Here is what I have been busy designing over about a month doing bits here & there, then recently finished it up when my internet was bad for nearly a week, vents & other bits will be added when I'm actually making it as my sketchup skills are more limited than my practical skill, but I have the basic structoral form of what I want to make so I have the specs at hand as a good guide.
This was going to be a rematch with my first scratch build & still is but with more flair & a steeper challenge as I attempt to lose the squareness of my cases
, I know making a square box is easy to me now so if I stuck with square cases there would be minimal challenge for me so wouldn't be learning anything new, don't get me wrong building a perfectly square case is not as easy as some might imagine especially the first time with no previous experience but when you've done it once or twice it gets really straight forward & easy.
Anyway it's going to cost me about £100 more than my last case for aluminium because I'm using a range from 1mm sheet to 4mm sheet & various flat bars & angle bars, I'll need to buy a 12" disc sander so I can make perfect joints & get perfect edges, I've worked out the cost & it's pretty scary compared to my previous cases.
£220 for aluminium with vat & delivery if using sheets
, but about £80 to £100 if only using bars
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£50 for plastic with vat & delivery
£30 round about for high tensile bolts & bits.
so £300 or £200 for absolute basics & this is going fully diy.
£50 upto £200 for finishing (paint or powdercoat or anodise or a mix of all 3)
£70 for 10 Enermax UCTB12 T.B.Silence fans or could re-use some I already have but fans keep evolving to be nice & quiet with enough airflow & nice looking which is why I'd prefer to get new ones.
I could do a budget version by using flat bars fixed together which would seriously lower the aluminium cost which I may do + it would be a chunkier case, it'll be interesting to make a case like this purely from flat bars & angle bars while being inspiring to others wanting to make a bada$$ case with a nice small budget, just needs a slight redesign which I'll sketch up before I commit to starting.
So this would be an even higher premium case than anything I've done before, but still cheaper than a top level consumer case, this time when designing I totally disregarded budget & just designed then worked out how much it'll all cost, I did design a water cooled case like this but I just don't like the size it has to be to hold all the water cooling gear not to mention the awkward tubing when it comes to maintenance so I'm skipping water cooling & staying with air for 1 last time
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£120 for the sanding disc machine, but this will be a great purchase as I know I'll always have a good use for it, the manual mitre saw I have would go perfect with this.
Met my saving goal so I could go all out on doing this now, but a 32" sharp led 100hz 1080p screen is highly tempting me, but if I got the screen I could sell my 24" led monitor & my 26" samsung monitor putting me close to my budget goal again so I'll probably do that
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About the design:
All but the rear fan would be mounted independantly to the mobo tray not being screwed into the exterior panels, the bottom storage section will be like an air tunnel, the mobo cooling section will have imediate airflow right next to the mobo & the fan below will give just enough space for the ridiculously long ati 5970 just so it's an option, there will be a fan mounted between the psu & mobo tray & a fan above the mobo tray with a duct to go out the rear, I don't think xl-atx or the like is going to be a new standard so I'm sticking with standard atx, a 10 slot mobo tray is huge & guess it's only applicable to 4x gpu users which I'll never be.
So the only cables that will be slightly visible would be the mobo power cables, sata cable, power switch/led cables & gpu power cables so should look & be really clean on the inside & out.
The hdd tunnel is nice as each hdd cage slides in being held down by flat bars, then a flat bar slots in front of them & they are secured.
The pci expansion piece will involve a chunk of aluminium with pins sticking out to act as a 1 piece lock down for all the pci slots & screwed in from behind.
I'm doing it this way instead of making a new thread because no orders have been made yet so this is fresh off the design stage, then I'll add all this to the first page of the log with some actual progress
, so just think of this as a hazy preview of whats to come next from me.
And now the design pics, any suggestions for a name are welcome, I'm all thought out after designing this for the time being
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Could be a couple of weeks to a couple of months away before I start.
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, which prompted me to show it in black 
