Project: [Storm] - 120508 - Pt.1

After a long time of being not so active in this forum i want to share our newest project with you, up to now we call it STORM.

We started a few days ago with this unspectacular big tower case (its not spectacular, but it has a removeable mainboard tray) which we got from ebay

Because its huge like a stacker we decided to build in some kickass hardware (we didn´t decide which hardware exactly up to now) with a big watercooling loop, 2 or 3 radiators (3x120 + 2x120 + maybe another 3x120) and 2 optical drives.

So at first we stripped the case down to its raw body to see how everything would fit and in which way we are gonna make the one or other thing....

then we made 2 small mounting brackets out of some alloy stripes which we use to mount the radiator on the bottom of the frame. This was necessary to prevent the radiator from falling down on the next image :D and it prevents that the radiator could be shaked out of its position when moving the case.....

as next we bend some alloy stripes into the right angles so that we could mount the 2 optical drives with them on the outside of the case....
beside that we also bended some of those stripes to hold another radiator in front of the case, then we painted everything inside white except the radiators they get a fresh black paintjob...

The Top of the case also gets a first cutout

one of the last things we could do up to now was to build a first water reservoir which will be attached directly to the pump to prevent it from sucking air....and to make the filling process a little bit easier....

I think that has some real potential. Nice work so far. Ther eis one thing that boggles my mind and i cant quite seem to wrap my finger around it. With such a monster case, why are you externally mounting your hardware? There should be more than plenty of room in that case for everything you mentioned.

yeah it looks good! nice cooling potential:D

thanks a lot!

@ j-roc... you´re absolute right....it´s a monster and normally there is enough room for a lot of drives.... but in this project i want a totally clean upper part (only Mainboard and Gfx visible) everything else should be mounted in the lower part.....the hard drives i´m going to use will be watercooled and needs some room for the cooling blocks....so that we decided to attach the optical drives on the sides to save this space...later when the projects is finished they will not be visible....but thats another step which will follow later on....

Wow, you have been away for a while. I loved A-51, can't wait to see what ya come up with here. Welcome back!

thanks a lot jdbnsn!!

today we cut the sidepanels....first we cut the complete panel in 2 pieces

Then the both upper parts got their cutouts and holes so that we can mount a 2x120 mm radiator on each sidepanel. One of the sidepanels additionaly gets a few more cutouts which will be used as small windows....

beside the cutouts we also cut out some acrylic parts in shape of the small windows which will be placed on the other sidepanel....

For the inside we prepared a first cover which will be placed in the front part of the case, it will cover the pump, the small water reservoir and nearly all cables which will be needed for hdds and opt. drives....(atm its not fixed in its position that will follow later)

As last step we prepared a frame of alloy stripes which is screwed to the radiator on the front of the case

Looks killer so far! Good work!

This looks sweet! I like the side mounted CD drives.

The bare case looks so good in white.. that's awesome. I totally want to do a white case now.. :(

thanks a lot!!! it´s always nice to hear when others like your own work:D

today we build another radgrill for the radiator which will be placed on top of the case (another 2x120mm), after that we painted both in a plain black so that they will bring in some contrast to the white.

For the inside we build another acrylic cover which will be placed on the floor of the top part. Then we drilled a lot of holes in it to guarantee that the PSU can pull air through it.