Rakk Hawani Flow Budget Case Mod + Build Experience

Modifying a PC case should not always be expensive, sometimes it only takes creativity and imagination to add a little bit of flair to your PC. Today, I’ll show you how I modified my Rakk Hawani Flow mid-tower case for just under 500 pesos. I’m also going to share with you my experience building inside this as well as its thermal performance compared to my old case, the Rakk Anyag Frost.

Rakk Hawani Flow Case Modification

First things first, I am not an expert on this so take everything with a grain of salt and feel free to comment down below in case you need to correct something from this project. So for this project, I’ll be using some acrylic spray paint, some vinyl wrap, illustration board, and plastic folder.

Total Cost: 494 Pesos

340 – 4 cans of acrylic spray paint
40 – Illustration board
14 – Plastic folder
100 – Vinyl wrap

Like I said this is going to be a semi-permanent modification so instead of painting the metal parts of the case like the PSU shroud, we’re just going to use a white plastic folder so that we can easily attach and remove it if we want to.

It’s not going to be the prettiest implementation but it’ll do just fine for our purpose, which is to add a touch of white with this black case. The middle part of the folder is perfect for the bend of the PSU shroud, I just had to cut it in size, cut some holes on it for the cables to pass through, and simply slide it in.

Now for the top part of the case, again instead of painting it which will take a lot of time and effort, like removing the old paint, sanding and all that hassle, I decided to just wrap it with white vinyl. With this, we can easily peel this off if we want to later down the road.

Applying the vinyl wrap is pretty straight forward, just apply it gently while preventing any bubbles along the way, you can use a card to smoothen the surface and a hair dryer or heat gun to allow the vinyl wrap to properly stick with the surface. Once done, you just have to carefully cut the vinyl wrap with a xacto knife. The quality of the cut will depend on your skill and patience, so take your time.

Now for the front panel, since it is made of plastic, we can easily paint it with spray paint. But first, we need to sand it a little bit with 120grit sandpaper just until the shine on the plastic is gone, this will allow the paint to properly adhere to the surface.

After sanding I did 3 coatings of white acrylic spray paint and 2 coatings of flat clear to remove the glossy white sheen. Make sure to allow the paint to dry in between coatings.

Once dry you can reattach it back to the front of the case, as you can see, it’s now looking better.

I also have a few PCI-E covers that I had from my previous builds, I think this is from Silverstone. I got lazy and just painted this with white spray paint as is.

Now for the side panel, to be honest, I didn’t plan on doing this, It was just a spur of the moment to add a little bit of flair to the case mod. With that said, I decided to use an illustration board for this, ideally, modders use acrylic glass, but I have limited budget partnered with limited time so I decided to go with the illustration board route.

The design was also decided right at the moment including the shape, dimensions and the paint job. I used a combination of orange and yellow and used some masking technique to come up with the ShopzadaPH iconic triangular pattern.

I also added some translucent plastic folder to hopefully allow some light to shine through around the logo and on the sides of the custom side panel.

Rakk Hawani Flow Build Experience

The first thing I noticed is the hard drive cage since there’s no removable hard drive caddy, it’s a bit finicky to install the hard disk.

Next is the SSD tray at the back, if you’re going to use a microATX board, the SSD tray will block the holes for the cables, but you can always use the bottom holes on the PSU shroud to route the cables, and that’s what I actually did, because I want to utilize the SSD tray so that I can easily hide the cables, compared to if I mount the drives near the front panel.

Cable management was never an issue with this case, it has an ample amount of space and in-place cable management slots.

Another thing that I noticed is that there are two reset switch, one for the actual reset button and the other one for the RGB reset button. Find the correct one and tape it with masking tape so you won’t get confused with the wirings.

Next is with the rubber grommets, I appreciate that this case came with rubber grommets but the cable hole itself is kinda small, so I had a hard time inserting the 24pin extension, I had to remove the rubber grommet, insert the 24pin cable to the hole, and then insert the 24pin cable to the rubber grommet and stick it in the case.

Now when installing the front fans, the only way you can mount the case fan at the bottom is by using 2 radiator screws, since there’s no way to reach and tighten the screw from the other side. Other than that, installing the other front case fans is pretty straight forward.

And lastly, with regards to mounting the top fans, I needed to mount the fans offset near the side panel because it was hitting the 8 pin power connector.

Overall, building inside the Rakk Hawani Flow is quite easy especially in terms of cable management in comparison with my experience with the Rakk Anyag.

Rakk Hawani Flow VS Rakk Anyag Frost Thermal Comparison

Now, before we end this article, it wouldn’t be a proper review without thermal comparisons between these two cases. For this test, I ran the built-in benchmark of the Assasins Creed Origins.

So with the Rakk Anyag Frost, with all the case fans running at 100%, our CPU’s temperature is 42 degrees at minimum and 55 degrees at max, while our GPU’s temperature is 37 degrees at minimum and 70 degrees at max.

Now with the Rakk Hawani Flow, with all the case fans running at 100% and with the front tempered glass on, our CPU’s temperature is 37 degrees at minimum and 53 degrees at max, while our GPU’s temperature is 36 degrees at minimum and 70 degrees at max.

While we’re at it, I also tested the Rakk Hawani Flow without the front tempered glass, with this our CPU’s temperature is 36 degrees at minimum and 49 degrees at max, while our GPU’s temperature is 34 degrees at minimum and 67 degrees at max. So if you want maximum airflow, remove the front tempered glass, just bear in mind that it will also allow more dust inside. so pick your poison.

VERDICT

To conclude, I think I did a pretty decent job with this project, let me know in the comments below what you think about this. Just take it easy as I am not an expert modder. I just wanted my case to be more personal and be one with our brand ShopzadaPH. I wanted to get the Rakk Huna 2 initially but I think what I have here now is pretty special. Thanks again to Rakk Gears for providing this case and comment down below if you want to see more reviews of Rakk Gears products.