So, I just bought my second choice - a case that is also good looking but not at all in the same league with the DD - I got myself a NZXT Phantom white:
There was one problem though: The Phantom was never really meant for watercooling, even though a 240 rad is supported but was never meant for a 360 to be installed inside! The other problem was, that I have already bought a Denger Deen Black Ice GTX 360 on eBay, that was meant to be installled in the DD case's front:
Now I had a choice of eighter selling the Rad and getting 2x 240's to place one on the top and one on the bottom or... try to fit the GTX360 somehow. I have seen a mod in the past, where a 360 was installed on the top of a Phantom, but that rad was less than 3cm thick and mine was 54mm. That made it look impossible to fit with the fans on it, because the RAM and some motherboard heatsinks were interfering. On the other hand I did not want to cut the case. I still wanted to see if I could fit the RAd somehow because I did not want to give up the cooling performance of the GTX 360 if possible:
As you can see it did fit but only in a certain angle. There was no way it could go in straight and in the middle. I checked how the Rad would look like from the side and actually it is not too bad - you can't really see, that it is not straight.
So I decided to give it a shot. First I had to make some kind of a bracket to be able to install the Rad, since the 2x 200mm cutouts are not meant for 120mm fans. I simply got myself a white, thin piece of an aluminum sheet and started to do the measuring and cutting:
First I cut out the two asymetrical strips and made the holes to attach the radiator:
Next I had to do some additional adjustments and mark the holes to attach the brackets to the case:
Here you can better see, how the whole assembly is placed in an angle:
Next, I wanted to see if I could also install fans on top, to have a push-pull configuration, having 3 fans blowing from underneath and 3 other ones sucking the air from the radiator. The ones on the bottom came with the GTX360, that I bought used on eBay for $60 and I think it wasn't a bad deal, since the 3 Aerocool SILENT TURBINE FANS are silent, look good and have LED lighting in them and cost almost as much as I paid for them with the rad, so it's like having the Rad as a bonus
Next, I had to do some more cutting and drilling on the brackets, to have them match the Rad and include all the necessary holes:
Here is the whole assembly installed, just without the 3rd fan:
The 3rd fan can't fit, so I will install a 9cm fan there. It should be OK, since there is 1 fan pushing air from underneath anyway. I know this is a bit of a getto mod but if you read all the above, you can see how I really had no other choice if I wanted the GTX360 to be used in this project. Now, most of the other parts of the watercooling project I have bought but there are still couple of parts missing and I will continue this, as soon as I get them in the mail. In the meantime I will do something else on the case, so stay tuned
