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I am finally up and running and at a point where I can post my case project and pictures. Suffice it to say, even simple case mods take a ton of time, though when you're done they don't look near as big a deal to anyone else but yourself. At any rate, I finally settled on an Antec P160SW Performance case. My first step was removing every part from the case and creating the blowhole in the top:



I mounted a low-noise Panaflo 120mm fan under the blowhole, using rubber washers to dampen the vibration. Next, I sleeved my Enermax 470w PSU, replacing all the Molex connectors with black ones. I used Vantec EZ Grip ones for the 5.25"s to make them easier to work with.



And all the fans:



I cut out PaxMate case dampening material and added it to the top, bottom, and backside of the case. The second picture here looks like the paxmate is one complete sheet on the underside of the case; it is not, I cut it to fit around the support stanchions on that side.





At this point, I mounted everything back in the case. Pictures shown are with my cables only 80% cleaned up.



I put the windowed side on to give everyone an indicator of what it is like with the case fully together:



Things I still have to do:
(a) Mount a Fanbus to connect all the fans. I have one, but am going to mount it in a project box, and haven't had the time yet. Will take some creative plastic cutting and a bit of epoxy.
(b) I'm thinking of re-sleeving the PSU ATX cable; it would void my warranty but that cable is way too inflexible with that metal sheathing. If I do this, I'll also replace the Enermax PSU fans with low-noise Panaflos for longer life and lower noise. I also had to remove the Northbridge fan while doing this project; it's failing and the buzzing noise was getting ugly. Don't know if I'll replace it, I really don't think I need to.
c) Wire my SB Audigy 2 to the front panel audio connectors. I have the pinouts, but I have to devise a solid way of connecting them. Alternatively, I may just say "chuck it" and go back to my Soundstorm, even though its analog audio isn't as high quality.
d) Wire up the two temperature sensors that are part of the case so I can display the temps on the front panel.

Hopefully at some point I can switch over to SATA hard disks, which will clean things up further. Hope y'all liked the post.

Nice work!

nice project so far, its rare to see a full window but it does look super clean

your box looks like an alien life form with those rounded cables

that video card in there sure doesn't look like a radeon 9700

hoxlund wrote:that video card in there sure doesn't look like a radeon 9700

It's a Sapphire Radeon 9700 128MB. It's got an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer on it and 8 OCZ Ramsinks. I currently have it clocked to Radeon 9700 Pro speeds, but I might be able to go higher, as it does have Samsung memory.

The VGA Silencer is fairly quiet, won't die like the stock ATI fan, and exhausts hot air from the graphics card out of the case.

ive been looking for that cooler buy for my video card, the nvidia 5900 ultra

it uses the nvidia artic silver cooler 4 and no one seems to have it, anyone got a link?

here is the link to mine, i don't know if the stock cooler performs better or what: http://www.3dxtreme.net/index.php?id=le ... a350ultra1

It appears that nobody has it because Arctic Cooling hasn't made it available yet (probably due to a design issue being reworked). FrozenCPU lists its availability as late 2004-early 2005. Arctic Cooling doesn't list it on their site, so I'd e-mail them and ask.

I'd get rid of your stock cooler once the NV Silencer becomes available. The heatsinks look okay, but it doesn't look like Leadtek put too much thought into that cooling unit possibly sucking in dust and causing issues with the fans.

Nice....... very nice.

Just came into some money this week from selling a spare system. I'm extremely tempted to go out and buy an MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum S939 Nforce3 Ultra board, and an Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester core. Seeing as CompUSA has a Black Friday special on the PNY Geforce 6800 AGP, I could pair that all up and do a much more extensive remodel of my system.

I know I could wait for the NForce4 boards with PCIe and Native-Command-Queueing support for SATA...but Geforce 68xx boards are impossible to find in PCIe so far, and there are no Arctic Cooling NV Silencers made for the Geforce 6600GT cards...and the current MSI board has a 20-pin ATX connector instead of the new 24-pin style. I think as long as I go Socket 939, that setup should last me for some time to come.