WOOOHOOO. yeah, no sparks, smoke or anything like that.
crank it up!! i just need to sand the led's a bit so they diffuse the light a little more (so it looks better viewed from an angle) as you can see, the mainboard is outside of the case for the pic below, but at the time of writing this everything has been finalized and put in its place. as i said earlier, i managed to make the main board a little smaller, so its now resting inside the front panel in the space between the floppy opening and the front intake. It gets its signal from the back of the pc, I put a Y-splitter in for it and the speakers. lazy ba$tards at the factory didn't see fit to solder pins onto my motherboard's onboard sound connector. not that that bothers me or anything.
yeah. well, that's all for now untill i decide whether or not to put the ramsinks I made onto my graphics card or figure out how to stealth my new usb ports. feel free to let me know what you all think of my WIP so far.