Project: FiFO - 2009 Mod Contest Entry

[yAu]

Project: FiFO - 2009 Mod Contest Entry

FiFO, stands for First In, First Out. What I am trying to achieve is that the computerparts that need cooling, have a flow of clean, fresh and cool air from the outside flowing by and exit through to the back. My main reason to make it, because I think that nowadays, the parts are being 'cooled' with allready warmed up air from other heat-emitting parts. So started drawing an air-duct around the CPU ( like I did in a lot of former casemods before ), but this time I extended the idea to the PSU and the GPU. These are the first sketches I made in Sketch-up.
The airducts are 80 mm plexitubes, and I'm trying to get transparant fans for them ( anyone an idea where I get them ? )
This rather technical part is also the introduction to the casemod part. ( can't really seperate one from another, now can you? ) So the plexi-airduct 'theme' is the general direction to form the rest of the case. I'll show you that later on.

What do you think, guys?

[PaPang]

Great idea! What does the rest of the case look like?

Cheers/Saludos

[FrenkieNL]

FIFO

First In, First Out.

A casemod that is not to be taken too serious
I'm in just for the fun and I hope you dont compare it to any of the really good and cool casemods here on this forum.
Just enjoy the ride and laugh a bit with me. ( or about me, whatever you like )

Lets start with a simple office PC. Dumped for a faster and newer model. So this is considered scrap. It turned
out to be a P4-2800 Mhz, I added some memory I have left, 2+ GB. Has an AGP videocard with 64 meg onboard.
rest is even less important as far as I am concerned.

Damn, this is sooo boring.

Lets rip her apart, here goes the HDD rack and the 250 W PSU.

Top panel away. Loosened the front panel.

Front panel gone.


To tube that goes into the PSU needs to be seen, so out with some excess material.

side view.

Some 80 mm plexi tube.

The wires from the PSU look really ugly, and I have no resources to buy fancy mesh, so i used some simple
cable-wrap to cover it up.
PSU
Here comes the top tube flowing its air into the PSU.

Dremelt a nice hole in the side, and smoothed out the edges.

Hmm, what is that ugly thing ?

Lets exchange it with this plexi fan with UV LEDs.

Dremelt it together ( hahaha ) Love this soldering tool.

Lets go crazy.

Special effect spray paint.

Lets not stop with just the PSU and the GPU... MOBO as well !

Voila !

There's a GPU underneath there somewhere .......


Like it so far ?

[PaPang]

Aww gawd, everyone's loss that your dropping out. Even your "fun" mods are profound and creative! Different to say the least. Well..:

First, great starting point, a non pre-modded case (IMO, the best type to mod). Prehistoric hardware but the challenge is to kick it up a notch or two with some nifty cooling, soooo valid these days while we wait for better times.

Second, upgrading on the fly with stuff most of us have lying around (I have a dozen led fans of all sizes in my storage bin, both old and new--never know!). Wire wrap too, each kit has easily for two computers or more.

Thirdly, a stone-finish for an almost stone-age machine, sounds appropriate, heh-heh. The wife (you know, the one with the frying pan) did this finish on some planters & looked pretty good. Definitely not the shiny automotive finishes most are used to.

Ahh... plexi tubing, wish I could get hold of that on a retail level here in Cancun, not a "minimum order" of maybe 10 complete tubes when I just need a couple of meters. Happened with 1" pvc pipe, I needed 10 inches and they sold me half a pipe or 5 meters. What am I going to do with the rest?? See why the wife gets upset with my hobby?

Kudos Frenkie, I say more!

Cheers/Saludos

[FrenkieNL]

This is how the case looks now in daylight, without the masking tape.

Another viewpoint

I installed the PSU and connected the two main wires.
You can see the colors of the wires here, I want to make that black as well.

I stumbled onto these vases in the local dumpstore. I also found a perfect intact IKEA lamp.
The vases were dented, but that doesnt bother me too much.
What I am going to do with them ? Wait and see

First I started to cut the vases through the middle, lengthwise !

First vase cut.


The IKEA lamp also cut. This was aluminium.

Here all are cut in two.

I have some crazy plan for this, should fit nice in the theme of my FIFO mod.

[PaPang]

OMG, you painted the mobo too! Hadn't noticed it. Yes, I and several others on my site, are curious as to what you have in mind with the vases--vents one said, scoops said another, decoration for a Roman column?


Surprise use, pls!

Cheers and Saludos

[petoscal]

OMG, you painted the mobo too! Hadn't noticed it. Yes, I and several others on my site, are curious as to what you have in mind with the vases--vents one said, scoops said another, decoration for a Roman column?


Surprise use, pls!

Cheers and Saludos

I'm really confuse, doesn't the paint mess up the MOBO?
looks really cool tho, I can't wait to see what are you going to do with the vases!

CHEERS!

[FrenkieNL]

OMG, you painted the mobo too! Hadn't noticed it. Yes, I and several others on my site, are curious as to what you have in mind with the vases--vents one said, scoops said another, decoration for a Roman column?


Surprise use, pls!

Cheers and Saludos

I'm really confuse, doesn't the paint mess up the MOBO?
looks really cool tho, I can't wait to see what are you going to do with the vases!

CHEERS!

No it doesnt. You DO have to make sure not to paint anything that needs conducting ofcourse.

[FrenkieNL]

Sorry about the vases, guys, I got a bit crazy when I found them, just screaming to mod.
Lets get back to where we were before;
Mounting the plexi tube to the fan.

Hehe this foto looks really cool... I think I found a new avatar!


Now to use the second tube as part of the CPU cooling, I ran into a little problem.
This is the standard Intel cooler which was mounted.

When I turned it 90 degrees to get the aluminium cooling fans in line,
I cant mount it because of the rectangular shape.

So I use this AMD cooling block, which is perfect fit inside the Intel brackets.

So this was before........

And this is now.

Used some oldscool math to determine the hole in the tube for the airflow.

And here is the (coarse) hole in the bottom of the tube.

Here it is supposed to be mounted, so the airflow touches the AMD cooling block on its way out.

-
I just ran out of dremel cut-of discs, so it could be a while before I can cut again

[sunnyXtremist]

whatever happens with this mod, it will be another great learning experience...

your mods are

and I want to be at your level of thinking some day!!!

[PaPang]

Yep sunny, our type of modder! Too bad Frenkie had to withdraw, but we stand to learn a hat full of tricks like the tube over the NB heatsink (it is the NB?). Also we must be thankful that he continued inspite of all. Hurrah for Frenkie!


Cheers and Saludos

[biggatomic]

very nice can wait to see the finished product

[FrenkieNL]

It is not the NB, it's the CPU cooler ! But hey, it's only a P4-2800. These babies never got hot-headed. Now if it was an old AMD....... but I guess you know why we NEVER see any old AMD CPU anymore; all went down in flames !
Just for a bit of fun, I can show you guys how a "Frenkie-Style" mod comes about. Just let me give you one example of my previous mods, so you know who youre dealing with.
This was a old written-off GARBAGE can. I had to throw it away because the id was broken.

R2_01.JPG (67.12 KB) Viewed 1710 times

Then 'IT' came to me, and I made this out of it.

R2_02.JPG (79.62 KB) Viewed 1697 times

[PaPang]

OMG, round surfaces! I assure you I've had my fill for a while of "rotundness". Like you scrap into treasure, a lesson for all the spend drift noobs. Good times are NOT around the corner,so learn to mod another way or file for bankruptcy!

Sorry, I only go back to slot As and 1s, it looked so small to be a cpu heatsink! But you are right, Pentiums and Athlons after the slots were pretty darn cool and the sinks were smallish (well, compared to the slot sinks and fans). Ahhh.. an Intel fan-boy, I'm an AMD nut but this thread would not be large enough for our arguments so I desist, heheh.

Keep 'em rollin' FrenkieNL, Kudos on the R2D2!

Cheers and Saludos

[FrenkieNL]

Ok, lets cool the GPU, (looks weird eh ? )

Here I cut the plexi tube as small as possible to fit the card.

Perfect fit.

Top view

Front view

This end can't contain a fan, obviously.

But since the air needs to flow, we need an exhaust. Here is the coarse cut before I filed it down nice and smooth.

( I could remove those two vertical strips of metal...shall I ? )