CoolerMaster Mystique

I've had this case sitting around for a good while now. Already did some hole cutting and wire routing, not worthy of a project log really. Had the thing running for a whole week before the PSU took a dump.

In turn, I proceeded to empty it out, and continue with a few more mods.

First off, I'll just give you a stock picture of it from some random site.



and if you ignore the front panel, there are the insides.



I got this case for a couple key reasons. It was relatively cheap, all aluminum, and stylish enough that I wouldn't be tempted to cut it to ribbons. Seems that didn't really last with all the recent down-time.

Much as I like the HD rack, it was simply facing the wrong way for me. Gonna turn that 90degrees for better airflow. Stock color scheme is irritating. I really wish they hadn't used purple as their color of choice for the tool free bays. Depending on whether or not I can get them off, paint them, and put them back on without destroying them, might be salvageable.


Here's where I'm starting from. Just priming for today. (cell phone camera, kinda blurry)


Already took the front panel off, holes for the fans have been cut out. This was at one time a running machine. See all those red dots? Those are rivets that get to come out. My friend over in the corner there is gonna help a little bit




Stupid red dots. There were more that I missed, some underneath the case as well. Mr. Ryobi did a fine job removing them, and the stubborn ones got a round with Capt. Pliers.


Anyways, with all that stuff taken apart, I had to tape off the bottom black part with some rather handy graph paper. Makes it real easy when taping since you have all those straight lines to work with. Yes, btw, that is electrical tape I used.



Also, since I plan on turning the HD bay sideways, I took that apart as well. Might as well paint it when it's separated. If I do get those tool-free bays off and back on painted, I'll probably leave the 3.5 and 5" bays alone.



Hello Primer.
Use good stuff. It's worth it.


Rounding out the end of the day, we have my Paint Room. i.e. A bunch of newspaper taped to the wall in my basement. I'm feeling quite good after sitting in these fumes for an hour or so.



Primered up!


Thats the last of it for tonite. Need to go out and get some paint, hadn't realized I was out. I'll probably be using a dark red, semi-gloss. All the fans are red when its running anyways. The PCI covers are chrome, so I'm thinking about doing the HD bays chrome as well. Depending on if the paint sticks to it.

Sometime next week I'll be getting a full tower case to play with as well. Gonna be some more painting with that one for sure. Then I don't know what Imma gonna do with it .

Ah well, til tomorrow. Gotta catch some sleep.

Oh you horrible evil stupid camera/monitor. This red looks beautiful in person, but trying to capture it with a cell phone (or just this monitor), makes it look horribly horribly pinkish. At any rate, 2 coats of primer, and two coats of enamel, and I'm very satisfied with the job done. I've included some stuff, pretty standard red stuff for contrast, IF in the event that it looks horribly pink to you as well, you can see the difference.






Now taking off that masking for the bottom part worked out really well. The contrast looks amazazing. The lower side panel edge has been left black for simplicity, but the only lower edge visible with everything all together will be in the back.



A little irritated that I didn't pay enough attention to detail to cover up this brace fully, or uncover it. Fixable though, just have to drill it out, paint it, and pop it back in. Something to do while paint is drying I suppose.



Only one other mistake, and thats the goop that it was sitting on getting stuck to the bottom. Not a key area for aesthetic value, but a bit of rubbing alcohol and a paper towel took it right off.




Moving on the the HD bay. I wanted to paint it with some nice chrome instead of the stock brushed aluminum. First I had to pull out an X-Box R/F connector, and a spare PSU cord. One of many, many spare cords.




They got some primer last nite, and are about to receive a second layer of chrome. So far I'm liking how they're coming out, and hopefully when they dry fully, the HD's wont shred all that nice enamel paint right off. Ah well, I'll take what I can get.

More stuff when it gets fully assembled.

Planning out is what takes the longest. Having disposable income helps with going out and buying all the last minute stuff too. I'm kinda obsessive about projects like this. It'll be all I do besides work and sleep for as long as it takes really.

So the red doesn't look like some weird pink/magenta then? Had me worried for a minute, must be my monitor or something.

Gonna take that little support bracket off and finish painting it, put the last layer of chrome on the HD rack, then let it dry til tomorrow nite to assemble it.

Bah, it's just my camera phone then. It looks like I slaughtered a farm animal, not like I had a run-in with Boy George.

At any rate, now that I'm thoroughly buzzed off the paint fumes down here, there's a couple more pics I can show off. Progress on this thing is fast as hell, boredom does strange things.

First off, getting those tool-free slides off was as simple as getting a razor underneath it, and pulling it toward the stop until it passed over it.



Then they just pop right out...



Stripped down bay, ready for paintage. I seem to have skipped over the primer, and my dangling contraption, but it's similar to the HD bay panels.



As for all those tool-free slides. Taking them apart further just revealed that the Lock was welded together (essentially melted), and those got broken apart. The stainless steel-ma-bobs are what actually go into your drives screw holes. Mmm... screw holes...



Got my bed of nails to keep em from getting painted to the newspaper.



Oh, and not to forget the drive bay, all finished painting, drying for assembly tomorrow.

Omg omg!

It's done!

Damn does it look good too. All the assembly was a pain in the ass, and there's more holes in the bottom than I'd like. BUT! It looks really damn good.

Lemme start ya off with a little something.

The backside came with these nice chrome pci slot covers, looks very good in there. 2 are missing due to the fact that I have a HD3850 waiting on the sidelines.



The back came out rather well. Nothing exciting though.


Here's the jewel of it. HD drive bay got turned (after much guesswork and lots of holes). The Tool-free slides got a layer of black to em. Went back on perfectly sans locking mechanism.



Here's a better shot of one of the drives installed.


Nice front quarter view. Normally you wouldn't be able to fit a fan on the inside of that front panel, but I dug around in there and made a few adjustments. Decided to use a solid black fan so as to keep from blinding myself.



Better shots with the side panel on. Makes the red-black contrast on the inside just a bit better.



Lastly, the front panel attached and DVD drive installed.



Alright, not entirely done. I still need to get all the hardware installed, and route a whole bunch of wires for the final look. Not to mention get it up and running with the meager RED led fans. So I'm not quite done yet, and this thread might be sitting for a couple days before I get the proper PSU. Some of the pictures came out slightly more red than before (it's really not that pink), but it's an even deeper red than that. Maybe I'll go back through with a real camera tonite and get a couple more shots of it's true colors.

I particularly enjoyed how the chrome came out compared to the stock aluminum color, though I'd have to advise anyone using metallic spraypaint to proceed VERY lightly. It doesn't take a whole lot to ruin it and cause it to start dripping.

Hope ya'll enjoyed it! Once I get some gear, I'll toss it in the case mod gallery. Anyone wanna give me some preliminary scores?

Man, I was at BB today and saw a Rocketfish case for 48$

If I hadn't just ordered one the other day I totally would have grabbed it.

I'm kicking myself for using my cell phone in the first place!

Redemption!!!

Now just a couple of days for shipping (-145$)

And I get to add in one of these

Only thing I'm worried about is this THING.


It's an Auras Fridge JES-998. That'd be a HD3870 underneath it somewhere. Takes up a lot of space, and makes the case feel crowded, imo. I have a single 120mm fan on there instead of the 2 80's, and it takes up 3 slots. I think I have 1 PCI slot availiable when its installed.

The thing cools like crazy though. 40-50c on a G80 8800gt. Even without a fan it matches the stock cooler. review here

Lucky bastard that I am, I picked it up from someone who does reviews that decided to sell it right here on TPU. Still cannot find them in stock anywhere and it's been a couple of months

Maybe if I get that Full Tower all prettied up I'll use it as my main case.

intel igent said:

black & red always looks nice! the touch of chrome and the flipped HDD bay

that cooler is pretty huge! i can see how it could get messy using the two 80mm fans but with a single 120 it shouldnt be to bad, how many other devices will you use? prolly just soundcard?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've got a SB Live 5.1 that I'm planning on using for it. Mostly because the onboard doesn't play nicely with Bioshock (i.e. not at all in game, menus sound nice though). I was seriously thinking about getting a PCIe x1 TV tuner card too, but it'd kinda kill off hopes of crossfire unless I get a single slot card.

Then again, I haven't seen much need for crossfire after playing Bioshock and Oblivion all maxed out on a 3850.

I think if I moved that card down to the second slot, I'd still have a PCI slot open for the sound card, then it'd probably free up all 4 of my sata ports instead of just two. Not sure if the K9A2 CF has onboard RAID, I know it doesn't do RAID 5, motherboards just haven't caught up to that yet. It'd be ideal to have 2 drives striped and one mirrored to the array.

PSU should be in by thursday, which means I'll have moar pics up sometime that night. Stay tuned guys.

Craptastic.

The site I ordered the PSU from got the address wrong. I called FedEx to correct it, and they said it would come today... lying bastards.

Ah well, perhaps tomorrow nite. Or I'll just drive the 30miles to their distribution center and put my foot in someones ass.

Lookie what I got today. Hehe...





One more little mod that I whipped up real quick. I had a spare 120mm fan that MKmods sent to me, decided it was high time to incorporate it into something. Appropriately enough, a front bay fan mod. The mesh was a piece out of the bottom half of the case. A bit of cutting and fitting to get it set in place right. You can see the bottom edge isn't quite perfect, but I was going for function over style anyways. Most of the time the door is going to be closed.




Now, back to start the assembly and wire management...