I built this computer for better cooling, performance and convenience of use.
I separated the main areas such as the motherboard, hard drive, psu and extra addons such as the dvd burner and other devices. By removing the hard drives away from the motherboard I was able to place a 120mm fan just to the right of the motherboard on the front of the case blowing towards the back of the unit bringing completely unobstructed airflow from outside the case straight to a side mounted cpu heat sink and have another 120 mm fan directly behind the cpu heat sink for exhaust which creates an almost direct vacuum to suck the heat out of the case. With this setup I noticed a 7-9 degree Celsius drop in my idle temps, they went from about 36 to 28/29 and under load from about 46 to 37 Celsius.
I placed a 80 mm fan at the bottom of the case to blow cool air on the video card and I also made it adjustable so in the future if I bought another video card with different fan placement on the card I can just slide the 80mm fan back and forth to where ever I need it. That mod also dropped my video card temps about 5 degrees Celsius.
The psu is in it's own area completely separate from everything else to help isolate any heat created from it.
The hard drive bay currently has 4 hard drives in it, all with hard drive coolers on them. With this setup I was able to keep a large gap between the hard drives for better air flow and also have a 120mm front fan and a 120mm rear exhaust fan, both are completely unobstructed from wires or anything else and were able to be placed closer to the hard drives since this case is narrower than most which improves overall air flow and cooling efficiency.
Another great mod for the hard drive bay is the slide out hard drive rack, if I ever need to swap out hard drives or replace hard drive coolers all I have to do is open the hard drive door and pull the rack out and I have full access to all drives. (cool or what!)
The top bay holds my dvd burner, fan speed controller, card reader, floppy drive, power and reset buttons and the built in cigarette lighter. All these were placed here for convenience so I don't have to bend down to insert or adjust anything when sitting at my computer desk, they are all at arms reach.
I also placed two digital thermometers on the front of the unit so I can easily monitor my cpu temps and my video card temps.
I placed 2 usb ports on the top of the unit so this way if I wanted to plug in my flash drive or anything else it is easy to reach and any cords/straps are contained on the top of the unit instead of just hanging down off the front or side of the tower like most computers are.
I also installed a lighting system that is sound activated. I have normal white lights that flash in the motherboard compartment along with the ultra violet lights that flash at a slightly different level exposing the hidden colors on all my components from the UV paint I painted them with. Very awesome to watch while jamming to some tunes. :)
A video can be seen from the link below with various shots of the making of it from scratch and a video of the light show it gives while listening to music. :)
Video: http://tifftsgifts.com/hardwood.html
Overall it took about a month and a half to build from scratch.
I think it has a grandfather clock kind of antiquity to it, not intentional, just turned out like that. A nice bonus.
A general shot showing front and side.
A side shot
Motherboard area with uv lighting on full with the adjustable graphics card fan.
Hard drive bay showing all 4 hard drives in their slide out racks.
