Antec 900 Mod Log

[mpilchfamily]

Well this is nothing new but I'm just getting around to performing the mod myself.

Here is the case before i started. Quite a mess of wires all over the place. As many of you know when the PSU mounts at the bottom of the case the cables come out of the PSU on the opposite side of the motherboard tray. So this means the cables have to stretch a bit more and leaves a cluttered look.


Now i stripped the case down to its frame to start figuring out what i wanted done next.


So i wanted to flip the PSU so the cables where right up against the side wall of the case.


With the PSU positioned like that the unit's cooling fan gets no air flow. So i had to measure out where the fan sits and cut a hole in the bottom of the case.



After some filing its all set to have the PSU mounted fan down. The hole doesn't quite line up as well as i would have like and the cut isn't as clean either. But its on the bottom so no one will see it anyway.


Now it was time to test fit the PSU and the motherboard back into the system to figure out where i needed holes to rout the cables behind the motherboard tray. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible to only 3 holes where needed. One of them will be hidden behind the motherboard.


Finally i spent a good hour or 2 getting the cables all sorted out so i had room to place the side panel back on.


It was a pretty tight fir but i got the side cover over it all.


And so we have the final wiring of the system. A good hour of that was cleaning the dust off everything in the case.





In all the whole project took about 4 hours to do.

[grady_24]

Very nice work mpilch!!! It makes me want to redo my routing to get rid of all of those PSU cables a little better!

[lostandwandering]

Very nice. I wanted to route the wires behind the mobo on that Dell I posted in the "under the panel" thread only to find out that there was no motherboard tray. That kinda halted things lol. Not sure I would have the nerve to cut open a case like that, but it's all the same.

[mpilchfamily]

I didn't either till now. In my old system i routed the P4 connector between the motherboard and the motherboard tray. It was i tight fit but worked out great. It got at least one bundled up cable out of the way.

IMO cases are meant to be mod. No case is perfect and meats all your needs. So there is always some alterations to be had. If you can't find any alterations that can be made then you have settled for what you have. You should always be looking for ways to improve things.

[lostandwandering]

I looked at pretty much every option for that stinkin Dell to clean it up, but the mATX case that the Dimension 4700 uses is just too freakin cramped. There is literally 3'' of space between the PSU and the 5.25 drives at the top of the case. No room to hide cables and like I said no mobo tray. My little cable management experiment ended when I almost cut the tip of my left pointer finger off. I was lucky I didn't toss the system out a window. lol.

[YMAA]

Mpilch is right, no case is perfect. One imperfection in my Qmicra resulted because I unscrewed the PCI slot brace wrong and both screws broke off in their holes. I had to do a little surgery to get them out, and widen the holes so I could use fan screws instead. Works great now.

[mpilchfamily]

When dealing with a boxed system like a Dell you almost have to get a new case and mod it to fit the proprietary Dell components.

[lostandwandering]

When dealing with a boxed system like a Dell you almost have to get a new case and mod it to fit the proprietary Dell components.

That's kinda the funny thing. Before I decided to buy a laptop I actually went through the trouble of researching the motherboard in the 4700. It's actually a standard mATX board. Same size and same screw layout as one you would buy off of newegg or such. I decided against it when I found out that the 915 boards only supported Pentium 4s. Not worth the trouble IMO.

[SirRobin4ever]

Great Job Mpilch! I will probably be doing a similar mod this summer, if I have time. I really want to paint the entire case black, inside and out as well. I've seen pictures of that, and I really like the way it turns out.

Have you considered doing the HD mounting differently? I posted on another thread yesterday about it. (Can't remember which one.) It basically makes all the hard drive Sata and power cables disappear.

Congrats!
~Keith~

[mpilchfamily]

I would need to get a new SATA cable that bends over at 90 degrees like the mod over at XS. It would also mean more alterations to the case to get the SATA power cable threw the side of the HDD cage. Eventually I'll find a themed mod to perform on the case. I was thinking about Transformers awhile back. Just can't decide what else the case needs to have done to it.

[tool_462]

I hope you either put that thing on a hard surface, or raise it up a few inches off the carpet! Either way that PSU is going to be a dust collector like mad.

[tool_462]

SATA II Left Angle Data Cables : Performance-PCs.com, ... sleeve it and they will come

90 degree SATA cables.

[mpilchfamily]

As you can see both my systems sit on boards so they are not right on the carpet.


The PSU was dusty as hell anyway. Either way its positioned it will be sucking in allot of dust.

[mpilchfamily]

SATA II Left Angle Data Cables : Performance-PCs.com, ... sleeve it and they will come

90 degree SATA cables.

Thats what I'll need if i want to turn the drives around.

[Lionhardt]

This is pretty sick. My friend just got the 900, its still a pretty sick case even unmodded,

[tool_462]

Ah good call mpilch. I figured you wouldnt neglect the PSU, since that is kinda your thing

My roomy also has a 900, I built it for him last summer and I really liked working in the case. He has a modular PSU so it wasn't much of an issue with wire management. I really like the case though.

[mpilchfamily]

I think the newer version of the case comes with these holes already in the side wall of the case so you can rout the cables. They also have holes next to the PCI slots for routing your water cooling lines threw the rear of the case. My case is a second generation 900. The first had a small problem where there wasn't enough clearance on the top PCI slot. So if your video card was in the top slot you where not able to plug your monitor in.

The case on the left is the 1st generation and the one on the right is the second generation. You can see how there is no space above the top slot on the left case.

[grady_24]

I think the newer version of the case comes with these holes already in the side wall of the case so you can rout the cables. They also have holes next to the PCI slots for routing your water cooling lines threw the rear of the case. My case is a second generation 900. The first had a small problem where there wasn't enough clearance on the top PCI slot. So if your video card was in the top slot you where not able to plug your monitor in.

The case on the left is the 1st generation and the one on the right is the second generation. You can see how there is no space above the top slot on the left case.

Yeah, Sirrobin ran into that problem, He just took a hammer to it.

No joke.

[SirRobin4ever]

I have the first generation 900.

A little bending of the metal above the GPU and shaving of plastic off the DVI dongle, and the problem is solved. Still a major oversight by Antec IMO.

EDIT: Agrees with what Grady says.....I still had the hardware in the computer at the time too..... (GPU excepted)

[iDENTITi]

Didn't antec replace all of those gen 1 900's?