"Greendeemon" - 120 Advanced ITX

[Thomas Blackburn]

I started building this in August of last year - it was my graduation gift.  Originally it wasn't a mod, just a build for my everyday use, but there were some problems with my setup.  If you know the temps a Haswell i5 can hit, you'd probably shy away from sticking it in an itx box without some intense ventilation.  So, the project turned into a mod.

 

This view shows how I repurposed the HDD bays to accomodate the Cooler Master 120XL radiator.

 

The motherboard, cooler pump, and attatched cables (Sans 24 pin)

This is how I fastened the HDD to the case.  I can remove it without too much hassle this way.

This is the new front of the case, with the faceplate dremeled off

The GPU (GTX 660) and the HDD/SSD in their place.

All the cable management possible in this itx case

The modded outer shell.  There were some nicks from lazy dremel arm, so I'll touch those up before I call it done.

The fans from the outside

The fans from the inside, with the fan cable management xD

All put together now

 

 

All fired up and glowing!  All blue leds were swapped for pretty green ones

 

 

 

I plan to put a green led strip up above the window

 

 

So that's what's completed so far.  Little touch-ups still need to be done and I'll be modding up a couple of things yet, but for a WIP on my FIRST MOD EVER, that's not too bad!

 

EDIT: New picture resolution looks better on this site

[knud]

Any particular reason why the front fan is your exhaust fan and the ones on the top your intakes?

(I'm just curious)

[Thomas Blackburn]

Yeah!  The tops are intakes because I didn't feel they would pull out enough hot air where they are, so I put them as intakes to get some outside air down in the motherboard area.  The radiator draws the air from that middle of the case area and pushes its heat away from the board, and the fan in the front takes the air from the rad directly out of the case to keep case temps down.  This was done this way before the major side exhaust fans were added, so I guess it could be done in reverse, however my temperatures are at an all-time low with this setup so I'm not motivated to change it any time soon (Also to demotivate me, the front fan is bolted in because the push mounts weren't long enough to use with the grate, and getting the bolts on or off is a headache and a half )

[knud]

That makes sense yes.

What temps are you getting now?

 

But to be fair, the reversed front fan does look good

[Thomas Blackburn]

These are the temps (Just did some more stress tests to be sure )

CPU (i5 4670k)
Throttling on (800mhz min) Idle - 30*C

Throttling off (4500mhz) Idle - 36*C

Avg. load temp - 60*C

MAX load temp - 87*C

 

GPU (MSI GTX 660)

Min - 26*C

Max - 70*C

[Thomas Blackburn]

I really wish I would have taken some worklog pictures when I was soldering these leds, they were a pain

 

I ordered some green LED strip from ebay which should be here any day now so there will be some major updates soon, but for now, some little things I'm fixing up:

Adhering the window stripping where it keeps coming off

 

This little nub kept the case from actually closing properly (The top would just hang out at a weird angle) so I had to cut the window corner off to make it fit.  Now it fits just perfectly!

 

 

Big updates coming soon!

[Thomas Blackburn]

The green LEDs finally shipped!    Here's a few pics of them installed (it looks wicked!)

 

 

Also I decided to reduce some dust intake due to the negative-pressure design of the airflow. 

 

I'm contemplating a few ideas for the outer case finish now, so it won't be long before I get it all put together and take the final pics with a better camera than my phone