That's two fan grills and two 92mm ducts. That took a fat chunk of change out of my wallet, but it proved to be worth the money. The first thing I did was cut the lock out.

The two fan ducts I bought had molding around the edge of them. Keeping that in mind, I was not too worried about how my holes would look. After cutting out the holes, the molding would pretty them up significantly. Furthermore, the spiral grills would make the front bezel look SWEET. So after I cut my two shady holes, the bezel looked like this:

Not exactly the prettiest thing eh? Two fan ducts and spiral grills will fix that up ASAP! Look at how flashy the final result looked!

Wow! MUCH better than I ever expected the front bezel to look. I put down some more cash for dual 120mm spiral fan grills, soon to be sitting atop the exhaust holes. Now the system looks flashy as hell with four matching fan grills. I have pics of that in the end of the article.

 My next step was to add lighting to my system. I knew that I wanted to put a window in the case and have everything all lit up, but I could not decide the best way to do it. Neon lights added a lot of heat, were bulky, and provided a light that was weak enough to the point that I would most likely need two of them. After searching the Internet and talking with some ProCooling regulars in the Pro/Chat, I decided on going with a cold cathode ray tube. I'm not sure how these work. All I know is that they are skinny, give off a lot more light than a neon light, and don't give off any significant heat. A modder's dream come true! So off to PCMods.com again to empty my wallet even further. I bought a cold cathode ray tube and I installed it in between the two blowholes on the top of the case. This was the PERFECT spot! I wouldn't be normally using that space for anything else so I sacrificed nothing by adding light. The kit was quite easy to assemble. It came with the following:

This kit is pretty expensive, but at least most of the work is done for you. The actual cold cathode tube itself comes with some Velcro double-sided tape. You just need to stick it someplace in the case. The toughest part is mounting the switch for the light. I mounted it near the bezel on the front of the motherboard chamber. PCMods gives you a template sticker.

I just drilled it out and the button mounted easily on the case

The picture of the lit case can go at the end of the article as it is the flashiest of them all . Two of my three major case mods were done with. I had done the ventilation and lighting. The last step was to make the window. Despite the fact that I think their prices are a bit high, I was VERY impressed with the quality of the last couple products that I had received from PCMods. I cruised over one last time. This time I bought a window kit from them.

 The window kit was one of the easiest mods I had ever done before. How sharp your cut is never matters as the molding covers up any small blemishes. So after cutting, you insert the molding around the edges of the huge hole. Then the window basically snaps in. They have a small locking strip that fits into the molding on the inside. It basically tightens the molding up and keeps the window snug. Getting that damn molding strip to fit in was a pain, but it just took time. I feel like an ass, because I didn't take any pics during the actual making of the window. I just have a picture of the final product. Here it is.

Looks snazzy eh? How bout we add a little light to the situation (damn that's cheesy)?

That more or less wraps up Part I of Black Ice. The next part will cover the cooling system. I'll go into how I mounted the heatercores that you don't even see in that last pic. I'll talk about how the system is near silent while still maintaining excellent cooling capability. I'll go into the plumbing, how I fit dual heatercores into the system, and which waterblock I used. But all case cutting/modding is done with. I am VERY proud of the final look of this rig. The reason why it looks like this is because I took it slow and planned heavily. In the past, I would jump into cooling and modding headfirst without looking back. Jacked up blowholes, fried CPUs, and condensation were all different things that would result from my sloppiness. I've since cleaned up my act and I haven't had a failure of a system yet.

 On a last note, I'm sure all of you are wondering about the name of my project. "Black Ice… I mean how unoriginal is that? Does he even have a black ice radiator in that thing?" Well guys and girls… I'm an ass ;). I named it a while back. Right after I named it, I found out that there was a firewall program called Black Ice. Ooops. Of course three weeks later Overclock-Watercool comes out with a radiator called Black Ice also! Oh well haha what can you do. A name is a name. That's all.

 If you have any questions, comments, rants, raves, or insults, feel free to throw them at me here:  . Of course if you're a real man or woman, you'll post it in the Pro/Forums so we can all make fun of you . Nah j/k, but the forums really are great so check them out. You will get your question answered by me faster in the forums than you will by e-mail. Another cool thing to check out is the Pro/Chat. It is filled with ProCooling staff and regular fans. Odd that we hardly talk about cooling in there! Well until next time, I'm out. Expect the update to this article in 3 – 4 weeks. Also I will be watercooling my Chilli Professional case in the not so distant future. You can read my review of that case here. Later.

-Kevin

If you have any comments or Questions please email me at Kevin@ProCooling.com