I figured I'd create a thread for my P180 build.
I'm not in a hurry with this project, mainly because most of the stuff won't arrive until next week. Which might be a good thing, because I have plenty of time to think things over Altho it's a bit annoying that this one store is not sending me my stuff, I double checked that everything was in stock. I've shopped from them a dozen times before so I'm sure there's gotta be some reasonable explanation for my order not being processed yet.

Anyway, as the topic says the casing is a P180, a black P180B to be precise.
The contents will be a C2D system:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
- Asus P5W DH Deluxe
- 2x1024MB Crucial BallistiX DDR2 PC6400 CL4
- Gainward 7900GS
Storage:
- WD Raptor 150GB as a system/workstuff disk
- Samsung T166 500GB for storage
- Samsung 18x DVD burner (SH-S183A SATA Black)
Power will be provided by a Tagan Easycon 530W
And finally cooling will be done by a Reserator 2 kit.

First thing on the todo list was to do some preparation on the PSU.. Actually it wasn't but I didn't want to start cutting up the P180 just yet
Anyway, I removed the fan guard. Nicely done by Tagan, the screws go down all the way with the guard removed so the heads don't stick out.


The PSU is modular but the 8-pin connector was not modular. I don't need it so I decided to hide it inside the PSU. You can see it sitting at the top here, I made sure it's next to the fan and not in the way for airflow or rotating blades.


I wonder what Tagan will think about this.. Technically I didn't remove it



With that done, I really had to start cutting up the P180. I don't like cutting stuff up, especially not brand new stuff. But I don't want to end up with messy cabling so this was the only way to go.

I'll give you an overall pic first, otherwise it might be a bit unclear what is where on the other pics.


The first cut was to allow the cables to go from one side to another in the lower chamber. It had to be quite a big hole because all cables except for maybe the 4-pin 12V will go thru here.


All of those cables except for the SATA power cables also have to make their way to the upper chamber, so another cut was needed. I had to use isolating tape to cover the sharp edges on the sides that are against the right side plate, because the protection stuff was a bit too thick. This was the smallest I could find.


And as always, I have some vacuuming to do..



That's all for now. Amongst the parts that haven't arrived yet are a bunch of extender cables and I don't want to cut any more stuff up until I know exactly how long they are and where I can fit them in.
So, to be continued

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEET

Yay, good news for me
I just got a confirmation mail saying that my order is on its way, so hopefully I'll be able to finish this thing by monday or tuesday. No overnight delivery here, I live in a pretty remote part of the country

Looking good, nice to see some craftsmanship with those cuts! (Unlike the rabid beaver that modd'ed my case, lol).

Looking forward to the rest! What material did you use to cover the edges that you cut? Thanks!

Thanks for the compliments

I bought the strips at an automotive/hardware store. It's the kind of stuff sometimes used on cars to prevent hoses from laying directly against metal edges.
They're quite stiff because there's some metal shielding inside. The stiffness actually turned out to be a good thing because it gives nice rounded corners. It costs about $3 per meter, or $1 for a foot.


I've been thinking a bit about the rear exhaust fan.. I bought a bunch of 120mm Nexus fans and I got those rubber thingies to attach fans to the case.. The problem is I can't seem to get the rubber thingies through the holes on the fan, even after cutting away the stuff in the middle. Another problem is that if I cut away the fan guard which I was planning on doing and put on this cover strip, the rubber thingies would pretty much lose their function because the fan would be laying against the strip.
So I think I'll just cut away the guard, put a cover strip on the edge, and then mount the fan with regular fan screws and if it ever starts vibrating I'll deal with it later.

If your talking about rubber ran mounts you can use petroleum jelly ie:Vaseline,and should help with sliding the fans on the mounts.

I did some more cutting today

I realized the upper drive cage holder thingy would be in the way for the cables, so I started with cutting that up after checking if the cage would still fit with the strips in place.


Next it was the rear fan guard's turn.. Which turned out like this.


And here it is with the fan in place



I received a couple of black sleeves today so I'll be doing some wiring for the fans during the weekend. I want get rid of the molex connectors which no doubt will be in the way for something..

The Reserator arrived as well, and it's huge! It's a lot bigger than I expected. One thing I noticed right away was that 2 quick connect fittings seemed to be missing, but it turned out that I'm supposed to remove those from the degassing tube. Well that just sucks imo.. I paid $350 for this thing and they can't put in 2 spare quick connect fittings that probably cost like a couple of cents to produce?

I took a couple of pics from the other side after vacuuming. Pretty "stealthy" so far

What are you using to cut the case? Just a dremel? Looks really nicely done, is it as even underneath the covers or is that just an artifact of the automotive grip you used?

I managed to fit my sata power cables through without cutting the case at the bottom... wasnt quite as pretty looking as your mod though

Yea, I'm using just a dremel, actually a cheap dremel copy even. The cuts underneath the covers are pretty straight, but far from perfect. But the covers give them a nice finish
I'm using reinforced cutting wheels that are a bit larger in diameter than the regular wheels, that seems to help for getting straighter cuts. And they last forever, all cuts so far are done with a single wheel and almost no wear yet.

A little update

Test fitted the mainboard..
And guess what, it fits!


Next job, cut a small hole in the back side of the upper drive cage. This was needed because I stuck a fan right in the front, otherwise I'd never be able to connect this cable.
Anyway, the hole..


And as a result the cable comes out at almost exactly the right height. I made sure to put the hole in the middle between the 2 slide things, so I can still install 2 drives in there if I ever wanted to (which I doubt)


And then it was sleeve time!

First the 2 front panel USB cables..


The front fan cable.. I will ziptie them together later on when I'm done with everything.


And I sleeved a molex->SATA power cable for the optical drive. I do have extra SATA power cables but I want to keep the amount of cables to a minimum. This way I can use a single regular molex cable, which I also happen to need for the Reserator



That's it for now One more fan to sleeve and I'm afraid the next thing after that will be cutting a hole in the mobo plate.

Last thing for today, I drilled a hole in the mobo plate for the ATX12V cable to avoid having to run it across the whole case. It turned out quite nice and I actually don't need an extender cable.

..nice..keep going

I didn't get too much done today. But I learned that the remaining components (drives, memory) are probably going to be delayed so now I'm in even less of a hurry...

Anyway I re-soldered the rear fan cables and sleeved them.. After a lot of testing and head scratching, nothing really worked so I decided to just lay the cable behind the mobo.
Does anyone notice what I forget to remove every time I take out the mainboard? No, not the socket protector thingy


And here's a blurry pic of where the cable comes out.. I was first going to put it on the CPU fan port, but then I remembered that on some mainboards the CPU fan speed can only be steered by the CPU temp, not by the case temp. I don't know what options the P5W DH has, so I decided to play it safe and put it on a chassis fan port even if I had to make the cable longer for it.


The chipset cooling also found its way back, after spending an hour removing all the crap the people at Asus had put on it and replacing it with AS.


And this is what it looks like atm.. The only cables remaining are the SATA cables and the front panel button/led cables. I can't wait to put the remaining stuff in. I might take the vidcard out of my other PC tomorrow and install the cooling.

What are those covers made of? Where can I get some for myself?

Everyone keeps asking me about those things Instead of trying to explain I took a closeup pic.. The inside and outside are rubber (I think) and there's a metal reinforcement in the middle.
I bought them at an automotive store so that would be the first place to look I think.

that trimming you used is AWESOME... goes very nice with the P180's brushed aluminium and black theme. i'm definitely going to find some of that stuff and use it on mine, if you don't mind me stealing your idea.

right now i'm using thin vinyl tubing that i cut along the length to trim the edges of the fan holes that i cut the grilles off of.... it's a quick and dirty solution that works nice, but i really love the look you got.

very nice job so far, though. i look forward to seeing the finished product.

Really nice work

Yay, I actually got something done again today

The frontpanel cables disappear thru a small hole in the mobo plate.


Next it was time to start with the cooling. I'm using my old 6600GT as a mock-up, the GPU is in pretty much exactly the same spot as on the 7900GS I'll be putting in.

So the first thing to do was to test fit the waterblocks.


First hose in place.


And the other hoses temporarily in place as well. I never realized there'd be so little hoses. Quite a difference compared to the DD setup I have in my current case!

Then it was time to see how the Reserator worked..

First I had to spend an hour trying to get air out of the system. I almost started suspecting that something was stuck somewhere, because it just wouldn't work. I could hear the pump was running but the fluid wasn't circulating at all.
The manual said to tilt the thing 70 degrees to get rid of air and showed a pic of the reserator being tilted to the right. Which I tried about 8000 times without any improvement. Finally I decided to try and tilt it to the left, and it started working right away
Anyway, the good news is that the pump is actually completely inaudible, I had to put my ear on the filler hole to be able to hear if it was running.


Instead of risking getting electrocuted by using the jumper cable, I went up to the attic and got an old AT PSU with ye olde on/off button.

Really, Really, Really nice.

/envy

My EXACT same feelings! I thought I had the cleanest looking P180...

Thanks
But no need to worry yet, there's some more cables to come Drives can make a mess out of the cleanest case.. And then I have the molex connector for the reserator, I have no idea where I'm going to put that thing. I don't want to have to dismount the whole machine if I need to remove the reserators little cable so I was thinking of having it outside the case, next to the PSU or something.
Btw your case looks awesome! (found it in an other thread)


Anyway, my parts are officially delayed. I can't believe this I ordered the stuff almost 2 weeks ago and first 1 item (a power cable!) was out of stock but supposed to come in the day after I ordered. After 4 or 5 days it still hadn't come in, so I cancelled the order and placed a new one, making sure there was plenty of everything in stock. Then it still took them more than 2 days to get my stuff shipped (usually they ship the same day).. And then apparently the barcode on the package was damaged, making the postal ppl very confused and causing my stuff to be even more delayed.
I sure hope the barcode is the only thing that's damaged, if any of the stuff is broken I'm going to have to kill someone But with my luck with these parts so far I'm expecting the worst..

It's nearing completion now, all I need is those parts! I have no idea when they are coming, because according to the tracking site they've been in the same place for over 2 days now

Anyway, all cables are now in place, except for the SATA data cables. The hole in the lower chamber turned out to be a bit on the small side, so I changed it, now it goes all the way down.


And tada, here's the dark side of the case Tight, but it fits.



View from the other side


And now for the moment of truth.. Yes! It actually closes


And here's my solution for the reserator's 12V needs.. I want to be able to disconnect it without too much hassle, and having an external molex connector seemed to be the best option. The cables are a bit tiny tho so I might have to do something about that.

Very nice work

I'm tempted to mod my Silver P180 but my skills aren't a patch on yours


Edit: just checked out volvo240.org - I now know where you got your skills from

My skills arent anything remarkable really A little cut here, a little cut there, and thats basically it. It's just that I had a lot of time for doing all this stuff so I could think stuff out before cutting. I've been collecting pics of P180s for the past couple of weeks so I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do to it even before I got the case.


You have discovered my secret! I'm a car freak (assuming you found my collection of Volvos). Altho I don't think I've ever cut anything off any of my cars myself.. I have a friend who is an expert welder so I have him do that kind of stuff instead I try to do everything else myself tho, I only really got started with car projects about 2 years ago so I'm still learning a lot

This is a very exciting thread, I always find myself checking for updates from snq. This is gonna look really nice when you finish. If you do end up having an external molex connector, having it sleeved would appear much nicer, and the two wires will not get caught on anything if they separate. (You were probably already going to do this. ) Just a suggeston. As everyone else has said, Great work!!

Did you remember to do this?

I actually sleeved the cable that is on the inside, but the last bit that sticks out comes from one of the Nexus fans and if I have to sleeve it I have to make a cut in the case, now I could do it without cutting because the wires fit through the small holes.
I have agree tho that it looks like crap

I just came up with a new plan tho.. The reserator 12V cable comes with a rubber thingy to protect the cable where it enters the case. Now if I make a small cut underneath the PSU where this thingy will fit, I can have it go in there and have the molex on the inside.
I'll have to shift the PSU a bit in order to remove it, but I guess I can live with that. It's not like I'll be moving this system around more than maybe once a year anyway.