Hydrodipped Phanteks P400

[TheNorthBridge]

A few years ago I hydrodipped an Xbox 360 (see post below) and afterwards a friend saw it on my entertainment center and said she would love to have it done on her computer with her favorite colors black, purple, and gold. She'd just received a Dell prebuilt system from her parents and loved the hardware but wanted a different case. I agreed to do the work for her, and looked for a case I thought would be fairly easy to tear down with glass sides (her choice). We settled on the Phanteks P400 because it looked really simple and fit right in her price range. Now I'm not going to lie, I didn't do all the work at once I tore down the case, and sat on it for about a month while life got in the way, then eventually started taping and masking off panels before finding a tub that would work for me, and these photos are from a couple years ago when I did the work I just forgot to post them. The original plan was to mask off the sections, along with the skeleton, then reassemble the case and dip it entirely as one piece like I did with the Xbox to get no breaks in the pattern but I couldn't find a tub big enough that would hold enough water and be deep enough not to spill over when the case went in so I just did each panel individually, which I think worked out pretty well. On the face panel, however, if you look close, I didn't work fast enough and the semi dry paint trapped water leaving bubbles in the paint, the friend thought it was a cool detail, I learned to move a bit quicker. On top of the dip I spray painted the side panels screws gold, painted the PCI covers purple, repleced the rivets holding the case together with black painted screws and added the Phanteks LED kit so the power indicator and case lighting could match the paint scheme as much as possible. Piecing the components together in the new case was a lot of fun, Dell, somehow, requires that you use the original power button on their motherboards, and being that this was a couple years ago I don't quite remember how I got around this, although I think I left the original button tied to the board tucked it into the PSU basement and fashioned a jumper that allowed the case power button to work, real pain in the neck. Hardware is, i7 7700k, Dell OEM GTX1070, 16gb noname ram, and an upgraded (from the Dell OEM) Rosewill PSU. I apologize in advance for photos being it multiple comments and if they come in out of order, 20MB per attachment is a pretty lame upload limit. 

 

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All packed up and ready for pick up. Thanks for reading, this project was a lot of fun. I have a couple more things that I've completed and a couple more in the process of being completed, and I'll post them whenever I have the time to get all the photos together.

[tkitch]

great job!  looks awesome! 

[Sarra]

Oh man, that came out amazing. I'll have to look into getting this done on my next case, assuming it isn't a DIY wooden PC case.

[TheNorthBridge]

On 12/19/2022 at 11:05 AM, Sarra said:

Oh man, that came out amazing. I'll have to look into getting this done on my next case, assuming it isn't a DIY wooden PC case.

Just try no to use metallic paint, the gold on this was really hard to work with and left a really rough wavy texture. A dipped wood case, with selectively painted sections so the wood shows through would be really neat. I'd try greens, browns, with some streaks of violets and reds and add green coolant to give the build kind of a rainforest vibe.  I think as long as you prime and mask properly it wouldn't hurt the wood, I mean people dip guitars, so it cant hurt that bad. 

[Sarra]

2 hours ago, TheNorthBridge said:

Just try no to use metallic paint, the gold on this was really hard to work with and left a really rough wavy texture. A dipped wood case, with selectively painted sections so the wood shows through would be really neat. I'd try greens, browns, with some streaks of violets and reds and add green coolant to give the build kind of a rainforest vibe.  I think as long as you prime and mask properly it wouldn't hurt the wood, I mean people dip guitars, so it cant hurt that bad. 

Probably going to dip a Meshify 2 case. DIY wood case will get stained, not sure I'm even going to try it. D: