Stock HSPC Large Tech Station

   This is more of a customizing job than modding job. Plus, what I'm going to be customizing is not a product used everyday. The product under the knife will be the HighSpeed PC Large Tech Station. This is mainly used for enthusiasts who change out system components often, or for PC shops and hardware review sites who need to test motherboards and components.

   But as a reviewer myself, I felt that I could mod/customize this to suit my needs more personally. The motherboards mount on the low tier of the Tech Station. This makes it a little more difficult to take some pictures and to mount larger HSF's.

   So I decided that I would reverse the 2 tiers. Easier said than done, but very doable. The first thing I did was disassemble the Tech Station hours after I assembled it. With all the pieces in front of me and ideas running through my head, I was set to customize my tech station.

   First thing I did was reverse the tiers. So, the top is now the bottom and the bottom is the top. To make things a bit clearer I'm going to give the tiers names. The motherboard/top tier and the PSU/bottom tier. Confused yet? If not, you will be.

   The next thing I did was to put the rubber feet onto the bottom of the PSU tier. Then I installed the 10" legs onto the top of the PSU tier. Now the 10" legs are optional, so in my kit I got 2 sets of legs: the standard set and the longer 10" legs. Now that's all I really did to this tier.

   If you didn't get the longer legs, you can either order them from HighSpeedPC.com or hit up a local hobby shop for some square dowels.

   The motherboard tier is a bit more tricky as it involves some minor drilling. The top part of the motherboard tier is not modified at all. All the modding is done to the underside.

   The first thing I did here was to mount the HDD rails. With the supplied screws and spacers simple get a HDD and grab the rails. Place the rails on the HDD and screw into place. No need to measure - just use the HDD as a guide.

Rubber feet

HDD rails

   Since I had 2 sets of HDD rails, and I doubt I'm going to have 4 HDD's installed on the tech station at the same time, I decided that I wanted to have optical drives mounted on the under side of the motherboard tier along with the HDD rails. What I did was cut the two 12" long rails into a 7" and 5" piece. The two 7" pieces will be for the optical drive and the two 5" will be for a second HDD.

   Another option is just cut the 12" rails in half and go with a dual optical drives. Since the optical drive is thicker then a HDD you will need to get spacers and longer screws.

  Lowe's, Home Depot, or just any local hardware store will have the longer screws. I got my hardware from Lowes and here are the part numbers: #490265 for the screws 6x1 1/2" 10pcs and #880432 for the 3/8"x .171 x 1 nylon spacers. I got 2 packs of spacers and the total cost for all 3 items was $2.25. The spacers are the perfect length for this project so no cutting was done to the nylon spacers.

   Next I installed the second set of HDD rails next to the first set, and then the rails for the optical driver were mounted 90° to the second set of HDD rails. Told ya you would get even more confused! It's really not that difficult to understand when you see the pictures.

Stock rails cut	Hardware from Lowes
2nd set of HDD rails	Optical rails added

   The large Tech Station comes two 120mm fans. For the fans, I mounted the L-brackets on the underside of the motherboard tier. The area I picked was near the CPU and PCI slots- this way cool air can be blown on the CPU HSF and video card(s).