MCE

September 18th 2006 - Conception

My first project has been underway for a while now. I've finally assembled all the components needed to run my media centre, all i need to do now is mod the thing to look like something you'd be happy to have under your TV. These photos are a few weeks old, i've since bought an OLED display to mount in the front 5.25" bay and a new power supply (which i'll probably swap because it's too big and i could do with a modular one to save space), but you get the general idea - not pretty!

After a few prolonged system tests i decided to use the original power supply that came with the case and just modify it a bit. So, a couple of weekends ago i set to work.

I originally planned to mount a 120mm fan where the existing fan was but this would have needed the fan to be mounted on the outside of the PSU case and subsequently would've needed the whole of the vertical support along the right hand side of the case (see top left picture above) to be moved/taken out. So I opened the PSU up to see if there was room to fit a 92mm fan inside.

It appeared there was, super! So, after far to much hassle and time (the garage really needs sorting out, and some new tools are needed), i hacked a whole big enough to allow unrestricted air flow to the fan and drilled a couple of mounting holes. A quick test fit and all that's needed is a fan grill.

However, after a quick system test is was obvious some more venting would be needed - there was far to much blowback from the psu fan. It was at this point i decided to replace the whole PSU cover with a new aluminium one but, because i actually use the media centre everyday (thus the slow modding progress), i needed to do a bit more hacking to ease the problem in the mean time. I forgot to take photos of that process but I will take some of the result soon. Suffice to say, a big drill, lots of unpiloted holes, and inpatience, created a big mess. Works though.

Will update very soon.