Creative X-Fi Gaming Mod

Savaged and Ravaged, by Dave Williams

As you can see from these pictures, the Creative gaming rig was extensively damaged - requiring virtually a whole new case to be built. It looked as if the couriers had played football with it! Whole sections of the case were either cracked or shattered completely and the mainboard lighting was bust. Chris felt gutted that his work had been destroyed like this.

Fortunately, the actual system hardware still functioned despite the fact that the graphics and X-Fi cards had broken free and run amok inside the case. The X-Fi card suffered several bent and shorted connector pins.

When they heard about this, those really cool guys at C3 leapt into action and sent me a replacement case straight away. Unfortunately, because Chris had used a custom cut front panel to house the display and drives and the replacement front panel was of the standard design, we had to try to repair and use the original custom panel.

Luckily, the panel had broken cleanly into pieces and although we could glue the broken pieces back together, the cracks would still be visible. To mask these cracks we decided to paint the trim panels and add a line of chrome tape around the edge of the front facia.


The edges of the trim panels were masked off to prevent any overspray and then the BACKS of the panels sprayed with black vinyl paint. This made the panels opaque and the black paint mixed with the blue of the plastic to produce a beautiful dark purple mirror finish.



With all the broken pieces glued in place, chrome tape was stuck around the edge of the front panel and then trimmed using a sharp craft knife.