Antec Sonata Mod Worklog

K

Kurtis

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 1, 2003
Messages
246
Hello everyone. I'm Kurtis Kronk, co-owner of www.thetechlounge.com and I'm going to attempt to mod my Antec Sonata. This will be my first real mod ever, so bear with me! Also, pardon my lack of creativity, maybe you guys can help me come up with a name later...

First off I'd like to say that I think there are a lot of very talented people that frequent the [H] forums, and I am excited to see what everyone here thinks of my mod when it's done. As you probably know, it is Spring Break right now... What better time to do a mod? Well anyways, here's what I have planned for the Sonata:

[Begin Worklog]

Basically the whole 'purpose' of this mod, other than looking cool, is to improve airflow/cooling, and get rid of dust. As you may or may not know, the Sonata has some holes drilled out on the top of each side panel which let a lot of dust into the case. To fix this problem I will be using some acrylic to essentially seal the whole area. But I won't just be putting acrylic there, I'll be using some special lighting in combination with a little sanding of the acrylic, to make a really cool effect on the sealed Antec holes. To be able to use the acrylic on the side panels, I have to use a smaller power supply than the Antec one though, so I will be using a 200W SeaSonic PSU (that's enough power, believe it or not)...

Also, some air will come in from small openings on the side of the door on the front of the case, letting in even more dust... I plan to fix this problem, perhaps with some rubber U molding...

In addition to these two problems, the front of the case restricts airflow, and the fan mount location isn't exactly ideal. Plus, those little rubber 'screws' just suck... So I will be adding a 120mm fan duct to the front of the case, and a little more good stuff, I'll get to that in a second. The Sonata's main selling point is Silence. As such, I will be using water cooling to keep my processor cool (probably not my FX5950 Ultra though...). The radiator will be mounted in the hidden 3.5" area. I'm not completely sure how I will mount the radiator, probably will craft something out of the acrylic to mount it...

And what would a mod be without cleaning up the inside of the case?? Well, it would be ugly inside, that's for certain. So I will be doing a custom wiring job on the whole thing, sleeving everything nicely, blah blah blah...

I think that about covers my plan of action... I'll keep you all updated on my progress. :) Hopefully I will be finished with the mod by Sunday (3-20-04).
 
I guess I'll get started with the first step... To make sure that my acrylic idea would even work, I had to install the SeaSonic PSU and checkout how much space it left me on each side, etc... Well, it was just the right size, so now it's time to make it look cooler :)

Here is the case with original power supply:

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This is the SeaSonic 200W power supply...

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Warranty? Nope. :D

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Swapped the stock fan with a Vantec Blue UV LED 80mm fan. Wired it up @ 5V.

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This is how she looks after this quick mod.

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Today I worked on re-mounting the hard drive elsewhere. I'll finish that up tomorrow if I can get a hold of some paint... I'll be working on making some of the acrylic stuff (for side Antec holes) tomorrow.
 
Well... I decided to go back tonight and try to play with the acrylic to see what i am getting into tomorrow... It was basically a disaster. After scoring one thin strip that I needed for one of the sides of the 'acrylic cage' if you will, it cracks in several places as I tried to break it off...

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So basically, I think this means that I should probably only use one piece of acrylic on each side panel, and use wood or something for the rest of the frame of the acrylic cages that you won't see anyway...

That is, unless someone has a better idea. To give you an idea of what the acrylic cages are I am trying to make, they are basically 5 sided boxes (with the side panel making up a 6th side). I need the side that parallels the side panel to be acrylic for the lighting effect to work properly, but I don't care what the other 4 sides are constructed of. So again I ask, any ideas? :D
 
you can try to use those L shape aluminums for all of the edges... so it look cleaner... and get jigsaw or something... y are you trying to break it off?
 
I cut my plexi with a jigsaw and a plastic cutting blade. You have to go really slow though. When I was cutting I went a little fast and it melted the edges. It gives it a kinda crappy look. No one sees the edges of my plexi because of molding but if its visible then you might want to take extra care when cutting. The faster you go the hotter your blade gets. If it gets hot enough it will melt the acrylic sure as butter.

A corded veriable speed B&D jigsaw will run you like $25-30. best investment I ever made for modding. I even prefer it over a dremel. Even when cutting metal I use my dremel to start cuts (to make a hole) and then use the jigsaw the rest of the way. I only use a dremel for the really curvy bits.
 
I decided to go with my dremel and some reinforced cutting blades. seems to be working well so far. The edges won't be seen, just one flat surface of it (the side parallel to the side panels). I'll have pics later on today.
 
so far so good with the acrylic... takes a while but the dremel does the job nicely :) hopefully ill finish at least one of the acrylic cages tonight and ill get some pics of it
 
Thanks CrimandEvil :)

Here's a few pics of me working on the acrylic to tide you all over until I get some more 'finished' pics. Nothing really exciting going on, just to show that I am actually making progress... :)

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me cutting the acrylic with my noobie skills

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first acrylic piece cut out

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yay, no scratches or cracks! :D


Okay, I got the 120mm fan duct today from Directron while I was working on the acrylic, so I decided to stop where I was with the acrylic stuff, and do a test run with the fan duct... I grabbed the front of an old HP case I had in the closet, and got to work.

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cut the hole, no problems...

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duct fits as expected

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or does it...

Again, the case the fan duct is in is not the one I am modding, I was just doing a test run, and it's a good thing I did because now I realize that since the front of the case is not flat, I will have to do something to make it look good on the sides of the fan duct...

My first guess would be that I should use epoxy or something like that, but I've never used it before and I don't know how to use it. Any ideas on that? I will be using some rubber U-molding around the hole in the actual mod, but that won't cover those big gaps on the sides of the duct...

one possibility might be putting the fan duct in the oven after I get the whole cut in the front of the Sonata case, and then while its warm, mold it to fit perfectly on the Sonata. This would save me a LOT of work with buying/figuring out how to use epoxy, getting primer/paint etc that I wouldn't need otherwise... Problem is, I don't have the recipe for a 120mm fan duct :D

Any idea / tips?
 
An HP in the closet! LOL :D

How about using some Bondo or fiberglass to help build up the surrounding area?
So your trying to build a new HD cage? Thats pretty cool since I need to do that too and now I can just use your "guide" for it!:D
Hows that PSU working out?
 
Originally posted by CrimandEvil
An HP in the closet! LOL :D

How about using some Bondo or fiberglass to help build up the surrounding area?
So your trying to build a new HD cage? Thats pretty cool since I need to do that too and now I can just use your "guide" for it!:D
Hows that PSU working out?
Click to expand...

Lol... yeah, the HP was my friend's before I built him a new one.

I've never used bondo... dunno how to use it. same with fiberglass.

As for the HD cage, I wouldn't say I'm really building one per se, but I'm modified the external 3.5" cage so that a HDD could be mounted there. But yeah, if you have a Sonata too, you could easily follow the same steps as I did for it... I'll talk about the HDD mounting tomorrow maybe...

The PSU is working great. I didn't exactly majorly modify it, so I didn't expect any problems... But yeah it looks great in the case. To see pics of it installed though you will have to wait :D
 
Bondo is like using putty, from what I understand. Spread, then let dry and sand to shape when it's fully dry.

I would suggest one of two things...

1 - slicing off the flange and curving the face of the tube to match the inside face of the cover, then epoxy it in place.

2 - Use some sort of spacers on the inside surface of the cover and epoxy the tube to that without cutting.

Other then those two, to get it smooth you're going to have to do bondo work on the outside of the cover.
 
cut a narrow "v" in the top and bottom of the duct part, not the flange and pinch it together, it should bend the flange enough to curve it to the face plate.
 
i think my best option is going to be bondo, not sure if i will cut the flange off or not though... I'll probably cut part of the tube off and experiment with that, leaving the other half with the flange attached intact, that way it will be sort of like if i have 2 fan ducts :D

this is my first time doing ANY of this stuff really, so I have a bit to learn about all this stuff (bondo, acrylic, even painting lol...)
 
Okay, I finished cutting most of the acrylic (enough for the first acrylic 'cage' and most of the second)... Here's another pic of the acrylic on my makeshift workbench

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With the acrylic cutting done, I decided it was time to ghetto rig some acrylic to make sure I would get the desired effect. I took one of the spare pieces of acrylic that I had from cutting earlier, sanded it in a circular motion with one of my dremel's sanding wheels, which is pretty fine grit, by hand (was too lazy to go downstairs and get the sheets of fine sandpaper i have :D)... and then I ghetto rigged it in place with some good 'ol scotch tape and styrofoam to set it back from the side panel a little bit. I then put the blue meteor light in position under the acrylic pointing up towards it... and this is the result...

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and here is a link to a really short clip I took of the ghetto rigged side panel lighting thingy...

http://www.thetechlounge.com/articles/antec_sonata_mod/worklog/worklog_movie_1.mpg
please make sure to right click + save as... if you want to view it :)

Now, please note that this is NOT the final version of the side lighting I am working on, this is just a ghetto rigged test to make sure I'll be getting the look I want. I'm quite pleased with how it looks, so now I'm going to get to work on putting the actual acrylic cage together and stuff... I should have it done by late tonight if I don't fall asleep :D

let me know what you all think so far :)
 
Thats sweet man. Me and a friend of mine were thinking of putting some sort of laser LED to shine through his ANTEC Sonata case like that too. Awesome deal!

-Logiks
 
:eek: Wow, did you do the lettering and the paint job on there?!? That looks like a pretty good mirror finish if you ask me! Kudos to you man. You did a lot better job drilling all those holes for the lettering than I could do. (y)
 
I'm the only one not seeing the pics?

Even when I paste the url's into a new window I get this:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /articles/antec_sonata_mod/worklog/01.jpg on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

wtf?
 
Originally posted by Shinare
:eek: Wow, did you do the lettering and the paint job on there?!? That looks like a pretty good mirror finish if you ask me! Kudos to you man. You did a lot better job drilling all those holes for the lettering than I could do. (y)
Click to expand...

Lettering and paintjob come standard with the Sonata. Kurtis added some acrylic to the back of it so dust wouldn't get in.
 
Originally posted by DaveX
Lettering and paintjob come standard with the Sonata. Kurtis added some acrylic to the back of it so dust wouldn't get in.
Click to expand...

OIC
 
Originally posted by TheMostWantedPolishTwin
pics don't work for me either...
Click to expand...
I'm using Firefox and I have no problem, what are you guys using?
 
Shinare: The Antec Sonata comes with those holes already drilled out, and it also has a great paint job when you buy it. Check out my review of it: http://www.thetechlounge.com/review.php?directory=antec_sonata

Now, as for all the people not seeing the images... they work... BUT apparently our hot-linking protection is being sort of ghey... I'll get it disabled later today. We've got plenty of bandwidth anyways on the new dedicated server now.


Now back to the topic at hand!

Last night I fiddled with the acrylic 'cages' for a couple of hours, and then I finally decided that I was making it too complicated. I decided to go ahead and just use one piece of acrylic on each side panel and stick it right up against it. This will work better in the long run as well, because NO DUST will get in the case, or on my acrylic. If any dust does get on the acrylic, now it is easy to clean off, since it is right up against the case.

I was quite pleased with the effect I got from putting the acrylic right against the side panel, much to my surprise... You can't really tell that there is acrylic right against the side panel when you look at it...

Also, something I noticed when I got the acrylic on the side panel was that my DFI LanParty KT400A has some really bright red LEDs on it that would make the blue light shining on the ANTEC name look purplish... So I will be painting over these LEDs (or something... lol)

Anyways, I only have the acrylic on one side panel, and it's just taped temporarily... So I am going to go ahead and install both pieces of acrylic permanently, and then I will post some more pictures.
 
Originally posted by CrimandEvil
I'm using Firefox and I have no problem, what are you guys using?
Click to expand...

linux -> firefox... it's prolly due to my net connection which in fact is plenty fast (peaks at 100+ kB/s) I'll try pics this weekend when I get home (currently at my college apt) - I have cable there...
 
Do the pics work now?

We switched to a different server a couple days ago, so maybe the DNS hasn't changed for everyone... It will soon though if that is the problem...
 
the holes cut out to spell antech are also there for more airflow, but its not much more, and if you modding the intake exaust anyway then it looks good with glass behind it.

i would say cut the sides of the duckt (cut out a knotch running down the sides) and bend the flange in to where you want it and glue it, and then patch the hole in the duckt if its still there, thatway anything your patching will be hidden (you dont have to sand and paint it) or you can add a bigger duckt (just the flange) molde that and glue it down, and then shave that down at the top and bottom so the duckt your using for air will sit flat with it (or dont use a duckt, if you have a fan the air will come to it threw the path of leaset resistance, (the hole, or holes in the front) you can carve a grill outof the bexle, instead of cutting a hole and adding a grill

either way good luck, and happy modding
 
yeah the antec holes have a purpose, but the air they let in brings in dust, and i am not particularly fond of dust inside my computer... as i said in my fist post, the whole 'purpose' of this mod is to improve airflow and cooling while getting rid of dust. The front intake fan in the duct will have a filter in front of it to keep dust away :)

and i just got back from the store, got the bondo, primer, paint, etc... so it's too late to turn back now! :D
 
Pics are working now, that antec case looks pretty nice, I like the LED's behind the Antec sign
 
okay well i've been cutting away at the front of the case for hours now... I've got the holes in the front plastic parts of the case, tomorrow I'm going to work on cutting away the steel parts of the case in my way...

sorry no pics right now, my computer is spread across the living room. I'll be putting my components in a different case until my mod is complete...

I'm also trying to conform the flange of the fan duct to the case exterior without making the duct itself oval-shaped... I'll keep you updated as I make progress (or ruin the fan duct :p)
 
Today I went to Home Depot and got myself a sheet of metal (will need this for mounting radiator later...) and some goggles and a good face mask... So tonight I will be cutting up some steel. I'll have some more pics up tonight :)
 
Okay, I've been hard at work on my case, here are some pictures of my progress:

Before I got started cutting up the case, I taped around everything I would be cutting... On the front plastic part I drew out a template for where I wanted to cut the hole for the fan duct...

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This part was easy, just cut out this large piece with a dremel cutting wheel. Probably only took 5 minutes, 10 tops...

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