Corsair 230T Orange BUDGET overhaul

sTrustrupJ · June 16, 2015

Hello all.

This is my first real thread in here but i'd like to share my experience where im lightly modding a 230T along with some of the hardware inside of it.

My budget for doing this was pretty much non-exist and to some extend i actually made a slight profit from it.

My rig (prior/after rebuild)

Corsair Graphite 230T Orange

Corsair CX430M/TX750

Intel G3258 w. stock cooler/w. Corsair H100 in push.

Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB 2400MHz

Asus GTX 750Ti Strix/Galaxy GTX 760 reference design

Kingston 120GB SSD & Seagate 500GB HDD

Here's how;

For some time i'd like some more performance and to do something speciel with my computer as it looked plain and with the addition of a new graphics-card that wasn't color coordinated i decided to take matters into my own hand.

I went online and searched for some cheap used upgrades(CPU cooler, GPU and PSU). Then i also got a spraypaint and a plastic lid for a bedroller.

Corsair H100 - 300kr (Yes i only have danish prices. google for convertions)

Corsair TX750 sleeved - 300kr

Galaxy GTX 760 - 600kr

Spraypaint - 50kr

Plastic lid - 20kr

Spend in total: 1270kr

So i went ahead and sold my 750Ti and my CX430M for a combined cost of 1300kr

All in all i made a 30kr PROFIT by doing this B)

This is when i just had the GTX 760 and decided to change the look of my pc.

Stripping everything apart!!

The Lab, i can always clean up later right?

Was making an outline of a custom backplate that i later messed up, will propably do another sometime soon.

Sawing the custom backplate. The plastic would crack if i tried to just cut through it with a sharp knife or so.

All shaped and polished

Had an idea of trying to make some orange flames on the backplate so i was making my own sketches and did a test on some cardboard.

The first coating of matt black color

First layer of orange paint to the old black/green GPU shroud!

Dinner time! Also pancakes on a budget

Later found out a white plasti-cote layer made for a great primer and required less orange paint to cover

There really isn't much to do when watching paint dry, is there?

After a couple of layers and you can see the fire thing on the backplate but i had some nasty dust and stuff into the paint and had to paint alot more orange than intended and in the end it was too much orange and i didn't like it with the dust in it etc.

Just stripped the black electrician tape off the gpu shroud. Didn't have any better tape at hand, budget remember?

I didn't want any white light in my all black/fire-color case so i disassembled the H100 and painted some orange on the backside for orange light effect.

Decided to paint the mounting brackets aswell!

Back at The Lab with all the parts painted. I did all the assembly and disassembly in my own apartment while all the crafting and painting was done in my parent's hobby room.

Thought i'd might aswell take a look. Never changed thermal compound on a GPU before. My heart was jumping at first ^^

Personally i think this is a SUPER sexy looking graphics card now! However i wish i were abit better at masking with electrician tape lol

Tried mounting the failed custom backplate with double adhesive tape just to get an idea of how it would look like - trust me, you don't want to see!

Okay so this is why i got the sleeved PSU cheap! I cut this part off all together and sealed the ends. There were alot of original black sleeved SATA connectors i could use and my SATA connectors weren't to be seen anyway.

PSU after painting and cutting wires to fit my build.

Started to get some parts in again to see how things fit

Okay so i mounted the H100 in the top, using the fans from the front panel. The H100 doesn't fit originally but with a slight angel you can mount 4 screws on the one side of the radiator through the top and the other side i mounted using the double adhesive sided tape again. I was slightly blown away of how sturdy it actually is and it even acts as a anti-vibration pad aswell! and i didn't have to drill any holes or cut anything to size, just a simple fit. AWESOME!

Needles to say, im not a big fan of cable-managing!

More things comming together now!

So my ROG OC-Panel used to stand infront of the PSU but that wasn't very nice so i managed to mount it standing in an angle against the side window and using my double adhesive tape (again, i love this stuff) onto the GPU! Also had to figure out some way of cleaning up the sleeved cables to switch between black and red properly.

More progress. Found some small perforadet(perforated? :wacko:) black metal profiles where i could put some zip-ties through and bind the sleeved cables down onto in the color coordination.

Finally got the other side on despite some problems with cramming all the cables back there. The 230T is a budget case and there's not much room for cables. Btw the hard-drive bays blocked alot of airflow i thought so i cut off the bottom part so i could still have a single HDD mounted safely. I cut it to size int he same way i cut the transparent plastic. Then i mounted my SSD on top of the HDD, do i have to say how i fixed it there?

All done with the side windows back on! might put a larger window in at a later time if not just upgrade it at one point.

Glamour-shots

Start to finish!

Okay so it isn't anything over the top and there's still room for improvement but i managed to improve my system and make it look alot more slick in my own opinion.

I guess the thing to take away from this, is that even though you don't have much of a budget, you can still do alot with some creative ideas and passion!

Forgot to mention my G3258 went from 72-74C to 46-48C under full load at 4.4 GHz @ 1,325v! Happy owner here!

Hope you enjoy'd and don't hate too hard, im new :i

Cream pie filled car · June 16, 2015

I like the new look of it now. plenty of pictures and you said that this was light modding. This is more than light modding, you sleeved the cables and painted stuff. Still, enjoy your new pimped out PC