ssr

AquaLight

Category

Case Mods

Status

Ready for Battle

Deets

Hey guys, this is my first modding project, AquaLight. The mod is based on Sunbeam’s Transformer I bought a while ago and never was really happy with its premod looks. I’ve always wanted to do a major mod on some case and express my style and personality. I really don’t know how I came up with the name, it just popped in my head at some point, I think the main reason is the fact I love water. Then it was a matter of making a case that would fit the name.

Now that we are done with the introduction part lets move on to the modding process itself.

Modding phases.

Front Bezel

I started off with the front bezel. I made it completely flat, smoothing everything with bondo and then made a blowhole at the lower part using a self made rohacell ring.
Then I covered the entire bezel with very fine fiberglass to strengthen the structure. In the floppy drives area I decided to put a 20X4 LCD. Finally after some more sanding the bezel was painted in a few coats of primer followed by pearl blue color and then some clearcoat. Once the clearcoat cured completely it was buffed to a mirror finish. At some point during the mod I also came up with the idea of using an aluminum cover plate for the drives area. The aluminum was brushed by hand and clearcoated. The drive area itself got a blue plexi cover with pre-cut slots for stealthed optical drives

Chassis

The chassis was disassembled completely. The front and rear 120mm fan grills were removed, and replaced with a honeycomb mesh. I also made an internal cover for the PSU and drives area. The cover was made from aluminum which got the same brushing treatment as the front bezel cover. Again with some clearcoat. The cover also featured a sliding door for the hard drives area. Finally the chassis was painted with the same pearl blue color and reassembled

Top

The top originally had a 80mm exhaust fan I decided to leave adding some cuts to follow the theme of the mod. After making the cuts the top got primed with self etching primer and painted using the same method as before. Finally I inserted a plexi piece held with screws

Side panels.

The right side panel was a rather interesting challenge for me since it already had a cutout design. I decided to cut the whole window out completely leaving only a thin frame to act as a support for the window I was planning. Then I made an aluminum cover for the big opening I had in the frame, making my own window cuts and finally the “AquaLight” logo on the upper part of the panel. The left side panel was left untouched only getting the paint removed and getting repainted with the same pearl blue.

Reassembly

Finally after all the parts were ready it was time for the reassembly. I run into some problems reassembling the case, which lead me to a 2 months break from the modding, as I was trying to overcome the difficulties. Luckily I came up with a solution and the case was finished within a week once I got back to work.

Lighting

I used 2 Sunbeam blue cathodes to light up the case when the lighting was on. Other than that it has 3 120mm blue LED fans and a 80mm led fan at the top. On the front panel I have a Zalman controller with blue LED indicators, a 20X4 LCD with blue background light and 2 Bulgin illuminated switched I wired to the Power and Reset connections

Final overview

It took me about 5 months to complete the project. The mod was mostly about improvising and at any point I didn’t have a vision of the finished mod (not until the final reassembly anyway). The total cost of the project sums at around 300$ and around 200 hours of labor were put into design, fabrication and execution of the mod.

Full worklog can be found here:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=118765&highlight=aqualight