I always wondered if there were a way to properly suspend 3.5" drives in cases like the Antec 300. Typical SPCR users resort to soft mounting their drives vertically, or in the 5.25 bays. The way I saw it was that the right drive rail/wall needed to be unriveted and repositioned outward to give enough room to suspend the drive. So I decided to try this on an old generic case before building into the basement PC...

The original 3.5" hard drive bays:


After deriveting, drilling new holes and repositioning the drive walls:


A 120mm PWM fan and WD 500GB soft mounted in the new 5.25" bays using my brother's old underwear elastic


The case doesn't have much place for wiring, but rest assured, most of it is inobstrusive to airflow:


Specs:
AMD Athlon II 435 OC 3.55GHz
4GB DDR2 800
WD 500GB Blue
Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H
ATi Sapphire 5670 w/ Arctic cooler
Enermax 300W PSU

Now someone try this with their 300 ...

Very nice. I also like the ghetto style cable management, that's the speaker right?

Update: I did a few mods:
-Deriveted, sanded, painted and airbrushed a lightening theme on the case, clear coat
-Made holes for cable management
-Flipped motherboard/ PSU
-Top blow hole 120mm Blue LED fan
-Created a small air intake with sound baffle in front
-Suspended HD in 3.5 to 5.25 converted HD bay
-Upgraded to AMD heatpipe cooler from an X6 1055T

The case panels, after painting,


The case re-riveted together with mobo/ PSU flipped,


Inside shot of mobo tray,


Top 120mm fan hole, lined with 3/16" tube slit down the middle. Check out the water droplet effect with the airbrushing,


Lightening design on the side panel,


Front panel 3.5" floppy bays opened for more air, with a piece of acrylic as a sound baffle,


Left side, all the cable gammy,


Back of the system, assembled,


Interior shot,


Front side,


System assembled,






And I was about to go out and buy an Antec 300 for this PC.....

Feedback is appreciated.

That looks pretty slick.
Must of taken a while

Although I have to comment that the lightning doesn't look like lightning (lol)
Plus lightning comes from the sky, not ground.

Front panel wires seem a bit out of place, they should go in a smaller hole via front panel.

would be nice if theres a see-through side panel since the inside is painted black

How's the temps?

Other than that, awesome upgrade dude.

Nice mods ! and nice paint job too !!! It's quite a change from what we are used to seeing around here

Just one thing I would have done differently : I would have cut out the PCI slots and added a fan there instead of cutting a whole at the top of the case.

Actually it can do both .

Really neat paintjob - how did you get the waterdroplet effect?

Lightning and waterdropletsare the two easiest airbrushing techniques, which is why I chose to try them first .

Thanks

you still should.

It's true lighting can do both, come from the ground to the cloud and from the cloud to the sky. Also it can go from cloud to cloud.

The airbrushed panels look very nice indeed. I guess most of us are stuck with sticking vinyls.

But, what happened to the black drive wall? I can see silver spots. And it's mounted crooked too; on your pictures I see this is because of the case-foot. You could maybe have cut out a piece of the drive-wall “footâ€

[quote="Lyonall"]... And it's mounted crooked too; on your pictures I see this is because of the case-foot...
I would also rather have seen perfectly cut out, not “sunkenâ€

If you don't say, you can't expect me to know, can you? My comment was based on the assumption of you having "pro" skills. Besides, I don't think I was too harsh as I started off with a positive notice.




I would not recommend hiding or falsifying things; it won't do your reputation any good. Besides, for the sake of your personal development, you should embrace criticism, not fear it.


Anyways, I have another suggestion:

For the holes you cut in your Antec 300, you used tubes that match color-wise with the respective panels. I suggest doing the same with this build (blue tube for holes on blue panels, black tube for holes on black panels).

Just looked a little closer, your RAM should be in either the Yellow or the Red slots, not one in each, those yellow slots are Channels A&B, the Red ones are C&D...for Dual channel.

Just a thought...

I do like the airbrushing though. Only change I would have made would be to make the lightning bolts thinner, more of a sharp image, but for a first shot, it's not bad at all.

LOL originally the 300 was supposed to replace this case... at least that was my intent. This was just a generic box I wanted to play around with, I agree its not as pro, but I gained alot of experience doing it.

Now I don't know if to choose between the 300 and my SOLO for this PC... the SOLO is sitting in a box atm.... ha!

The stuff I used to line the 300's edges is door edge molding- a bit thick for this application- used for automotive door edges. I don't think I should invest in this case anymore though IMO...
If I had to redo a similar project it would be much better.

Thanks for the suggestions.