Project NoName

[KiNgPiN83]

Hi all

So this is my very first attempt at a proper project. I've built PC's in the past but everything has been pretty much standard case and parts wise. The most advanced I've got is drilling holes in cases for fans, dangling things with cable ties and created an awesome foamboard shroud that connected my Alpha Pal 8045(?) to the outside of my case. (Sucking that horrible hot air straight out!) I'm also of the age where water cooling was pond pumps, Swiftech Storms and lots and lots of cable ties. Advanced water cooling was getting a PCI relay card to turn the pump on at the same time as your PC! Lol! However, i digress...

With this project i wanted to use my laser cutter to create my own case. I'm still pretty new with the laser cutter and my designs are fairly basic. However if this goes well, i'll definitely design another. At first it was going to be water-cooled using my old water cooling parts. However it soon became apparent that my lasers maximum cut area of A3 sized wood was going to mean that i wouldn't be able to build the case wide enough to fit my required components in. Plus the water cooling parts i priced up to replace aging water cooling parts started to get quite large. Especially for a PC that was to be created around a FX8350/ATi280x etc. (I've recently shelled out on a Ryzen based machine that I'm typing on so can't really afford to replace the core of this machine too. Especially as its a second PC.)

Enough about me and my life, lets get down to it:

Specification:

* AMD FX8350
* Asus Sabretooth 990FX R2.0
* Corsair H100i V2
* 16GB DDR3 (Either 4 x 4 or 2 x 8... Whichever is faster)
* 250GB Intel SSD
* 4 x 2TB spinning disks
* 1 x ATi 280x (Maybe 2 non crossfire due to design/not able to source long cable...)
* Lots of Fans
* Fan controller

Design:

Spoiler: Old design

I know its a terrible drawing and its on a post it note but its probably going to change a bit so its more a starting point. Plus all the best ideas start on the back of fag packets/post it notes.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

So for the TLDR's out there this is the current state of this project:

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Cooler, lots of fans, fan mesh and motherboard standoffs of various sizes.

Mobo, GPU, Fan Controller and RAM:

Last bits removed from case:

 

[KiNgPiN83]

To get a better idea of sizes and where i would like to put things i created a basic box, slightly larger than the end product:

Box panels:

Spoiler: Old Design

Pieces put together for mocking up holes, vents etc.

Spoiler: Old design

Mapping out the mobo tray and where the standoffs need to go:

After sitting the motherboard on the wood and marking the holes i thought to myself, this may not be terribly accurate... I wonder if someone has some exact markings/sizes i could use??? A short google later and i had them and have mocked up the files to be cut out.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

I can't believe my luck! Went to turn the laser on this morning to cut the motherboard tray out and its completley dead. I've emailed the guys i got it from and hopefully its just a dead PSU that they can send me a replacement for so i can get back up and running ASAP.

Hopefully this won't delay things too much.

UPDATE: Turns out that there is a tiny door on the power socket with a fuse in it. I just needed to pull it out, swap the live fuse for the spare fuse and it powered straight up! Full steam ahead for some more updates tonight.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

A little Friday night update:

Cutting action shot - Bottom part of mobo tray

Both pieces of the motherboard tray cut out. They will be glued together with the lower part holding the nuts and the top guiding the screws through. I probably could've made this one piece but the increased strength of two pieces may come in handy:

Picture of the top and bottom pieces lined up to hopefully show you what i mean:

Nylon bolt lined up with my laser cut hole. I was impressed it fit so well! Haha! (The sizes on screen differ to what you end up with due to the kerf of the laser cut itself. I think my kerf or width of laser is 0.1mm so you have to take this into account in your designs.)

Pre gluing together:

And that's it for tonight while i wait for the mobo tray to glue. Once its glued i can then fit the bolts and stand offs and then the mobo. I can then test fit this in the box and mark where i need to cut out holes for the peripheral ports on the mobo and the PCI ports etc. I can then put these in my existing designs and re-cut the box to a shallower size. Well, once i have also figured out the rad, fan, power/reset button locations etc.

My goal is to have the best air cooling i can with optimised hot air removal/cold air introduction. Who knows, if it turns out well it could replace my good old Coolermaster stacker that PC1 resides in.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

So who can spot my deliberate mistake to make sure anyone is actually reading this...

(Currently cutting two new pieces and will glue them together correctly this time... )

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Today's update.

Motherboard mounted:

Access hole lined up correctly:

Annotated the box to show where i want to mount things. I'll take measurements from this and put them into the design for when i re-cut the box to the right size:

Today i also designed and cut the fan holders:

And this was supposed to show how accurate i managed to make the screw holes! (But didn't work too well...)

 

[Dan103]

Nice and different looking forward to seeing the final product

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Nice and different looking forward to seeing the final product

Me too! I've been working on the design when i can and will hopefully have more to look at this week.

 

[famas]

This is my kind of build! great work so far.
Really like the look of the fan holders.

What laser cutter are you using? Do you have a wood working background?

 

[KiNgPiN83]

This is my kind of build! great work so far.
Really like the look of the fan holders.

What laser cutter are you using? Do you have a wood working background?

Thanks, they came out better than i expected and everything lined up too! I'm trying to pick this project back up and get a decent update uploaded for everyone ASAP. Just struggled with time a bit recently since the wife has started working in the evenings and i'm on put the child to sleep who doesn't want to sleep duty. Lol!

Its basically a standard 40w Chinese affair that a company called just add sharks import and then go over fixing any issues. Unfortunately they have just ceased trading so my upgrade will have to come from elsewhere. Skill wise i'd say I'm an enthusiastic amateur. Designing things was a steep learning curve to begin with but I've got the hang of the basics now and there's loads of tutorials and things out there for when you get stuck. I use a mixture of Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Wow... I can't believe this update has taken a year! Then again i can considering all that's been happening over the last year in the life of Kingpin83. Still, i'm currently sorting the photos and there will be an update incoming.

 

[Omega_]

Wow... I can't believe this update has taken a year! Then again i can considering all that's been happening over the last year in the life of Kingpin83. Still, i'm currently sorting the photos and there will be an update incoming.

exciting

 

[KiNgPiN83]

So the design has changed completely... After looking at what i had i decided that i was going to take it a different route and re-design the case. Plus i have a year of extra skill using my laser and i'm now able to design and realise a lot more interesting ideas than i used to be. So the new Design is something along these lines:

* Same components as original post
* 4 distinct areas to case - PSU/Controller lever, HDD Level, Mobo level and cooling level.

I don't have a picture as its all in my head and i am kind of winging it. This is a big thing for me as i always used to struggle with being a perfectionist and if things didn't go exactly how i wanted them i'd lose interest/hope/whatever and give up. However i'm slowly moving round to the idea that nothing is perfect as well as working on my procrastination and other issues and this project seems to be good to help that.

Anyway, enough talking. Here are the latest photos of Project No Name Version 2:

Here we have the front of the lowest level of the new case. The window is for the fan controller and the rectangle/circles are where the power/reset/LED's will live. The grills either side are for air to be drawn into the case.

So the grills gave me my first issue. The beauty of plywood is that it is made up of layers with grains going in alternate directions meaning its nice and strong. The bad news with this is that although i can see the knots and things on the outer surface i cant see the ones hiding in the middle layers... (My laser doesn't like knots. Only 40w ) So knowing i had to recut this piece i redesigned the vents to make them a bit more interesting:

I much prefer this version and it seemed to cut first time so i obviously got lucky knot wise too!

Here we have the power button and LED's. The button itself is round and split into two semi circles. So in effect it looks like a single round button but gives you power and reset. Obviously this means you have to be careful when using them but i like to live life on the edge. Haha!

Next we have the housing for the fan controller which will hopefully keep it where i want it. First is the brackets themselves:

And then the brackets connected to the controller in situ:

We also have the plinth for the PSU. Basically a box with a large hole to make way for the fan and lots of small holes for where it will draw air through and out of the PSU exhaust:

(I get through lots of masking tape...)

Next we have the sides. If I'm honest two are just plain so there's not much point putting up pictures of them. However the PSU side is more interesting. I found the screw/hole locations online and made them line up on the side of the case to keep the PSU on its plinth and stop it moving. I've looked at them and they are pretty well lined up. Maybe slightly off but i can adjust the design if sanding doesn't fix it:

(I may have to design this with larger circles around the screws as i can see this falling apart when i attach the screws through to the PSU..)

Here we have an exploded view of the case:

And finally the current progress picture as it stands:

I'm still trying to work through access to various areas for upgrades etc, how each layer will fit together, the cable runs between layers and lastly the location of the GPU's. That is the part that is really going to test me but I'm looking forward to it. Also please excuse the potato photos they were on my iPhone. I'll try to get better ones at various points of the build.

Thanks for looking.

 

[OJ46]

Images in the last post aren't showing for me mate. Looking forward to seeing the new plans as I love these 'completely different to the norm' builds

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Images in the last post aren't showing for me mate. Looking forward to seeing the new plans as I love these 'completely different to the norm' builds

Thanks for letting me know, i’ll take a look.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

Images should work now.

 

[Testiculous]

Images working fine now. Following build with interest.

 

[KiNgPiN83]

A little update for you...

Tested my power/reset switch idea out. (It will look like the below however more recessed to hopefully give it a cleaner look)

Also prepped both of my 280x's for getting their way into this build. (Removed the mounting bracket) I wanted to crossfire them but can't find a long enough cable due to how the GPU's will be mounted. Which is a shame but no one seems to make extra long bridges/cables:

I then moved on to the storage level of the build:

So this looks a bit odd but its the only way i seemed to be able to do it whilst keeping the drives flat. I had some fancy ideas involving them not being flat but didn't want to cause the drives issues... I guess i could change them in the future? Back to this design, this should be good for the front to back airflow however it isn't going to be straightforward removing/replacing drives as you'll have to remove each hole bank at once... Although personally that doesn't bother me too much.

And here's another view of the above:

Next we have an exploded view of this level with the sides and roof. (I was gluing the base to another sheet of ply to give me some more rigidity at the time the photo was taken.)

The rather technical process of gluing the base...

And this is the whole lot coming together. Glue, masking tape and the jig hopefully keeping it straight and true. This also shows the intake and exhaust fans. You may have also noticed the cut outs round the fans. This is for a grill/attachment that will be added to both ends later.