Thermaltake Mozart TX / Xbox PC Case Mod

My Big Fat Review/Mod


















Two in One.

First the review. For the most part I like the Mozart TX. It's a solid case with with lots of room for expansions and bells & whistles. I'm a fan of Thermaltake and already own a Armour case which is great. The area where this case fell short was in the supposedly tool free drive bays and expansions slots. On my Armour case these features are superb, but on the Mozart I found the mechanism on the expansion slot flimsy, my graphics card sorta flops around. The 5.25" bay tool free setup only works with standard components. Anything out of the ordinary such as my Soundgraph iMon Ultrabay is a pain to install, because there is only one screwhole. If your device doesn't line up, well, you'll have to drill holes. Also you still have to put screws on the inside side of the 5.25" bay so it's not really "tool free". These were the only two things I didn't like about the case, beyond that it's great. I was able to fit all my media PC guts and goodies inside as well installing my modded Xbox on the mini-itx side.
For pictures of my Xbox install you can go here. This custom install took me about 4 days and most of that was soldering custome wire extensions for the DVD drive power and the Power Button. I also went with a PC power supply as opposed to the Xbox's PSU so I could add more fans. You'll need an adapter board to do this which you can get from Sickmods. The one other thing that took a while was wiring up the USB ports. I decided to use the 4 USB ports on the front of the Mozart for the Xbox. Which requires two things. One soldering usb connections onto the back of the controller board. Secondly you need to take the original xbox ports and some old usb cords and patch them together. Check out Llamma's page for a guide on this, but check out my pictures to see how to make 'em pretty. If you have questions on any of the steps involved in the Xbox to PC case mod feel free to post a comment and I'll get back to you. If you are not into making your own cables you can buy most of them at Llamma's or find them online.
Happy Modding.