Mod of the Month - May 2009

Project AluChill

by NysoO
Worklog: Here

Building your own case is never an easy undertaking and making a large tower case complex enough to house lots of high end hardware and water-cooling is even more of a challenge. Never feeling satisfied when modding a pre-built case, NysoO set about making his own tower entirely out of aluminium as it's light and easy to work with.

Anyone who's dabbled with water-cooling probably knows that there are things we'd change even with great cases like the Lian Li V2000 series or the SilverStone TJ-07. However building your own case like NysoO has done is certainly one way to edge closer towards perfection. Luckily he also has the tools on hand to assist him.


Early preparations included some extensive Google Sketchup work which we always like to see. Clearly the plan here was to paint all that lovely aluminium black as well as having a triple 120mm radiator in the base, a dual graphics setup and gull wing-like side panels and top panel that rotate forwards giving access to the internals.

The black paint scheme extends to the interior too and with black fans and the black coolant we've seen in later photos, AluChill should look very mean indeed.


It's all about the angles! NysoO started by cutting a series of aluminium square rods that would form the basis of the frame of the case. To secure them together he drilled holes for mounting hex cap screws which would give a flush finish with the frame. Above we can also see the frame nearly complete with a clearly defined bottom section for the PSU and cooling hardware, reminiscent of a large Lian Li or SilverStone TJ-07 case.


The front panel has also received a fair amount of attention and has been cut to fit a four channel fan controller, optical drive slot and LCD display as well as a dual 120mm fan grill. Also above we can see a very complete looking case with all the side panels mounted with a menacing lip overhanging the top of the front panel. It looks awesome in silver, never mind black!


In a more recent post in project log, NysoO shows us the dismantled case sections having been powder coated black. After an inital scare with a bent panel, he proceeded with fitting it all back together again. Here we can see the case half way back together and looking awesome. Make sure you post some images of the entire case NysoO when you've finished it! There's also several videos of AluChill on YouTube including this one of it's removable motherboard tray. Make sure you check the rest out in his project log.

If you'd like to vote for NysoO's Project AluChill, head over to our forums.