Here is a thorough description of my rig as well as how it came to be...



Around August 2004 I bought a new PC, and at the time had no plans to mod it at all. That changed in January 2005 when I discovered I have a passion for all things shiny and bright. I made the largest window I've ever seen in a PC case with the help of my friend Robert and his rotary tool.

My PC is an Athlon XP 2800+ @ 2.25Ghz (10% overclock to 3000+) with an EPoX 8RDA3 motherboard. I have 512MB RAM (tests by various groups say more isn't needed for WinXP, contrary to popular belief) and a 120GB SATA HDD. It has onboard 5.1 for sound (plan to get an SB Live soon), ATI 9600SE video (my budget is low), and 52x Diamond CD-RW and 48x SONY CDROM optical drives. It runs XP Pro, Fedora Core 2, and 98SE for old stuff. I also have an MX-1000 laser mouse. It rocks!

The case itself is silver, the front also with a ‘brushed metal’ look covered in transparent blue acrylic. It has four super-bright blue LEDs on the front, each in a shiny mini-vent (it came like that) with a switch in the front USB/Sound/Firewire to turn them off. It has two vent grilles on either side.

My first mod was two UV cold cathodes. I saw them for $30 and grabbed them. I didn't have a window then so I put them on my desk.

I then made the window using clear Perspex and mounted it with double-sided ultra-sticky tape for a rimless design, and got a rear 120mm Thermaltake "multicolour" LED fan (its three LEDs change colours). I placed one UV cold cathode across the left vent and one up the top, invisible unless you put your head next to the window and look up. Everything near the case is lit up with a cool electric purple, and anything that is UV-reactive around the case glows. There is a switch mounted in a PCI-slot bracket to deactivate them. The UV cold cathodes are equipped with an adjustable sensitivity sound sensor driver, which can be switched to always on.

I then cut a hole in the top of the case, again with the help of Robert and his rotary tool, and put a fan in it, with a Biohazard fan guard.

I then purchased a green UV-reactive SATA cable, as EL ones weren't available for SATA at the time. It added a bit of light to the case. I also placed an 80mm Thermaltake LED fan on back order in early February. It still hasn't arrived.

Next I decided I would give my PC a name: "Glo Box". At the time it didn't live up to its name that well, but I planned for it to, and it does now.

Next, I made an LED mod using a 1-watt 22-ohm resistor for the whole group, two 1/4-watt 47-ohm resistors for the yellow LEDs, a Molex power splitter and a few super-bright LEDs. They are hidden fairly well, so it looks like the case just glows. The LED mod is connected to the 5-volt rail. There is also a switch to deactivate the LEDs, but it’s blu-tacked under my CDRW drive at the moment, just until I cut a small hole in the back of the case.

I have a blue LED pointing at the upper-left of the board, and another blue LED pointing at the CPU cooler fan. They produce a cool blue glow that generates a sort of harmony, as the colour usually does. There is a yellow LED pointing to the left of below the CPU heatsink and another pointing to the left of above the CPU heatsink, two green LEDs pointing at the lower -left and -right, bathing the lower half of the motherboard in a bright green light. There's also a UV LED pointing at the UV-reactive SATA cable, enhancing it just a little. Apart from the UV LED, all the others are "super-bright".

To mount the LEDs in the case, I pulled apart an old AT full tower case and got all the LED holder thingies out of the front. It had LEDs for six individual hard disks… The leads to the LEDs are hidden by putting them around the edge of the case.

The next mod I made isn’t really much of a mod. I bought an infra-red transceiver kit from Jaycar, put it together and stuck it under my hard drive. It’s out of sight, unless you look in the window with your head at the same height as the hard drive. So if I wanna use IR stuff with my PC, I just point it at my window.

I am very pleased with the result of the mods; it makes my case look truly unique and it lives up to its name very well. It lights up large rooms at night and looks very, very cool.

However it is not yet complete. I need a Thermaltake green LED fan to replace the generic loud one in the top blowhole, and two blue ones for the front of the case. I am also going to get a green EL (Electroluminescent) IDE cable soon. Then it will be complete. When it is, it will outshine most other cases I've seen.

The total cost of all these mods is only $160 + $30 if I end up getting the two front fans. Quite cheap, really.