Operation Sabertooth (Case Mod)

[Trak]

Well this is a re-do or better described as a new Mod......Of my 'ol Red Storm.....

I did the Red Storm Mod back in 2010 and at the time I knew that someday I would upgrade the hardware and change it up a bit.........









Although I was pleased with the outcome, I wanted to upgrade the rig and do a more involved mod.........
Finances were scarce and time was limited....so I waited until this year!


The foundation of this build was the Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard...




The Hardware is:
Cooler Master Storm Scout case
Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard
AMD 8150FX Black Edition 8 core CPU
Cooler Master V6GT CPU cooler
EVGA GTX550Ti GPU
GSkill Ripjaws DDR3 8gb GPU
Crucial M4 SSD....Sys/OS drive
5x Western Digital Sata HHD's 500gb
PC Power & Cooling 750W Silencer PSU
Noctua fans
CM Storm Trigger keyboard
CM Storm Sentinel AdvanceII mouse
paracord sleeving


The changes I made to the Scout case were aimed to increase air flow.....

The front and the top had honeycomb type holes in front of the fans and slots/designs in the plastic case parts...too much restrictions for me..
so...






Honeycomb removed





Front Bezel opened up...
Added some routing holes to the motherboard tray for cabling.....


On to Operation Sabertooth........

Stripped and ready...


Let the painting begin....



















Base color is set.....

Decided upon Digital Desert Camo......If i only knew just how much this was gonna be labor intensive....


Being cheap and wanting to it all myself, I went to:


Camouflage Paint Stencils


and printed out my own stencils.....and the cutt'n begins!








this took me 3 days of cutt'n with an exacto.....but it was worth it coz It's unique!




Second color added over "cuts".......







If you look, you can see the stencils under the second coat.


More to cut and another color or two to add!

[Solara2xb]

Nice!! Looking good so far! The color scheme will go nicely with the sabertooth board.

[Trak]

Nice!! Looking good so far! The color scheme will go nicely with the sabertooth board.

Thanx......

[xelosia]

thanks for posting looking forward to seeing the updates and the finished system

[Trak]

thanks for posting looking forward to seeing the updates and the finished system

Thanx......

[Doctor_Death]

looking good !

[Cyberburnout]

Very nice start. Looking forward to more pics of this build.

[PoLoMoTo]

Gonna be sweet!

[Trak]

Gonna be sweet!

Very nice start. Looking forward to more pics of this build.

looking good !

......Thanx People........

[realneil]

I like the colors so far. This will be great looking when it's done.

[MattyMatt]

Stencils are never fun :/

[Trak]

Stencils are never fun :/

A total laber of love...or something like that!!

I like the colors so far. This will be great looking when it's done.

Thanx

[Trak]

Been a busy day.....


Having cut out 11 sheets of digi prints, time to use some...














now for the 3rd color....










Hopefully I won't need a 4th color....will remove stencils when it dries and we'll see how it looks...




Off course....I bought my Ripjaws before I decided on a color scheme...so I need to fix them..





more on that later.....gonna paint the heatspreaders.




Also started on the cable sleeving.....





Damn 24 pin is a TRUE pain ....using my customized pin remover!








Had to change all those pins from the Red Storm (red & black)......Military colors now!


I never relized just how BAD those 'ol heatshrinks looked....I'm embarrassed!







AS you can see....going with paracord and heatshrinkless connections....

















That's all for now.....fingers are raw from those damn pins/connectors!!

[Trak]

OK......


The moment of truth.....time to peal all them stencils and pray.....







I was worried that they might get stuck...waited a few hours for the paint would set.....BUT, no problems!
I was concerned @ the "Espresso" color, as it seemed a bit too dark and I was also concerned that I might not have used enough Large stencils on the first color "Fossil"......However, it worked out exactly like the vision I had in my rattled brain!


​Imagine that!!!!



















Of course, I'll have to wet sand it now to level the layers and gonna shoot it with a Satin Clearcoat......I had some overspray, as a couple stencils lifted on the edges (from the first layer).....BUT, you know what?......they sorta add depth and texture to the print......I might just leave them!!!...........OR NOT!






Also painted the heatspreaders on the RAM....



Again missed a little line @ the labels, minor touch-up!

[MattyMatt]

I didnt think I was going to like the colour scheme, but it turned out great!

[Trak]

I didnt think I was going to like the colour scheme, but it turned out great!

Yeah...I was concerned myself..adding color upon color but it came out just as i thunk it would...took many hours of planning and set-up but it was worth it!

THANX