Finally got around to some simple Air540 Case mods

Bought materials for doing some modifications to my Corsair Air540 case and some components back when I built the PC last Summer. However when my Rift and GTX1080 arrived I couldn't resist putting the PC together before I'd done the mods and thereafter could not motivate myself to take it all apart again to do the mods.

My procrastination was broken last week when I bought a Startech 4x controller USB3.0 PCIe card so I could expand to a 4 camera Oculus Rift setup. The USB ports are horizontal on the card and were wider than the PCIe slot opening!! ie. I couldn't insert USB cables. A few minutes with a dremel would easily sort it out but I wasn't risking my motherboard with metal shavings and risking a short. Nothing for it but to remove the motherboard. I then remembered I had a few mods waiting for the last year to be done that also required a PC strip down. So finally after a year the procrastination cycle was broken and they're now done finally.

I dremeled the PCIe slot opening obviously. I cut out the HDD rails on the 'bottom' of the case so that I could directly mount to the chassis the two fans I had ghetto-mod cable-tied to the HDD rails up till now. I also dremeled off excess fan hole tabs on the 'Top' off the case. I have a 280mm Corsair H110GT up there with 140mm fans. The excess tabs are for 120mm fans. Not normally an issue but I use Thermaltake Riing fans and the tabs where blocking part of the LED rings. Aesthetically this just wouldn't do!!

Once all the dremeling was done I painted the interior of the chassis with White Plastidip rubberised paint. I also painted the CPU Pump housing of the Corsair AIO and the Shroud of my Palit Super Jetstream GTX1080.

While I was at it I delidded my 6700K and replaced the Intel TIM under the IHS with CLU (Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra Liquid Metal TIM). I also replaced the TIM on my GPU die with CLU as well.

I re-arranged my Intake and Exhaust fan arrangement. Fans aimed at GPU remained as Intake but I switched my H110GT CPU cooler fans to intake as well so they would no longer be recycling GPU exhaust. Left the rear fan as exhaust. Started to worry about the case being massively positive pressure with 7 intakes and 1 exhaust until I had my Homer Simpson DOH!! moment and realised theres nothing in the rulebook that says the front fans have to be intake. Its just a convention. So I switched the front 3 120mm fans to exhaust. Plenty of exhaust now to blow all that GPU and CPU exhaust out of the case. I had already broken with convention anyway, as I use this case on its side!! :D

I blew all my warranties Sky High though!! :D

The pics:

http://i.imgur.com/AfL4cnU.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/2Fr4Nhl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/mTGvEIf.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Y9nhq0P.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/3AZgeEZ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Rd4RvXj.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/inQeyRF.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jeW0SSU.jpg

Heres a before picture when the case and components were still black. Ignore the fan config in that photo though. I've posted a photo of the new fan config below it:

http://i.imgur.com/o9yGgQW.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/l5ahkhP.jpg

Looks the doggys do dah's!! NICE job duder :)

Thanks Man! :o: :biggrin: