Ever hear of a Lian-Li PC-76? First mod in almost 7 years.

[Devilpup]

Ah good old computer modding, such a fun project back in the day but I'd been away from it for so long I forgot how to do it. My last adventure in modding was my Lian-Li PC-76 tower that I installed a water cooling system in back in 2004. Now this chassis was never really that popular I think, when I first invested in it I could only find a handful of reviews. For the curious, you can find a review of the stock case at this link:

http://www.dansdata.com/pc76.htm

Also for posterity, my original mod post (complete with dead pics I don't have anymore) here:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=845904

So why has it been so long since I've done any modding? Well, a couple of deployments plus getting married and having kids can tend to slow a guy down. I recently convinced my wife to let me build a desk for my pc though and it ended up actually looking pretty nice:

I did that with about $40 worth of lumber so it got me thinking...Wonder if I could build a nice wood computer case to match? I eventually decided that I didn't want to spend that much effort building a completely wood case from scratch, but I thought it might be kind of cool if I took the old LL and gave it wood exterior panels so it will look like a piece of furniture instead of a plain computer (or as the wife called it, "a big ugly box").

Naturally if I'm going to mod something, I want to increase the functionality too. I.E. I want better cooling and low noise. I turned away from water cooling back in 2006 when my tower sprung a leak and ruined a video card, despite that it was a nice excuse to upgrade. So after some deliberation, I decided to remodel the inside before adding wood decor. First, here is what it looked like mostly stock with parts installed:

My plans for it were fairly simple, at least in concept:

1 - Rotate the HDDs 90* so the cables come out towards the right side of the case.
2 - Replace the rear panel and raise the MB 2" in the process
3 - Add 2-4 x 120mm (possibly 140mm) intake fans on the bottom, under the MB area.
4 - Hack up the MB tray some more for some wire holes/rear access to the cpu HSF
5 - Raise PSU near top of case.
6 - Panel the exterior in wood to match the desk.

After that I'm a little iffy on what to do. Part of me wants to replace the MB tray altogether, but then I'd have to buy or fab one. Part of me wants to enclose the PSU in it's own box with a 120/140mm fan, which is why it ended up so high up in the case. Part of me also thinks I should paint it because that might help it not be so ugly after all this hacking. Did I menation I am hacking this case up and not really modding? Yeah, it could get ugly inside. Guess I should get started.

First step of course is to strip it back down to the frame, here it is mostly nekkid:

Next step was to hack out the rear panel. My jigsaw took a royal dump on my work here when the blade bent and I didn't notice it because the laser on my saw was still right on line. You'll see what I mean in a couple of pics, but here's how the back looks so far:

I did get a panel cut from sheet steel and made it fit. Cutting out the slot opening in the back was a PITA, it probably would've been cleaner had I used an Al panel and my dremel, but I used steel with a crap jigsaw. I also hacked the PSU bracket in half to make it fit my needs. I still need to cut a 120/140mm fan slot in the steel. You can see the deviation in the steel panel itself and the frame if you look at the upper right part of the steel panel:

So far I don't think that's too terrible, and if nothing else I can use it as an excuse to do a better job later with some plexi or a more expensive panel.

It was kind of a lot of effort to do, so why did I do all that? Well, simply put I wanted to raise the MB tray about 2" off the floor of the case. That will help me with my wiring ideas and allow me to add intake fans to the floor. Why that position instead of the 80mm stock front fans? So that the incoming air will blow directly on my GPU of course

You can also see in this picture where I plan to cut the MB panel behind the CPU. It was a bit of serendipity (and about 4 years of not removing the MB) that left the cpu HSF bracket mark on the MB tray, making it easy for me to figure out where to cut.

The moment of truth came when I did a mock-up and bolted the MB tray in place. Overall so far I'm gonna say it's a success:

If you're still having trouble visualizing the size of the case, here it is with my daughter chillin inside:

While typing this I realized I should throw the PSU in there just to check it out. Hmm...

Looks like it'll work, and the exposed cables don't really look that bad. Some of you kids these days get all crazy with sleeving individual psu cables and then taking pro pictures of it. I think I'm gonna kick it old school and just try to keep them out of the way lol. Well to be honest, that's pretty much the other point of building a box for the PSU as it'll hide all that crap. If it all goes well, by the time I am finished there should be very little exposed cabling. Time will tell I guess, I think I'm going to have to wait until next weekend to get any more work done on it. So in the mean time I ask for your opinions:

In the quest for silence, how do the current "quiet" 120mm and 140mm fans fare? Anyone have 4-8 of them in a system they would call "quiet"? I have a Thermaltake TY-140 fan en-route so I can check it out but my last experience with quiet fans was doing the 7v mod to Panaflo 80Ls.

Also, what do you guys think of painting it vs leaving the aluminum bare? I'm going to paint the steel panel for sure, but the rest of it I'm actually thinking it wouldn't be worth the effort since I'm going to cover the exterior in wood. Though...the thought had occurred to me to add a side window while I'm at it...

 

[Korben Dallas]

HAHAHA the pic with your kid sitting in the case cracks me up.

 

[thehoang12]

Lovely baby and Nice case

 

[Devilpup]

*Update*

I've been debating on my cooling situation as I'm not eager to run a bunch of fans, but I want to make sure that I have sufficient airflow through the box to keep the system cool. My original thought was possibly running 4 x 140mm fans but I didn't have any on hand, so I wasn't able to get a clear idea of how much bigger they were than the 120mm fans I had. Here is a shot of the 120's laid out on the bottom:

I got my first 140mm fan in this week and I like it a lot. It's significantly quieter at full speed than my 120mm fans, but there's no way I could possibly fit 4 in the bottom. I also considered how much losing all that material might weaken the floor of the chassis, so I think I am going to just roll with 2 x 140mm fans as intake on the floor, and 1 x 140mm fan exhausting by the CPU. The rest of the air will vent through either the vid card or PSU, not really sure yet. Either way, getting it to fit by the CPU was a bit tight. Here's a shot of how the 140mm fan compares to the 120s

While I'm debating my cooling delima, I decided to knock out the wood portion. I'm going to try and finish that off today so I can just focus on the metalwork.

Last night I hit up the hardware store and picked up a board to hack for the top and front panel. I didn't have a router so I had to cut the spots for the CD drives with a circular saw and a jigsaw. It's pretty tight but doesn't quite fit right with the standard covers, so I went out today to pick up a router. Man having good tools really helps out. This is what it looked like last night, after I added holes for the bulgin switches:

Today I went out and picked up some lumber for the side panels. I wanted the panels to be cut straight so I had them do it at the hardware store. What I should've done is just did it myself even though I don't have a table saw. The guy cut it wrong twice and in the end it still wasn't exactly what I wanted, but I lost my patience so I just took the wood and left. Came home and attached them to the side panels:

For the curious, I am attaching the wood to the frame using socket-cap machine screws. I countersunk them just a tad to have them lay flat on the chassis. I'm not sure how the silver screws will look once I stain the wood so I might need to pick up some black screws instead. Here's a closer pic of how they fit:

Now to play with the new router and try not to get hurt in the process

 

[KaizerDan]

Haha If that wasn't a Lian Li id be so worried that she would get all sliced up being in there!

 

[Devilpup]

Haha If that wasn't a Lian Li id be so worried that she would get all sliced up being in there!

Indeed, their cases are some of the best platforms to start modding if you're new to it. Granted they're already pretty well laid out so you gotta be creative, but on the other hand you're less likely to cut yourself on them than some other brands.

*Minor Update*

Finished (?) most of my wood prep, routed the corners of all the wood and cleaned up the drive bay opening. I also had to excavate some of the area around the power and reset switch as the bulgin switches aren't long enough to securely bolt through 3/4" wood. Now I have plenty of room to work with and should not have any problem:

Also hit the side panels and the rear panels with the first shot of paint. Well it's not really paint, it's that plasti-dip stuff that's supposed to be for spraying on tools. It's a plastic-like coating that you can spray on, so I thought it might be a good idea to paint the panels with it to keep any vibration from rattling the panel against the wood. You can also see the hole for the 140mm fan I cut in the back panel in the pic. I still didn't like how it fit and the 140mm fan was pretty tight, but I think it might actually work out once it's all said and done.

That's all for today, not sure what tomorrow may bring as the family seems somewhat anxious about me being in the garage all the time. Thanks for looking.

 

[Devilpup]

Not a ton of progress today but I managed to get some work done. I debated heavily about putting a window in but in the end I decided against it and just left the side panels straight. Since there was no more modding for me to do on the wood, I went ahead and laid the stain down on it:

Also did a quickie and got the hdd cage rotated. I was hoping to be able to keep both bays but it wasn't going to work out, so I decided to just keep 1 hdd cage and fabbed new brackets. Used to be that 12 hdd bays would offer a lot of storage, but these days I haven't even filled the 1tb drive I have in my main system, let alone multiple drives. Also considering that 2tb internal drives aren't hard to come by and it'll be a long time before I need more than 6 storage spaces. I figure 1 SSD for the OS and 2 x storage drives in a raid should work out fine if I ever get there, until then I only have 1 drive in my system anyway.

I was hoping to get the fan holes cut in the floor this weekend but it didn't work out. At least I got the wood work done so now it's a matter of waiting for next weekend to get the air holes cut, chassis sanded, and mb tray cut. Then I might be done, lol just realized that I don't have a lot left to do that I set out to do in the beginning.

I guess that's another weekend in the books, now I'll be waiting on parts this week to hopefully get her wrapped up next weekend.

 

[Devilpup]

Another weekend, another few steps closer to finishing the thing off. I finished the frame cuts for the fans and got it mostly cleaned up. I started bolting everything together yesterday so here's how she looks now. Keep in mind that it's empty, I'm waiting on a new cpu cooler before I move the hardware over, for now it's sitting in a Lian-Li PC-61. Anyhow, updated pics:

I painted the rear panel of the frame so that it would blend with my home-fabbed parts a little better. Plus, black matches the wood better than if I had left it silver. Getting the 140mm fan to fit was a bit tight, but it works out well. I also lined the holes with some neoprene rubber trim to help it not be so sharp. Finally, I painted the fan grill to match.

I debated trying to paint the whole frame/interior black but I used this stuff called Plasti-Dip. It has a nice flat black look but comes off way too easy, so it's not a durable finish at all. So instead I just went with a "silver and black" theme I guess, where parts of the interior are black but the rest I left silver. You can see the two 140mm fans I mounted in the bottom as well as the work I did with the MB tray. I cut out a huge area to get to the back of the cpu socket in case I ever decided to change out fans.

Once I get the cpu cooler I'll put the hardware in. It's nothing fancy, really it's a budget build from about 2 years ago. I am upgrading the video card cooler to a Shaman and the cpu cooler to a Silver Arrow. I am pretty sure I don't need that much cooling power but I figured I may as well hit it up while I was in there.

In the end I will have 6 x 140mm fans in there, which sounds like it'd be loud but actually wasn't too bad when I did a power test. I may invest in a fan controller to tone it down but I haven't decided if I want to spend that money yet. I will say that I got a stupid-happy grin on my face when I powered the fans up and felt how much air was blowing through the box

 

[mannyman]

looks good. a fan cotroller will make it silent and all that cooling will make it nice and cool

 

[Devilpup]

Yeah that's my current debate: Whether to go with a fan controller or hope that I can just 7v those fans. For some reason I remember the last time I tried to 7v a bunch of fans the computer wouldn't turn on. Then again, I think I had 13 of them lol.

I was also wondering if I can hook the fan from the shaman directly to the fan port on the video card without burning it up. It is only a 4870 so I guess that would be a good excuse to upgrade the card though

 

[Devilpup]

'nother quick update:

Installed the Thermalright Shaman gpu cooler on my Asus 4870. The shaman cooler is friggin huge but still fits in my Lian-Li PC61 (barely). Here you can see the two coolers compared:

I was trying to figure out how to run the fan cable (or where to run it to) and then I thought about just hooking it in to the card itself. I checked the original hsf and it was pulling about .19 amps at full throttle. The shaman fan was only pulling .14, so I figured I would be safe just wiring it to the card. Some cutting, heat shrink, and sleeving later and this is what I ended up with:

I didn't cut the wires from the fan's connector, I just popped them out of the connector and attached the wires from the Asus hsf unit to them. Seems to be working fine so far, furmark temps before the change ran in the low 70's and now they're peaking in the mid-high 40's (that's *C). So for about an $80 investment I was able to cut 25+ *C off my vid card temp and shut the fan noise as well. I is happy!

Only down-side is now that I cut out that noise maker, I can really hear my stock AMD hsf unit. Good thing I have a replacement on the way to get rid of that.

 

[Devilpup]

*Update: Almost done!

I got the last piece I was waiting on this week and moved my hardware over to this box. I picked up a thermalright Silver Arrow hsf unit to help cut the processor noise and keep it cool. I was actually quite surprised at the size of the box this thing came in, it was friggin huge. Here's a pic of it next to my beer for reference:

And here it is next to the stock hsf unit that came with the processor:

I was initially concerned about it fitting, but after I got everything installed in the new (old) box it all came together nicely. I know I need to work on cable management a bit so it's gonna look funky to you neat freaks, but overall the airflow is tremendously improved over my old box and overall it is about as quiet as it was when I was watercooling. First from behind:

You can see that painting the back of the frame helped a lot in the looks department, it matches the wood a lot better than the silver.

Then inside:

Overall I am very pleased with the airflow. The Thermalright Shaman is an awesome gpu cooler and having the 2 fans at the bottom blowing onto it should keep it cool. I have the two bottom fans and the rear fan running @ 7v for silence. The gpu fan is wired to the video card fan header, and the cpu fans are wired to the 1 PWM cpu fan header. There isn't much to obstruct the airflow except for the sound card, which I could probably dump and leave the slot empty but I decided to keep it for now. The rest of the components are listed in my sig

Last thing I need to do is fab some new 5.25" drive bay covers and then I'll be set, barring any upgrades.

 

[Devilpup]

*Final Update

Well I think it's time to close the books on this one. I have the system together and running at a nice 3.6 ghz with barely a peep coming from it. I hear the hard drive seeking more than anything else, the rest of the box just emits a low hum which is about as quiet as my old Eheim watercooling pump. So what does it look like now?

The silver drive bays look a little odd but I don't have anything left in me to finish modding them. I was originally going to just paint them but I don't want to deal with chipped paint. Eventually I may just buy some black anodized LL drive bay covers which should look pretty cool, but I wouldn't really consider it a "mod" if I'm not doing some custom fab work to it.

Overall it matches my desk nicely and the cooling/noise is significantly improved over the old setup. My processor barely hits 40* C and my 4870 peaks at around 45* C. I'm gaming WoW at 1920 x 1080 with 4xAA and 16xAF and am having a blast. Now if only I could get my 2-year old to stop mashing my keyboard while in dungeons I would be fine

 

[Blahman]

On its own I don't think I would ever turn a Lian Li into a wooden case but I have to say it does fit in well with your desk -- nice work!

Now if only someone made wooden stealthed optical drive doors!

 

[jojo69]

Nice job! So, is the wife chill with the "big ugly box" now?

 

[Devilpup]

Yeah I think if it wasn't for the desk I probably would've just stayed with my old PC-61B as it was working fine except the noise. Now though things are cool, I have plenty of room, and have the satisfaction of having built something neat. Plus I'm gonna take some old parts and stick the PC-61b in the garage to host some workout music

I did end up earning the wife seal of approval on this. I think it's because now the desk just looks like a desk with a built-in cabinet, instead of a desk with a silver box haha.