My first shot at a cool looking computer... advice?

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I just put in my uv cold cathode lights and am wondering what you guys think of it.

The main things I've done are
1. painted my optical and floppy drives (all used to be beige)
2. made a hard drive activity indicator thingy under my floppy (since I needed two LEDs)
3. installed a windowed side panel (from newegg)
4. put in 2 uv cold cathode lights from SVC


This is my first computer I've messed around with trying to make it look cool, so I'm wondering how I might make it look even better. I might paint my control knob for my volcano 9's fan black too, it looks kinda strange since it's blue. I'm thinking about getting some uv reactive IDE cables, but my budget is very tight. I had to use a knife to cut the hole for my switch for the lights, which took 2 hours.

Well, here's what you came to see, the pics:

The front of the case
front

A closer pic of the drives
drives

How the lights looked with auto settings on my cannon a40
normal

The lights with a 5 second exposure (since it's closer to this brightness in real life, the camera didn't pick it up very well on standard settings)
5seconds

I should probably clean off my fans now that I look at my pics again. Well, besides cleaning, let me know what you think.

Edit:
For anyone that cares, here's what's inside

1800+, stock speed
ecs k7s5a
512mb mushkin pc2100
Visiontek geforce 3 Ti200
Turtlebeach Santa Cruz
generic 12x DVD
Lite-on 40x12x48x
52x creative infra cd-rom (if anyone knows how to get the remote to work in XP, advice would be appreciated)
80 gig maxtor ata133
80 gig wd special edition
promise ata133 controller card
enermax 350watt psu

other hardware:

logitech cordless freedom combo
black NEC FE950+
logitech z-560s
Viewsonic VB50 HRTV

 

[SaveYourself]

It's pretty cool, but I'm a more than a little leery about cutting up my case because I like things as quiet as possible, and even 4 Vantec Stealth fans in my SX1030B is pushing it. But that's not the most annoying noise source in my case. The most annoying noise sources are my VGA and CPU fans because they have lots of blades, so their sound is high-pitched.

 

[Dan]

Nice job. I'll soon replace my modded Enlight with one of those Chieftecs so it's good to see the potential.

 

[BeauJangles]

Get rid of those printed labels for the HDDs. I forget where, but ask around Hardforum's cool case section (their modding community is huge!) for applique letters. They look much much much more professional. Other then that, pretty nice

 

[Mikki]

Nice looking case YOyoYOhowsDAjello, add it to my Post Your Case Mods thread if you don't mind!

Great job!

 

[amdskip]

Where and how did you mount your top and bottom cold cathods?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Well, as for the mounting, SVC has a mounting kit that comes with their cold cathode kits that uses a velcro pad that sticks to your case. Then there are plastic things that stick to that. The plastic things have loops that tighten around your tube.

But, I ordered a kit and then anothere bulb that came bare, no mounting kit. So, to keep it consistent, I decided to be cheap and just use some twisty ties to keep the bulbs in place. They're attached to my case, not the side panel. There were some holes in the frame of my case that were easy to get the ties through.

The wires and the inverter are along the right side when facing the side panel. They fit pretty snugly along the side there. It's a pretty amateur way of doing it, but it worked, so I'm not going to mess with it until I have more time.

 

[dawnbug]

UV was an excellent choice.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I'm really glad I went with UV too. I almost went with blue or violet (or was it purple... whatever). I was afraid the UV wouldn't be bright enough, but I didn't want to go with boring old colors. No offense to anyone who had blue or violet lights or anything, but I just thought I would take a chance and try the new UV ones.

I'm very happy with how it looks. It's plenty bright for me since I'm in a dorm room without a lot of light. It's probably not a great choice for someone that's going to be working in a bright room all the time though, it's very visible, but I wouldn't call it intense by any means.

 

[amdskip]

Are there holes in the top of the case too?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Well, now you get to see what a half a$$ed job I did attaching the lights. It looks totally normal from the outside, like I did a decend job, but here's a pic of the computer with the door off. (I was experimenting with some materials and how they reacted to UV, and on this shot I forgot to turn off the flash)

with the flash

That's better

Well, you can see what a crappy job I did attaching the lights and how I placed the inverter. I'll mess around with the stuff later to see if I can improve.

note: I didn't keep the stars in the case, I'm contemplating cutting them out into some strips to add as accents somewhere or something to that effect.

 

[Morph]

I like the silver/black two-tone paint job on the drives. What kind of paint did you use?

 

[ChrisADuffy]

Nice lighting! Did you get the UV cathodes at SVC?

 

[ChrisADuffy]

YOyoYOhowsDAjello, Pls disregard my question about svc, I just saw it there. Nice price.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I used plastic model paint for the drives. I think I should have put another coat on, as they're looking not so hot after a couple months, especially the button on the burner. Also, in trying to take out the trays on the drives in order to not get paint in the drives themselves, I managed to break off the eject gear in my burner heh. I had voided the warranty on my drives by breaking the little seals , so I thought I was screwed when I heard a loud crunch when I powered on the drives after the paint job and had the trays go back in. Luckily all the drives are working fine and are in perfect shape other than a missing eject gear on the burner.

Here's what I used. Almost all the paint is left too, I hardly used any of it.
paint and brush

 

[deerslayer]

Looks pretty nice

Only thing I would suggest is getting some expandable tubing and covering up your wires for your PSU and the wires that connect to the motherboard for HDD and the Power/Reset button etc. I did this in my case and it looks very nice through the window

 

[R3solve]

Dude! That's ******* awesome!

 

[alfhead]

nice one! i've got the same case, unmodded. i just need the time to do it, but your case has definitely given me some incentive to!

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Thanks everybody

LyNx01, I agree, the power cords do look a bit messy. I've seen a lot of different kinds of stuff used for the purpose of covering up and organizing wiring, any specific tips on what exactly works best / where to get it? I'd probably end up going to a hardware store and try to find something.