freehand sketch.


Tomorrow will be dedicated to the Kanji as it is a focal point of the case and I will either redraw it or spend hours making sure it is cut to perfection if deemed worthy. Well that's it for today let me know what you think.
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Recent Projects:
Harmony
PNY CES 2007

[Lancer]

Well it drove me nuts and I couldn't leave it like that so I went ahead and redid the kanji so it looks a lot better now. I never was any good at free hand stuff but I think it came out better this time.


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Recent Projects:
Harmony
PNY CES 2007

[DickH]

Why dont you use a large brush and actually paint the symbols out and then kind of smoothen it out afterwards?

[Iralvar]

this is going to be sweet. since it is going to be a HTPC you should use this to cool it.

[Sheldog23]

oh noob, you silly silly...noob.  LOL J/K


anyways Lancer sorry I haven't comment on it. Been pretty busy.   WOW! you just went and tore up a beutiful case.  It would almost be blasphemy if I didn't know you were going to make it look 100X better.   What you have done so far is amazing.  I am very intersted to see where this goes.  Stuff like this makes me want to mod cases now and then.

I think the Kanji look fine.  No matter what you do its going to be difficult to replicate the hand brushed look but I think even if it is a little more refined it will look excellent.

anyway...3 cents.
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www.austinpcmods.com

[Lancer]

heh thanks Noob but I don't plan to water cool it.  LANtrix will probably be the last system I water cool, as the PIA is not worth it to me since I am constantly adding or removing hardware. Yeah I have a bit more refining to do on it and will not cut it out till saturday when I can take it over and let a few of yall eyeball it at Sheldon's.  Thanks guys I am having so much fun working on this.
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Recent Projects:
Harmony
PNY CES 2007

[Lancer]

Well sorry don't really have a pictorial update tody because Sheldog23 and I both forgot our cameras today. I went to Sheldog23s shop to help him with the Blizzard case and pretty much ended up getting a lor more help from Sheldog than I was able to help him. I must admit working in that shop is amazing. I jumped a week ahead of where I had planned to be in just a few hours. It's amazing to see what having the right tools for the job can do for productivity. We made all of the panels of relective plexi that I needed, and beveled all of the edges, and I started cutting out the Kanji on the top of my case but accidentally lost the screw that holds the discs on my dremel while ching a disc and decided that it was probavly a good time to stop. I will take some pictures of the panels and post them up a bit later.

Thanks again Sheldog it was a blast and I owe you big time, just need to figure out how to replay you. We'll see.

Well good night everyone I need to pass out.
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Recent Projects:
Harmony
PNY CES 2007