Lenovo Thinkcentre M92 mesh grid mod

sooker · April 28, 2020

Hey guys, I want to share my casemod of the Lenovo Thinkcentre M92 Tower with you. English is not my native language, so please excuse any crude expressions and errors

I call this machine “Frankenstein1” since I barely spent any money on it, and it houses components from all over the place.

I got the base computer for free from a friend, it’s an old school PC, I harvested 14GB ddr3-ram and 4 120GB-SSDs from the “trash” at my workplace. The only thing I did buy was an i5-3570, a msi rx470 8G and a corsair VS550, all used for about ~140€ total.

It certainly is not a beast, but well enough for me and casual gaming.

When I got the rx 470, I got a “problem”: It has somehow nice lightning and rgb logo on the side – things that want to be seen.

But: All my other components were ugly af:

Mainboard: Green
Power-Supply: Non modular and massive cables
Case: No possibility of cable-management AT ALL
Ram: Green and blue and ugly
GPU: No backplate
Ugly colorful mainboard-power adapter for Lenovo Board
Blue ugly sata and other cables

Have a “before-look”:

The only thing I liked, optically, were the SSDs. I did not want to spray paint the board, since all other components on it are ugly as well (and I really don’t like the spraypaint board look).

So, I decided to cover the board, as well as the backside of the gpu completely, cover the cable routing and make some space for the unused cables from the power supply.

My wife said,

Quote

“That’s what CASES are for”

– she’s right (as always), so – think of this as a case inside the case.

In order to leave a possibility for heat dissipation I went with a simple steel grid from Baumarkt (hardware store) and the cheapest spray paint. For this mod, I spent a total of ~15€

1. Ripped the case apart and removed all cages. Damn those riveting!

2. Spray painted the case on all sides that were silver

3. 3D-printed a mount for those 4 SSDs

4. Bent and dremeled the grid plate to fit

5. Spraypaint was empty, so I painted the grid plate with a roll, and put an angle bar I had lying around to the side, to tame the cables

6. Spent a lot of time on cable management and put it all together.

Next step certainly is to cut a window into the side, so I can close the case again. I’m not sure whether to use another steel grid or an acrylic glass as a window. We’ll see.

As for lighting inside the case, I prepared another internal usb port (ripped from another old pc), and I still have an esp8266 with 16 neopixels and dht11 temperature sensor lying around. I’m gonna place this one on the top side (inside) as soon as I figure out, how to control micropython over USB.

I think from the outside, I’m gonna leave it like it is – for now.

I really like the result so far, but I’m also curious about your feedback.