Anyone who’s been involved with PC building and modding for any length of time has seen their share of oddities when it comes to PC cases. These are the first thing people see after all, and as such they were some of the fist things to start taking different forms as the industry evolved. It was and still is a dynamic market, and as the designers and PR people put out products that they think we the consumer will appreciate and spend our money on, there inevitably come along some examples that are… out of the ordinary.
Modding:
I mentioned a couple of things earlier regarding modding. There are two kinds of cases that appeal to me as a modder: blank slates like many from Lian Li, and the exact kind of crazy I see here with the Steam Castle.
Inside the front panel, we can see that those silver stacks on the front corners are only held in with tabs. Easily removable for modding. The upper mesh on the front panel is also easily removed by bending out the tabs. Personally, I would love to put a couple of vertical cylinder reservoirs in these corners with some good lighting and bubbles. If I had to have an internal optical drive bay, I would also cut off the mounting tabs on the 5.25” drive bay cover and shave the sides down just enough to slide into the hole freely and mount it to the front of the drawer of the optical drive. Done properly it would be nearly invisible. A small hole in one corner (both corners to maintain the symmetry) would allow the eject button to be accessed with a paper clip. A hassle? Yes, but I don’t use the optical drive all that much, and it would be worth it to maintain the front face appearance. Obviously an external drive would be another option but they are not for everyone.
Looking at the underside of the top panel shows the power junction for the LED panels under each of the vent grills, and shows that these grills are easily removed as an assembly with a Phillips screwdriver. This opens up any number of possibilities with these openings, from fans to reservoirs, to some off-the-wall caps for the holes with mounts for a huge radiator and tubing. There really is a lot of room here for anything the modder wants to do.
If you like the vents but want to do something with them, they are also easily broken down into their parts, with the backs held on with tabs and the clear diffuser for the LED held onto that piece with tabs of its own. They’re fairly stiff, so care should be taken not to break any but I managed to disassemble the entire thing without incident in fifteen minutes. Looking inside the lens at the LED board you can see even that comes off with a single screw. With power to this area built into the case with handy manual adjustment not only of power level but circuit via the color-changing switch, these could be turned into any number of things by the electrically-minded modder.
