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So, I'm planning on building a Midplate for my Corsair Carbide Air 540 which has notoriously hideous Hard Drive hot swaps on bottom. Plan is either to remove the swap bays altogether and replace them with the midplate or build on top of the hard drives. I reckon removing the bays will be only option to make it clean. Who uses HDDs on 2018 on gaming machine anyhow? Instead of boring plain midplate or one with graphics, I'm going to build one with infinity mirror. We already have Cases with Infinity mirrors on the exterior, so why not add them inside too! ( It's bigger on the inside! - Doctor Who) And since regular LED lights are boring, and we all hate having different LED systems to control our legion of various LEDs, Addressable LEDs are must for more effects I'm still in planning stages of the whole thing (expecting to build this within 2 weeks now) Materials needed: Glass option A: Regular Glass mirror, 2mm x 370mm x 200mm One-Way Mirror Glass 3mm x 370mm x 200mm Totals up to 5mm width from glass, most likely significantly better optical quality. Acryl option B: Plexiglass Mirror 3mm x 370mm x 200mm Plexiglass Spy Mirror (one-way mirror etc, naming varies) 3mm x 370mm x 200mm Totals to 6mm width from Acryls, probably not as good as Glass option would be. Led Strip: Corsairs Addressable LEDs, controlled by Lightning Node Pro or commander Pro I realise this is just one LED option, I just happen to have ML120/ML140 Pro RGBs in my case so I have the controller ready for them. Alternatively someone with newer motherboard could use other strips which plug straight to Mobos own addressable RGB headers ( I'm not using "normal" RGBs on my project, so there's that ) Led Profile: Had some profile and diffuser as leftovers from other project i've done, will see if I can use these for this with ease. Diffuser might actually just ruin the effect, but i'm going to test it with and without it. If it works I'll just paint the profile black. Superglue, Hot Glue or some regular silicone sealant for assembly. Depends on glass vs acryl too. Alternatively with acryl even screwing the whole thing together would be an option for possible future disassembly needs. Total pricing currently is 65€/$70 USD for the acryl or glass option and some 35€/$40 USD for the RGB leds adding up to 110€/$130 USD ---------------------- Current stage on project: RGB strips have been ordered, arriving next week. Looking for different sources/shops for the mirrors, current ones that I've found are pretty even on the pricing. Local glass shop would take ~65€/$70 for the glass variants, whereas the Acryl from online shop would be ~65€ with shipping. Debating wheter I should get glass or acryl, wondering about the optical qualities but for project like this the difference is minimal. I reckon the deciding factor will be being able to build this as thin as possible since the space is actually limited up to a point and if I find cheaper sources for the acryl or glass, price obviously. Anything I've missed, forgotten, thoughts about the whole project as whole, tips?

Hey! My name is Simon and Today I would like to show my build for you just to give you an idea of how to create a Mid-plate in a Corsair Obsidian 750D. I am 17 years old and have no to little experience in this area, everything I did was completely improvised, except the measuring ofc . Also take in mind that this works for the 750D case and that case only! No other Obsidian case will have the same measurements! The specs on the computer used are GTX 970 G1 Gaming. 4790K @4.8. And the motherboard msi Z97-S02. Having this motherboard allows for the sheet to slide in between a PCI-E slot and all the interface from the motherboard to the Chassi buttons, which makes it look alot cleaner. This might work with other motherboards aswell, but no guarantee. Also keep in mind that this mod allows you too keep the HDD cages inside of the chassi, the only problem is that you cannot have the small handles for the HDD holders, which basically makes them useless, but hey, no need to take them out since they can just aswell be there! To kick it off I will tell you what you need, material wise, skill is not really required. Knowing how to handle big machinery or having someone doing it for you like my dad did is *GOLD*. Note how i clearly meant what i said! GOLD! Optional stuff marked with a "*" at the beginning. One sheet made out of any metal will do. Atleast 325x470x(1-3 should not really matter) millimeters. Metal sheet bender and cutter. A drilling machine with a rather large bit of 25 mm+. This is for the hole where the PCI-E power cables will come up from. *Plexi glass. Almost the same dimensions, 325x470x5. Except a bit thicker. This is to prevent it from cracking since I found bending a thin 2 mm piece was completely impossible. *Spray paint. I used Black and White. Feel free to use whatever. Also remember to use proper paint designed for masking unlike mine, which made it crack and look real nasty, I will have to redo the paintjob completely. At a distance of 1 meter it looks good though! *Sleeved cables. (Mines are ordered and will be here in 1-2 days from the topic creation. Updates will be here then) *Angle grinder or sand paper with a hell of a lot of muscle! This is used to narrow down the edge of the 5 mm plexi to be thin enough to slide below a PCI port on the Motherboard. *Masking tape. If you go for paint, this is a nobrainer! *An LED string to make it look cooler, I went for an RGB one with remote controlling, worth every Swedish crown! *Sandpaper to sand the Plexi in order for the spray paint to grip properly. *Just a writer and some cool icons that you wanna have on your midplate printed out for masking! 750D Obsidian Case ONLY. The measurements will not be proper to any other Obsidian case! Sections This is divided into four, possibly five sections, section 1 being how to shape the metal sheet. Section 2 how to shape the plexiglass and how to handle the surface. Section 3 will be about painting. And finally section 4 will be about inserting the newly ordered sleeved cables and installing the LED string+tips on where to place the IR-Reciever if you bought an RGB one with controller. I might add a section 5 in the future where I build a white cover for the three rubber openings in the 750D (The 24-pin Motherboard power comes out from one of them) to cover the hidious rubber rings and also adding some extra white to the fully black chassi. Once again, this can be done with any color, but personally I prefer Black & White builds over anything else! Section 1 This is the section where I show how to form the metal sheet. So, to get started, I did a prototype with a metal sheet to drill holes etc and to see where things did work out and where they did not. You might decide to stick with the metal which is also a very nice option, then you can just basically skip the ending 70% of this tutorial since it is about painting mostly. The sheet was first cut to 325x470 and then marked at 170 mm in width. It was done with this machine. The machine used for bending it looks like this After a completed bend at the specified point the sheet will look something like this. Test fitting it inside the computer to see if the measurements were correct. Notice how it goes smoothly in between the PCI slot and the bottom connectors. If you use a sheet as your midplate make sure to isolate the ends with more than just paint to prevent it from shorting out and frying your motherboard! Final thing that needs to be done is to drill a hole in the plate on the upper side. This is for the PCI-E cables to come out from and smoothly into the graphics card. This is optional but looks really good. The measurements are a bit different from my graphics card since they all vary in length. This card is really big (Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 970) And needed the hole to be drilled at 220 mm from the left side of the sheet, and 50 from the bend, the hole is drilled on the top side. For clarification it would be the side facing up on the picture above you. Be sure to not just steal these measurements but to actually check for yourself if your GPU is in the length of these measurements. I kinda eyeballed it and marked my spot so finding yours should not be to difficult. Keep in mind that when you are doing this step with plexi glass you will have to first drill a small hole of about 6-10 mm before stepping up to 28-32. I learn this the hard way as my first piece broke in half. I also have to add that you need to be extremely careful and lower the drill very slowly, last thing you want is forcing it through the plastic and cleaving it! SECTION 2 Here starts the section where I will handle the Plexiglass. It starts by cutting a piece of plexi in the same size as the metal sheet. Here is where it becomes tricky however, a 5 mm sheet is a pretty tough task to bend, but it is doable. I tried bending it in the same maching as I bent the metal sheet in but it instantly springed back. I layed more pressure and the BAM, it snapped. You can see the crack to the left. The right piece is the new one. I tried a new approach, where I still used the same machine, but heated the edge on the inside and outside of the plexy for 30 seconds each with a heat gun on maximum heat, then bending about 30 degrees in the metal sheet bender. After doing this 3-4 times the bend was complete with a fine 90 degree angle. Before we move on to section 3 we need to do one more thing. We need to sand the both outer ends of the plexi. Without doing this the spray pain will not stick to the surface, but will instead clump up like drops on the surface, if the paint is not designed for plexi spraying that is... After sanding it might look like this. I have no clue how to sand properly btw, I just went full SMOrc on it and it seemed to do the trick. Also, worth to note is that with a plexi plate over 2 mm you will not be able to fit it properly between the PCI-E connection and the bottom connectors on the motherboard which will make it look kinda bad, therefore you need to get an angle grinder. I used a cutting "blade" looking like this. You can probably use most of the sanding ones. Just be careful so that you don't go too rough on the grinder's "blade" and because of that break plexi glass at 3 mm or so. It will ruin your day. I recommend going for quite a while. Surprisingly it takes quite a while to sand plexy and after about 5 minutes of grinding it looked like this. It was not enought and I had to grind another 10 to make the angle even sharper. If you are uncertain of when it's gonna fit snuggly, test it out every once in a while, if it's too fat, go back to grinding! Only one step left before we move on to section 3, and that is the hole for the PCI-E power cables exactly as the one we did back in section 1. If you need measurements or tips on how to do it, just scroll back up to the last part of section 1 and you'll find it! Keep in mind that when you are doing this step with plexi glass you will have to first drill a small hole of about 6-10 mm before stepping up to 28-32. I learn this the hard way as my first piece broke in half. I also have to add that you need to be extremely careful and lower the drill very slowly, last thing you want is forcing it through the plastic and cleaving it! Okay! The first two sections finished! Only two, possibly three in some week if people show interest and think that this was not too much of an amateur's work. For those who missed it up top section 5 would be a plate covering the three rubber holes leading into the cable management section. If you paint it the color you want I think it can really prove to add some nice aesthetics to the build. Anyways, section three and four gonna be coming up today or tomorrow depending if I feel like writing the entire thing today. Also feel free to ask anything about the build! I will try to answer it as professionally and fast as I can! Cheers!

Hey guys, I'm new to the forum, now I don't usually do forums because I cant keep up with the many usernames and passwords, but seeing as I watch Tech Tips so often I thought why not. So, my topic... I have an 800D that I will hopefully be modding soon, I currently have a full water cooling loop (cpu, mobo and gpu) with a triple rad in the top, and a single in the bottom. Now I am currently using an i7 980X, Rampage 3 and a 680 2GB, and this is plenty of cooling, but I want to upgrade some stuff when Haswell lands, now do you guys think its possible to remove the mid plate on the 800D without affecting its structural integrity too much? I haven't seen this done on any 800D cases, but personally I think the cooling zones restricts the airflow more than it is meant to. Thanks guys, look forwards to hearing some replies and ideas :)

I'm partway through planning my midplate for my case, using @JordanMac 's guide. I was finding it hard to create a design, but finally came up with this. I'm trying to keep it simple so that it goes with the rest of my build. So, anything you think I should change or add? This is the top (White light will shine through the white parts) This is the front of it (It bends over the PSU to hide cables and the lighting plate)