Project: A HTPC

Kodiak · 16 Oct 2011 at 21:35

Day 8

Drilled the holes for the lid.

Drilled and tapped the top angle

The back angle needed some more holes drilled.

Glued the top angle to the front and back sections. That took a lot of fiddling to get just right.

Naked shots. Note the PSU mount has been fixed in place (at last).

While the glue was setting, I marked up the lid for a 120mm fan.

Unfortunatly I dont have a 120mm hole saw. So that gonna have to wait to sort that.

And that brought the day to an end.
This evening I assembled the case. It still needs the side angles glued on and the lid screws will be replaced with countersunk ones. And the switches need to be soldered (need to get some heat shrink oo).

Not much left and I can remove the rest of the protective film and install some hardware.

Diggsy · 16 Oct 2011 at 21:39

Todays pics not working?

Kodiak · 16 Oct 2011 at 22:15

Working now.

Kodiak · 22 Oct 2011 at 22:34

Day 9

I started off by doing a little soldering and installing hardware.

Ok, no i7 with water cooling and crossfire here. Just a passively cooled HD2400 and a 1.8ghz Dual core chip. Its worked in the old HTPC and i see no real reason to change that now.
Well, that is until I get some more cash . . .

Onto the final bits of gluing.

The side top angles needed to be glued and they were gonna be tricky buggers.

But thanks to address lables, I could single handedly position and mark up where the angled needed to be glued.

I used a scribe to mark where the angle should be. Both the lines on the edge and angle should line up to indicate that its in the right position.

I mixed up some glue, positioned the angles and clamped them firmly in place.

The glue needs about an hour to set firmly enough to handle. So I then got on with some other minor jobs.

I tidied the cables (a bit).

And peeled off the protective plastic from the bottom. No more holes needed to be drilled.

That took me to lunchtime and a much needed cup of tea.

After lunch, the glue had been sitting for about 90mins, so it was time to scrape off the excess

And re-assemble.

I wouldnt put the lid on until the evening. To allow the glue more time to harden.

I wasnt happy about the looks of the IO ports on the motherboard. So I decided to make a cover out of some scrap 1mm aluminium.

This also allowed me to play, um use the new gillutine and press.

I cut the sheet roughly to size to see how it looked.

Not bad.

Using the old IO shield, I mesured up where about the holes needed to go.

A bit of drilling, sawing and filling later.

The sound, serial, VGA and parrallel ports where cut.

The rest done.

I trimmed the plate down a little so it didnt interfer with the expansion card holder.

More lable goodness. And clamped in for the drilling of the tapping hole. The acrylic would have the 6-32 thread cut into it this time. The aluminum is too thin for the thread.

Screwed in place.

Lid on and a Im done for the day.

Tomorrow, Im finishing the lid by cutting the fan hole for it and countersinking the fixing holes.

Then its just about done.

Maybe a panel to go over the dvd drive to stealth it abit.

gt_junkie · 23 Oct 2011 at 16:01

Excellent work!!! Great job!

gt

Kodiak · 23 Oct 2011 at 16:08

Day 10, well about an hour of it.

Started off with a trip to the DIY store to pick up a 127mm hole saw.

I found a suitable bit of old kitchen work top to use as a base to cut into and drilled a ¼ inch hole in the center.

A bit of clamping down and a brief cut later and I have a 127mm diameter hole in my lid

Some countersinking and I can take off the protective plastic sheet

All done.

Its been a real experience building this case. I very happy with the results. It almost looks like the render. Maybe next time I'll look into making it a bit longer and taller. And look at putting the HDDs in a different place.

Next time, I think i may make a combined NAS Smoothwall PC case. 2 Motherboards ontop of each other.
Or maybe a full tower case.

King Damager · 23 Oct 2011 at 16:28

Looks very nice, the only thing I might try and do personally would be to get some black Vinyl or similar to put over the metal corners of the case.

Very impressive though altogether!

kd

Doomedspeed · 26 Oct 2011 at 00:50

King Damager said:
Looks very nice, the only thing I might try and do personally would be to get some black Vinyl or similar to put over the metal corners of the case.

Very impressive though altogether!

kd

I agree or put a metal accent strip across the bottom.

All in all though a great looking case, built from scratch aswell. Well done. This has inspired me; if only.

Crezzlin · 26 Oct 2011 at 00:59

gd job

Stoner81 · 26 Oct 2011 at 01:47

Awesome build log you got some epic skills dude!

Stoner81.

Kodiak · 26 Oct 2011 at 19:15

Thanks for the comments guys.

As for the suggestions, I'm thinking about the strip along the bottom. Maybe a piece of angle or 1mm sheet cut and bent to touch the ground.

DiCe! · 27 Oct 2011 at 13:11

love it

You are going to be forever dusting that lol