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Hello everyone Today I finally finished my recent project the “Smoker”. This was a project I fantasized about for years, but never had the time nor resources to realize. My friends and I had talked about a PC that is essentially a wind tunnel and I found this to be so intriguing that I had to build it. The design is pretty simple since it is nothing more than a tube with two large fans on either side. However, I wanted to keep my PC hardware and did not want to buy new parts just for this build. So it had to fit my mITX-motherboard, a Geforce 780, my ATX power supply and a H100i liquid cooler. After some tinkering I came up with this: Now that I had a plan I started on the basics. I slaughtered an old case I had spare for a motherboard back plate. Sadly, it did not have a CPU cutout and also lacked cable-management holes, so I had to cut them myself. These struts I cut out additionally would later hold the case together and hold the back plate. Then I had to ask for a few favors from a previous employer of mine, so I got hold of the remaining parts for my case: The Steel tube that had to be cut in half and some lids with holes for 200mm fans. In these lids I had to drill some holes and test-fitted my NZXT fans. I also predrilled the holes for hinges and rivets that would keep everything together. Of course a smoker would not be complete without a handle, so I bought that too. Now I had to paint those parts, which was a pain since I had no place to paint these other than outside and the weather just would not play nice. I had to use a primer made for zinc-metals since the steel had a fresh zinc-coat. So after primer and paint it looked like this: I did not pain the inside (except for the primer) since I was planning to add some dampening on the inside. I remembered that I would need a drive cage for my remaining hard drives, so I nicked one from another case and painted that together with the back plate and a grate for the exhaust fan (since there will not be a dust filter on the right side). Of course this tube would not sit straight without some feet, so I took some wooden fence and stained it. Then the assembly began. I fitted a dummy-board to test the clearance for IO. Seemed okay at first, but proved to be very tight. I also ordered some parts to hold my radiator from Case-King and screwed it in. Soon I started adding the power-button and front I/O, then I moved on to applying the dampening material on the inside after which I installed the fans and the metal grate on the right side. I used spare dampening material and Velcro to fix the PSU and drive cage, then I used some more Velcro to attach the SSDs. Then I tossed the dummy-board and started to move the rest of my hardware into the case. The dust filer looks very greyish in this photo, but it’s just bad lighting. I did spend some more time on cable-managing, but I just wanted to be done at this point since I had to troubleshoot the system. It was quite unstable for some time and I wanted to finally fix it. Some minor tweaks and assembly later, it was stable again. Seems like the crashes were due to the Y-cable I used for my GPU, so I replaced that with two separate cables. Seems stable now. Finally, I connected all my periphery and called it a day. If anyone is interested to know anything else, just ask away. =) I will try to respond as fast as possible. Thank you for reading. Tell me in the comments if you liked this build and enjoyed it as much as I did. Cheers

Hello again LTT Community! First off, I suggest going to my original case mod post I did a few years back, where I showed off my DIY side panel window mod. I have made a few parts upgrades since this post, most notably I have a GTX 980 in there as well as some storage upgrades. Link: I am now back with another mod, except this time I am tackling the front panel! I had this idea to make a turbine looking mod where you can see through the front panel to a blue LED fan behind it. TLDR; And here's a build log! I really like the Bitfenix logo, I cut it out so I can reuse it later. Now to cut the fan hole, I screwed this up a little bit by cutting the hole a bit too high so now the cutout from the previous cut visible. Not a huge deal, you can't really notice it in the finished product. With everything put back together, this is what it looks like... Now lights off... I didn't like the white grill, so I cut that out and ordered a black 120mm honeycomb fan grill to put in its place. I mounted the new grill and pasted the Bitfenix logo back on. I then took some U-channel trim and put it around the outside cut, it hides the mistake in the cut pretty well! I'm quite pleased with how it came out, and think it goes very nicely with me windowed side panel. Let me know what you guys think! Thanks for reading! Before and after:

So I shipped my computer over from Norway to Canada, where my uni is, a few months back, and the case got banged up pretty bad. I bent it back the best I could, and did a bit of touch up, however the inside of the window is pretty scratched up when the rad came off the fan mounts and hit the window. I thought this might be as good time as any to replace the window of the case with one that does not have any fan grills. What would be the best/ cheapest place to get a replacement window, as I no longer have access to a laser cutter to embark on the process myself.

Hi there guys I have a Aerocool DS 200 Mid tower case and at the top of the case I've got my radiator which is a Alphacool st30 i am using EK vardar 1850rpm fans on the radiator would you think the case fan grill will effect the cooling performance of the radiator as i am thinking to cut that out so my fans can make direct contact with the radiator i'm not sure if its worth cutting the case of not.

I've tried the 600t replacement ones from corsair but they dont work because the edges are to wide. Are there any out there that actually would work like the 400R for a front intake?

Hi, .. I have few questions about fan grills. 1. What are fan grills for? 2. Do they work? 3. Do they make the air more cold if you add grills on both sides of the fan? 4. Are they worth using knowing what are for?..