Project: Pandora's Box

[RogueOpportunist]

Heya guys,

Been lurking around these and various other mod forums across the net for a very long time but my "participation" has been... Well... There hasn't been any. I've always admired some of the things people do to what some would consider a simple computer and I've been inspired by so many of you but for one reason or another I just never got around to doing any work of my own... Time to change that.

Before getting into the actual "meat and potatoes" I would like to take a minute to thank all of you guys for putting the extra effort into documenting your projects and being so helpful to others, a big part of the inspiration comes not from the cases but from the people themselves, you're all doing such great work, keep it up... Now on to the fun!




Pandora's Box

The goal of this project is fairly simple, to create a small, silent, air cooled, moderately powerful MMO gaming rig using standard interchangeable parts. While I previously intended this to be a reserved mod which would serve more as a practice run in working with/cutting metal I decided to change my "direction", this mod is now going to be a test bed to see just how far I can go with this.

My intent is not to go spending 100's of dollars, in fact quite the opposite, I'm doing this on the cheap... Not because I can't afford anything else but from my own perspective it really isn't that hard to throw money at a mod until it looks good because everyone looking at it is largely going to see the money you threw at it, while that obviously isn't always the case I have seen quite a few mods where if it wasn't for the dollar investment it wouldn't be anything special so to test my abilities and see if I got what it takes I'm using low cost resources only.

My planning on this is VERY loose, I have a basic idea and concept but beyond that I intend on working with what the case and my inspiration give me, artistically speaking if I paint a picture or make a drawing I never do so with an image in my head, I just let whatever wants to come out come out and the art creates itself so with this case I am going to follow that same flow.

The case I am working with is some old junker I had kicking around, this is one of those cases they sell for 35$ including power supply so there is absolutely nothing special about it... or is there?


Here it is in its pretty much fresh off the floor where it's been sitting for 3 years form... minus the parts which I already took out...

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/1499/untouchedcase.jpg

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/3323/untouchedcaseopen.jpg

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/6919/untouchedcaseside.jpg

As you can see this case minus the hideous front bezel is pretty much identical to any other low cost case which for all intents and purposes would do fine for what I need it for but that's no fun... So let's take a peek at what the plan is thus far.

http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/7391/highlightedsections.jpg

(1) The first area of attack is the chassis as a whole, for some reason I've always liked the look of shallower MATX/ITX towers and the plan is to cut out 3.5 inches of the whole case to give it a bit more of a "cubic" feel, this change isn't so much for the cosmetic value as much as an experiment on working with/cutting case steel but the cosmetic aspect doesn't hurt either... The total case depth after the chop chop should be between 10.5 and 11 inches.

(2) Obviously if I'm shrinking the case these drive cages are going to have to go, that doesn't bother me at all though because this system will not be using an optical drive and if I ever changed my mind on that a slim optical could be worked in practically anywhere.

This cage removal is being done to address a pet peeve of mine in case design, I could make it work even with the reduced case footprint but for the longest time there has always been an aspect of case design that drove me nuts... Well... Not nuts but it bugged me. Why on earth do almost all case designers put one of the 3 hottest components in a computer right smack on top of the intake fan for cool air? Hard drive performance and life are nowhere near as dependant on being “cool” as the rest of the system so why on earth is the cool air hitting them first and spreading their heat through the case to parts where heat IS a critical factor in their life/performance.

I'm sure someone will come along to talk about convection and heat rising and how the cold air coming in is not spreading the heat into the case but let's be real for a minute here, the convection thing only works when the heat has a clear path to travel, with 5.25” drive bays sitting right on top of the hard drives there is a pretty big wall right in the path the heat would be trying to travel in. I'm sure arguments could be made for positive air pressure and all that but I don't know, I've gone over it in my head a million times and putting hard drives where all case manufacturers seem to love putting them just doesn't make sense to me... Or at least not as much sense as having them at the highest point in the case where the heat convection would actually go unimpeded.

I'm sure it's one of those things that would result in a never ending discussion but this is “my” case and in “my” case the cages are coming out and the hard drives are getting slapped right to the top of the case where the convection has nowhere to go but out... But more on that later.

(3) The rinky dink fan port is going too, actually... pretty much the whole front panel is going. With the drive cages gone and hard drives being mounted at the top of the case the idea is to put in 2 120mm intake fans for good airflow directly across the entire motherboard and out the back of the case.



I still have some other ideas swirling around in the old hat rack but the above 3 elements involve the bulk of the “reconstruction” phase of the project, after those are done the rest will likely be fabricated from scratch. I could probably save myself some time by making the whole case from scratch but I'm in this for the experience so make way for the hard way!

[RogueOpportunist]

I started off today with your basic rivet drilling using a 1/8 inch drill bit, I'm pretty sure everyone around here knows what I mean by that but in case any new people happen to be reading this the case was held together with little rivets, in order to get these out to break down the case into pieces you just need to fire up your drill with a little 1/8 inch drill bit to slowly drill out the rivet, the process is real easy because the rivets already have a little guide hole.

http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/9383/disassembledcase.jpg

Remember earlier when I said there was nothing special about this case? Then went “or is there?” like the plot was going to thicken later? Well the plot thickened, I managed to pull all the components and take down the whole case without a single cut on my hands... Not even a scratch... The edges on this case are all quite smooth and the vast majority are even rounded... I am impressed. This little case that I spent 35$ on including a power supply is actually better built than my 100$ case... I'm quite ecstatic with the craftsmanship on this little gem, I mean it's no Lian-Li but for a case that is about as cheap as they come I'm stunned.

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/7789/casegrime.jpg

The parts need some cleaning and I'm hoping that's not rust I see but if you check along the the top right of this picture you can see what I mean about rounded edges, pretty much any area that would have any real human contact (or cable contact) is rounded like that and the edges that aren't are about as sharp as a cheap butter knife.



Have you ever seen those commercials for CLR that say you can use it to clean your coffee maker? Well, I figured I would try to clean the parts with some CLR since I saw what might have been rust... Not really sure if CLR would make a difference or not but I figured if I'm going to clean the parts anyways I might as well use it... Well... Interesting result...

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/2497/clrz.jpg

I'm guessing there is some protective coating on the steel, which makes sense... The part that doesn't make sense is the CLR peeling it off on only 2 panels, the bottom and back, the rest of the panels washed fine although some did have small areas with this effect... I used maybe 2 ounces of CLR in a bucket filled with water so now I'm wondering if I could strip that protective layer entirely if I washed the parts down with straight CLR, I'm still going to have to sand them all either way but getting right down to the metal in all the small corners using CLR would be nice... Guess I'll have to experiment a little.

[RogueOpportunist]

The basic layout inside the case will be fairly simple and compact, the idea is to have the bulk of the airflow passing almost straight through the lower half where the system components are and have the power supply and hard drives on the top. The concept for the hard drive section isn't really fleshed out yet but I'm either going to mesh the top and allow for straight convection, grill the top and use positive air pressure or design the HD bracket more like a conduit and have a fan on the bottom pushing air through, I'm kind of leaning to a less fans is better approach as keeping noise to an absolute minimum is one of my primary targets and the system being housed inside will not be overclocked.

http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/7977/layoutia.jpg

Space is going to be tight up top so the cooling method I go with might end up being a choice of form over function but we'll see, I've measured it out and without the drive brackets in the way there will definitely be space up in that corner, I may just have to cut back to only mounting 2 drives or something.



The front panel has me kind of stumped, the two 120mm fans will sit on the bottom left hand side of the case so the airflow can pass through freely instead of running straight into a wall of ram which leaves an open space on the right side, not sure what to do there... Maybe just some accent decorations or something... Then at the top there is a big open space where the hard drives are being housed, kinda thinking maybe I could pop one of those USB LCD monitors up there... Hmm...

http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/3734/frontpanel.jpg

I'm not sure what I want to do here, part of me wants to leave it as flat as I can and go for a more Fractal Designs R3 look... Or cover it in art work... Or kit bash... Hmmm, so many possibilities.

[RogueOpportunist]

Anyone have any ideas/tips for cutting the case panels? The cuts will be across the entire surface and need to be perfectly straight, Ideally I'm thinking a table saw with some steel cutting blade would be best but I don't have a table saw available to me, my options are pretty much jigsaw or dremel, I'm thinking I could whip up some wooden guide to keep the jigsaw on a perfectly straight path but I'm not sure how well that would work.

Seems like using a jigsaw would be roughly the same as using a table saw with the exception being the saw is moving along the guide instead of the object moving along the guide... Any ideas?

[mDust]

Anyone have any ideas/tips for cutting the case panels? The cuts will be across the entire surface and need to be perfectly straight, Ideally I'm thinking a table saw with some steel cutting blade would be best but I don't have a table saw available to me, my options are pretty much jigsaw or dremel, I'm thinking I could whip up some wooden guide to keep the jigsaw on a perfectly straight path but I'm not sure how well that would work.

Seems like using a jigsaw would be roughly the same as using a table saw with the exception being the saw is moving along the guide instead of the object moving along the guide... Any ideas?
Clamp either a piece of wood or metal L bar to the piece being cut. It works great and is what I was going to recommend before I finished reading this post.

Great work log so far!

[RogueOpportunist]

Clamp either a piece of wood or metal L bar to the piece being cut. It works great and is what I was going to recommend before I finished reading this post.

Great work log so far!

L BAR!... Now why didn't I think of that. :facepalm: Awesome idea, that would work perfectly and I don't have to worry about making all kinds of wood contraptions... You're a life saver. +rep for you!



On another note I whipped up a little concept picture to get a better idea of the look I'm working with, the fan holes are very roughly scaled to occupy the space they would in the real world...

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/7189/concepto.jpg

For this picture I centered the fans, not sure what the position will be when I get to the real thing, having them offset for the left side of the case would mean much less interference for the airflow but running them up the middle will probably be more aesthetically pleasing... Hmmm... Cross that bridge when it comes I guess.

If I do run them up the middle of the front bezel I'm tempted to seal off the 92mm fan and vent on the back of the case to create a stronger positive pressure inside the case so the disturbance in air flow won't matter... Not that it would really matter anyways, looking at it the way it is I can't see airflow being any kind of an issue even if I was to overclock the system, I'm probably over-thinking things.

[mDust]

...I'm probably over-thinking things.

...which is always better than under-thinking.;)

[RogueOpportunist]

Today I started sanding and marking out the planned cuts on the top, bottom and side panels. I'm trying to take my time figuring out where to cut because I'm trying to preserve as many of the original mounting cuts, brackets, grooves and drilled holes as possible so when the time comes to put it all back together the "machined" accuracy of the various holes needed to put it together is maintained... This is exactly why I am cutting my portion from the middle of the case instead of just shaving it off the ends.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2528/sandedtop.jpg

This top piece is the only one that isn't going to turn out looking like a shorter version of the original after the chop chop because in order for me to keep the "feet" on the bottom of the case and the notches that the side panels slide into the race track looking detail on the top segment is going to look "off".

My plan for the top panel is to get rid of the detail part but I'm still considering which way to go about it. Since it is an indent in the top of the case I could bondo the top smooth pretty easily... Although the top has some flex to it, of which I am not sure what effect it would have on the bondo...

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/9620/warpedtoppanel.jpg

I'm not sure if that flex would crack the bondo while I'm working with it. The other option that kind of goes with my idea of having convection keep the hard drives cool would be to cut out the center of the top panel and replace the whole top with mesh...

[RogueOpportunist]

I was cruising the net earlier after digging through some boxes of trinkets and things looking for inspiration on what to do with the front bezel and at some point during that I decided that I'm changing the whole direction of this project, the basic work on the chassis will remain the same but the overall creative design is going a completely different way.

This is my first real project and as such I want to see just how far I can push myself, I see so many truly amazing things being done on this site and I want to see just how much of that I myself am capable of... So it's time to unleash the beast and pull out all the stops.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to change thread titles on these forums, can anyone point me to where that might be done? On most forums if you edit the title on the 1st post it changes the thread name but on this forum it doesn't.

If a mod happens to read this and users aren't capable of changing thread titles could you change the title to "Project: Pandora's Box" for me please? I would hate to have to create a whole new thread just for a title.

[x88x]

If you're still wanting to put your HDDs up at the top, I would recommend going the mesh route. That'll give you a lot more airflow around the HDDs, and actually if you seal the back and mesh most of the top, those two 120mm fans on the front should do for airflow for the entire case.

For the thread title, you are correct in guessing that only mods can change them. I'm sure one will come across this eventually, or you could always send one a PM.

[RogueOpportunist]

Actually along with my projects new direction I've also been rethinking my cooling options, to coincide with the Pandora's Box theme, the plan is to turn the case sideways making it look like an ornate chest or "box" and cooling with a single 100cfm 240mm fan on the top right over the motherboard with the sides being grilled/vented in some way with the front and back being sealed so airflow on the right side of the case gets pushed out through the power supply and hard drive cage while air on the right side gets pushed out over the video card and chipset heatsinks.

I have an old shuttle matx mobo and athlon 3000+ that both run really hot so once I get the basic chassis sized and put back together I'm going to load it up and use tin foil to wall off the various sides to see what kind of effect it has on the temperatures, having a top down system seems like it would work well with a top down CPU cooler like the stock intel but after market coolers that blow front to back might suffer... To compensate for a large after market cooler I may create a ducted system that passes air from the front to the back through the cpu heatsink and use the top down to cool the rest of the system.

So far the idea I'm most fond of looks like this...

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/5116/topdownlayout.jpg

I know it forces the airflow against the natural direction of the heat but I don't really see that being a problem and although an argument could be made for air pushed out the sides being sucked in again at the top I can't really see that as being an issue either, if the air is still hot enough to create a problem by the time is circles around then the bigger problem would be the ambient temperature in the room, I could always switch the air flow to blow hot air out the top and suck in from the sides but sucking in through the top means I have have 1 big easily washable dust filter whereas with any "blow hole" system there is no way I could direct dust through a single intake source... unless I went around sealing every single crack with silicon.

I'm also thinking I can squeeze in 8 drives if I went with 2.5"... Not sure on that one though, 3.5" drives still have the size and cost per gb advantage and the sizes available on 3.5" drives pretty much negate any size gained from having double the amount of 2.5" drives.

[RogueOpportunist]

So I finally got around to making some cuts, decided to leave it for a weekday when people are at work as to not bother everyone around me with the noise.

I opted not to use the jigsaw as I had this strange feeling that the up and down cutting motion on sheet metal like this would tear the edge to rat **** so I just dremel'd my way through it, which didn't actually turn out half bad... Well no worse than the jigsaw would have been I'm sure, here's the cut top and bottom pieces...

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/908/topandbottomcut.jpg

The first cut I made was a little wobbly at the start and they are still rough but after grinding them flat it should all turn out pretty straight... Now to figure out the best way to attach them to each other, I'm thinking if I'm going mesh anyways I could cut out the center then use 2 part epoxy to attach the 2 pieces together then epoxy the mesh on the back which should take care of the structural strength, I'm open to any other ideas people might have though.

To get a better idea of the space I'm working with I taped the case back together temporarily to load it up with some parts...

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/8239/tapedupforfitting.jpg

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/3157/fittingtopview.jpg

The scrap metal you see poking out the 5.25" drive back was just to lift the hard drive high enough to get over the ram, I've had to change the idea of mounting the hard drives width way in the case due to my complete overlooking of the cables that come out of the power supply, no big deal though, also, in the final product the drive isn't going to be sitting practically on top of the CPU/Ram like it is, I just wanted it as far back as possible for some perspective in the picture.

As I mentioned previously the 240mm fan will be sitting directly over top of the motherboard so I can't see cooling being any kind of a problem, the only issue I might have to deal with is the 3.5" drives sticking out into the area the fan will be mounted... Hmm... Maybe I'll just make a bracket for 2 2.5" drives instead.

The PSU in the picture above isn't the one I plan on using so while the right side looks pretty cramped for airflow the PSU that is really going in here does have a fan to pull air through. The power supply I used was the cheapo that came with the case, I'm figuring it's about standard depth for a lower wattage PSU but just to compare I dropped my 950w in to see how much space I would lose since the 950 isn't in a case yet...

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/8536/longpowersupplyfit.jpg

Obviously the components I plan on using in this case are not going to require anything even remotely close to 950 watts of power but it's nice to see that I could still fit a larger power supply if I really wanted to.

Oh and my maximum card length inside the case turned out to be exactly 10.5"... My 10" 9800 GTX+ is going to fit perfectly. :up:

[RogueOpportunist]

Been awhile since any updates, not really much to say, some parts and things I've ordered are in limbo and I don't want to do anything permanent to the case until I can physically see what I'm working with so... yeah... shoulda just gone to Home Depot. The project does live on though.

[RogueOpportunist]

Small little update, got some of the "hardware-esque" stuff finally but the computer components I ordered from NCIX STILL haven't arrived, I dunno if anyone has dealt with these guys before but my god are they incompetent, apparently their policy is if your order doesn't ship right away and everything doesn't go perfectly on the first try they just leave it there until you call, then when you call they tell you everything is good then leave it there until you call again, been almost a month now I've been trying to get these guys to ship my order... Makes me wanna mod their face into a computer case with my fist... :mad:

Anywhoo... these things happen I guess, it's just thrown a major wrench into the works because part of my plan in building this system was doing a small upgrade on my main system (and switching back to the ATX form factor) while using the leftover parts to make the second system which will be going into this case so I want to make sure my measurements (since the space in the case is going to be so tight) are done with the actual components that I'm going to be using but doing that at this point would mean having to take a part my primary system and I just can't afford the downtime... Ugh...

I guess I should think positive and hope the bulk of my frustrations are getting themselves out of the way early and it will be smooth sailing after this... I know I'm probably kidding myself but hey... Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. :lick:

[x88x]

Bad luck on the parts, where did you order them from?

[RogueOpportunist]

NCIX.com, it's a Canadian company. I usually order from TigerDirect.ca but they didn't have everything I wanted and I like ordering as much as I can from the same place as shipping adds up when you start piecing things from multiple locations.

At first I ordered a couple open box items that they didn't have and they never bothered to email me or say anything about it until I called them a week later asking what's going on, then I changed the order for the full price versions of which they had tons of stock of and sent in the difference via paypal and they again did nothing with it for a week until I called them, then their paypal department apparently processed the order and again nothing happened until I called them, then I waited more and nothing happened, calling them yet again the guy assured me it would be sent out asap and he was "bumping it up in the queue", that was noon on Wednesday, they had 2 days to ship and nothing has happened... Guess this is what I get for being a patient and reasonable customer... Come Monday I'm thinking it's time to act like a raving lunatic.

I probably don't need to make it into a little story in my worklog but I guess this is all part of the project right? :D

[x88x]

Doh, sorry, missed the name in your earlier post. :facepalm: Is there a Better Business Bureau sorta thing in Canada that you could report them too?


I probably don't need to make it into a little story in my worklog but I guess this is all part of the project right? :D

Yup, all part of the experience. :D Plus, we've got quite a few Canadian members; it's good to let them know of problems with a potential supplier.

[RogueOpportunist]

Reporting someone to some agency that does next to nothing would cause me more trouble than it would them, I finally ended up getting my parts after like a month or so, heh... Normally they're a pretty good company to deal with but this order just kept slipping through the cracks for some reason... ah well, that's life.


Finally got some time to do some more work but I am going to have to retake some of the shots, bought myself a new little camera and I'm still getting used to it so I buggered some of the other pictures I took, not a big deal though as the ones for the top turned out O.K.

I haven't had much of a chance to get into the workshop to work on the project but I did spend a lot of time mulling over the layout inside the case and I came to the conclusion that making into more of a mini-desktop style case just wouldn't work out too well... I mean, no more than just designing it to be a tower then just flipping it onto its side should I need to so I've gone back to laying it out to be a "tower".

Here's a shot of the top of the case...

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4178/topbeingglued.jpg

I cut out a hole in the top that will be meshed and have the hard drives "dangling" underneath so the heat will rise directly out of the case, I clamped the two cut pieces down to a little piece of wood with that blue cloth like paper towel stuff so when it comes time to pull it up after the J-B weld has dried the inevitable stuck bits will just be stuck to the cloth and can be sanded off.

On a side note the "flex" that I talked about earlier for the top piece seems to be gone now that I cut/refastened it... Cool beans.

Things are getting to be a little tricky now as every piece is cut in half so making sure everything lines up properly and keeps to the measurements is becoming a concern, after all, I don't really want this looking like some 6th graders birdhouse once it's all back together.

Here's a closeup of the J-B Weld on the seam...

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/6679/topbeinggluedcloseup.jpg

I've never actually used J-B Weld before but I see tons of other case modders using the black/red J-B Weld so figured it must be the thing to use, we'll see how it goes. I'm trying to make sure I do things "properly" but to be perfectly honest I really have no idea what I'm doing and am just flying by the seat of my pants.

Unfortunately as I mentioned earlier I messed up the other pictures but for the most part all the pieces are being "glued", this part is just taking a little time though as I only have 4 clamps and the J-B weld takes something like 4 hours to cure and 24 to dry.

On another note this past month or so has been a nightmare for my computers, I've had to reformat my 2 desktops multiple times and had the SSD in my main desktop start corrupting data, luckily Patriot gives a 2 year warranty and those 2 years run out in January... Nice timing for the drive to kick the bucket so I'm almost happy it failed now as opposed to later.

Everything seems to be running fine now though, it's just amazing how much time computer problems can suck up, hell it took me almost 2 weeks just to figure out my SSD was failing, I thought it was like 10 other things before finally narrowing it down.

I'm hoping to get a fair bit of this done before Christmas, at the very least I want to have the frame back together, the hard drive cage made and get prepped for some of the more "creative" work so this worklog gets a little more interesting than just pictures of metal... Although at this rate I might want to rename the project "Dead before done" due to the world ending in 2012 and stuff... :facepalm:

[RogueOpportunist]

Interesting day today, it seems like I didn't get much done but what little I did get done took me a few hours as today was a sanding day and I did most of it by hand as I wasn't sure how the J-B Weld would hold... Oh and I decided to skip retaking the pictures I goofed yesterday as I wanted to jump right into things.

Yesterday when I was getting the pieces put together I realized that nothing was "straight" or "flat" or "symmetrical"... I guess that's to be expected and normally it wouldn't be a big deal... except for when you start taking pieces out of the middle and then trying to smack em back together.

My first little quirk was right on the edges of the base of the case, one side lined up perfectly but looking at the other side it seemed like it was a millimetre "off", I did my best to fix it with the Dremel sander and think I did O.K. below are the sides, can you tell which side was off?

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/7582/outsideedge1.jpg

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/9031/outsideedge2.jpg

I figured out a little trick while sanding with the Dremel, if you have 2 sections that aren't "level" you can sand it out by using the rotary motion of the tool "upward" against the hard edge of the section that is higher... Probably easier if I include a little illustration...

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/9033/edgesanding.jpg

This isn't likely going to be any big secret to those with experience but by making sure the rotary action of the sanding bit is going against the edge sticking up you can at least smooth out hard edges... It still won't be perfect but at least you won't have an obvious seam to deal with after painting.

Another little quirk I ran into was that the ornate decoration on the bottom of the case; like the edges, didn't line up perfectly. At first I thought I goofed when fastening the pieces together but realized it wasn't me, the metal just wasn't symmetrical... So I had a little touching up to do on that as well...

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/8595/offedges.jpg

Looking over at the sanding bit I used to smooth out the sides I was hoping it might work some magic once again...

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/8130/touchupsanding.jpg

Seems to have worked like a charm, the only problem I ran into was after all the sanding was done and everything was looking pretty smooth and lined up I accidentally put my hand down right smack in the centre of the base plate causing the thin seam of J-B Weld in the middle of the seam line to crack, fixing it wouldn't have been a big deal but after looking at it a bit more I decided I wanted a little more structural strength, unlike the top section which will be getting a mesh screen to help reinforce the areas with the cuts, the bottom is going to be on its own, so after all that sanding and detailing I decided to fill in the whole centre area of the ornate "grooves" with J-B Weld, not really sure how well this is going to work out but I'm hoping that along with some more structural strength having more density on the base might help with noise... *shrug*, we'll see.

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/1628/baseplatewithjb.jpg

Once the J-B is dry I'm hoping I can just block sand it flat without any trouble, I didn't put any "reinforcement" strips on the outside of the plate but I do plan to put some along the grooves on the inside which I also plan to cover up, I could have put a few scrap metal strips in the J-B on the outside too but at this point I'm not sure if this is even going to work like I want it to and it would be far easier to sand out the J-B Weld if it doesn't work than to try and sand out the J-B and try to pry off some metal strips.

Now to rummage through stuff to find something I can rip some metal meshing out of for the top... :twisted:

[RogueOpportunist]

Seems like it was another one of those days where I spent all day working and got nothing done... I swear I dunno how some of you guys get your stuff done so fast.

I started the day with some sanding again, the centre part of the base plate that I filled in with J-B Weld was dry so I wanted to get it sanded to see how level it was, didn't turn out too bad, there's a few areas around the edges that "dip" a bit as you can see by the little un-sanded bits but I'm sure the primer coat will cover that up...

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/606/baseplatefilledcenter.jpg

It still looks a little rough in this shot and I did a bit more sanding afterwards but soon realized there was one spot along the cut seam that was sticking up a bit so I did my best to round it off and then slapped a bit more J-B which I'll sand smooth tomorrow, the only part that kinda sucks is the raised section extends into both the lower and upper ornate deco thingy so making the edge of the deco thingy look "normal" while getting rid of any seams is going to be tricky.

Overall I was very pleased with how filling the space in the middle with J-B worked out, not only did it make it stronger but the piece has much more density to it now, even when using the dremel to sand the sound wasn't as harsh so the "concrete" pool in the centre of my base plate is definitely going to help muffle ambient chassis reverb.

As pleased as I was I decided to go ahead and do the underside, I didn't end up putting in the metal reinforcement strips though as I really didn't feel it was needed, the piece feels plenty strong enough as it is now...

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5627/baseplatefilledundersid.jpg

It looks a little sloppier than it really is as the camera picks up a lot of detail in higher contrast but I basically just took a paint scraper and used it to apply the J-B in the crevice as smoothly as possible so I don't have as much sanding to do.

While I had everything goo'd up I decided to keep going with the J-B and give the top some of that noise dampening goodness so I did up the groove deco thing on the top too plus I did the little space under the lip... that part was a pain to get even remotely close to smooth and sanding it isn't going to be fun, I tried to use the same technique as I did with the paint scraper on the larger sections by using a flat edge exacto blade, it worked O.K. but in hind sight was a big pain in the butt and I probably should have skipped this idea...

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/3059/topundersidejb.jpg

The little lip thing alone cost me about 2 hours of screwing around to get it to look "flat", I probably spent more time on this than I should have considering it's the underside and once assembled likely never to be seen but if it didn't look "right" I wouldn't have to see it to know it was there and it would just bug the hell out of me...

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/8168/topjb.jpg

The top looks like it will end up really smooth, will likely only need to sand it to get rid of the excess "slop" from smearing around the scraper, which suits me fine, the less sanding the better at this point.

Overall today; like yesterday, wasn't the most productive but my god does sanding and "puttying" things take time to do right. I don't know if I'm just some remedial handy man or what but I spent a good 2 hours sanding that one base plate so it was smooth, I was thinking of using my power sander but I have this feeling that if I do something is going to go wrong, either the piece will crack or too much will get sanded or god knows what else, sanding by hand sucks but at least I know it will give me the finish I'm after.

For the last picture of the day here's my little workspace...

http://img573.imageshack.us/img573/1889/workspace.jpg

I used a dollar store shower curtain pinned up against the wall and draped down over the workspace as it has a very strong static clingyness and a lot of the metal shavings/dust from sanding stick to it so cleanup is just a matter of wiping is down with a wet cloth, works pretty well.

Anywhoo that's it for today... Time to go eat. :up:

[billygoat333]

JB Weld rocks. :D

[mofo]

look for industro in your hardware store. Its the name jb weld gives their jumbo sized tubes. Same stuff much cheaper per quantity, like 16$ for 10 oz, which is alot. I may post pics of a secret mod I'm slowly working on that is pretty much identical so far to yours:)

[RogueOpportunist]

Hmmm... Definitely gonna have to look for that cause I've almost gone through my first packgage of red/black, thanks for the tip. I think I paid like 7 or 8$CDN for the little packages at Walmart.

+Rep for saving me money! lol

[RogueOpportunist]

So I slacked off over the holidays and didn't get much of anything done but today I had the chance to spend the entire day in the workshop... and it still seems like I didn't get anything done. I ran into a few problems with the top and bottom pieces before X-mas and noticed that the J-B Weld just wasn't strong enough to do what I was trying to do without reinforcement, I kept getting cracks and a few places broke completely with just minor bumps or a bit too much flexing.

The base seems to be fine but the top has been giving me some serious "issues" and what little I did get done over the holidays was just sanding down the J-B after I tried to fix a spot only to break it somewhere else and have to start over... So I finally got wise and put in a little reinforcement.

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/4486/topwithreinforcement.jpg

I'm getting real tired of messing around with this one piece at this point, I must have spent a good 6 hours in total just re-sanding... Ahh well, what you gonna do, it's a good learning experience.

A few days ago I found an old side panel from another case and figured I could cut a chunk out of it to redo the front segment of the case and give it a solid surface to which I can add fan holes and what-not, first I cut out a piece roughly the size I needed...

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/3849/choppedupsidepanel.jpg

I then cut out the middle of the front segment to get rid of all the "junk" that was of no use to me...

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/5527/cutupfrontpanel.jpg

The basic idea here being that it's going to be a whole lot easier to attach fans and make holes/mounts and things on a flat piece of metal than it would be trying to make use of the front face as it was and filling in all the extra holes later.

I've stuck with my original plan and I'm going to have 2 120mm fans on the front for air-flow, I looked at possibly going up to 140mm and while they would fit the benefit is negligible plus the variety of fans available at 120mm seems to be better.

It should work out perfectly with the 2 120mm fans blowing directly across the motherboard...

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/6712/frontpanelwithfan.jpg

Finally after a few more hours of sanding I got to fastening the sheet I cut from the side panel to the "frame" I made of the front...

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/3218/frontbeingassembled.jpg

I'm probably going overboard by sanding everything right down to the metal and I'm not even sure of there being any real advantage to doing so but I guess once this is all done with I'll be able to look back on the hours and hours... and hours... of hand sanding and filing and feel some added sense of accomplishment... or at least that's what I'm hoping.

Adding it into the worklog like this it seems like such a small amount of progress but I was at it for quite literally the whole day, didn't even stop for lunch, it was like 6-8 hours worth of sanding, filing and cutting... Guess it's going to be awhile before I'm at the level of some of the pro's around here, it's all good fun though, even if I am just a "remedial" modder. :lick:

I guess there's room enough for one more pic, I recently tried to make a Google Sketchup model of my little project so I could move things around and see how it all fits instead of just guessing, I'm still at odds with how I'm going to do the front panel but being able to make "scale" representations of things sure is making it easier to lay things out, should have done this to begin with... anywhoo here's a quick snap of the model...

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/245/casemodsketchup.jpg

I've still got a long ways to go on this and I won't lie, it does get frustrating at times when I step back and look at how slowly this is moving but I try not to let that kind of thing take over and keep telling myself that this is a recreational and educational exercise... Completion is not the goal here, the goal is the work that comes before completion... If I rush, this thing won't be as good as it could have been but if I take my time both it and myself will be better at the end.

[x88x]

I forget, what GPU are you putting in this? I didn't think of it till I saw those fans there with the MBB graphic, but if you a long card it'll hang over the MBB and not fit in there.

BTW, is that the MBB you're using? I had one for a while..until the NB crapped out on me.. :( If you want to watercool the mosfets, let me know; I still have the custom waterblock adapter plate I made for it.

[RogueOpportunist]

That's not the MB I plan on using, was just a graphic I Googled so I could see where in the case everything would be sitting. Motherboard layouts as far as CPU, memory and slot placement all seem pretty standard.

The GPU "was" going to be my old 9800gtx+ but now I'm not so sure, I have to remeasure my card to double check the length but either way the case isn't going to be able to handle the really long cards, the entire case length is only 10.5" with 1" being used for the fan (if I mount them internally) meaning a max card length of roughly 9.5" (which if I remember correctly is what my 9800gtx+ is).

EDIT: Just flipped through the earlier updates hoping I had written down the 9800GTX+'s length and it is apparently 10" so I might have to mount the fans on the other side of the front... or maybe look into mounting them half way into the panel... Hmmm... Guess I'll have to tinker around with that one.

When measuring this all out my intent was to make things as tight as possible while retaining good airflow and enough space for a standard ATX PSU of any length, so far I'm right on target but everything was measured exact so if any of my cuts are "off" a little it's going to cause a problem which I won't really be able to see until everything is back together.

Water cooling is out of the question for me, huge waste of money IMO, with the way technology scales over-time and the price tag associated with custom water rigs not to mention the minimal overclock headroom you get it just doesn't make much sense to me, right now my main Core 2 system is running rock solid stable at 4.2 on air and my GTX 460 at 900mhz, I could push both higher but where they are sitting now keeps my temps low and gives me a performance I'm happy with.

[x88x]

Also keep in mind the IO-plate offset. That cuts about 0.5" off the usable length of the case. Fortunately (IIRC) the 9800GTX+ has its power connectors on the top instead of the back. That would have knocked quite a bit more usable length off.

[RogueOpportunist]

Well, I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off cutting myself down to 1 front intake fan to blow air across the motherboard and then instead of having a lower front intake to blow air at the GPU I instead have 1 or even 2 bottom intakes blowing air up at the GPU... Something like this...

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/5710/1frontfan.jpg

[RogueOpportunist]

My only concern with this is that I'm basically blowing heat from the GPU straight up towards the CPU, which is why I didn't want to do it this way originally... Whoops, hit quote instead of edit.

Hmmm, I guess I could also consider getting rid of the front intake entirely and going for a bottom to top airflow.

[RogueOpportunist]

Seems like I've lucked out, my 9800 GTX+ is actually 9.5 inches, not 10... On top of that the IO plate offset isn't an issue at all, the little "tab" on the IO plate sticks out the back of the case so the back of the IO plate sits flush with the back of the case.

I was almost worried there for a minute but it seems like I measured everything perfectly when I was working out the cuts so I should have no problem mounting that second 120mm fan in the front for the video card. :banana:

[RogueOpportunist]

So I ran into a little issue today, yesterday afternoon I started playing around with ways to smooth out the front panel of the case, instead of using J-B Weld as a "body filler" like I did for the top and bottom panels I opted to try another product I've never used before, Bondo Fiberglass Resin Jelly... Never having used this stuff before I didn't really know what to expect.

I'll spare you the details but apparently someone "stole" all of the hardener tubes from underneath the little plastic lids in the store because I checked a few of them because I wasn't sure what the plastic lid was for as there was no harder or anything underneath any of them, despite the package saying 1oz white cream hardener.

Not paying much attention I just assumed this stuff was pre-mixed and the harder was already added, in hind sight that was a pretty dumb assumption as if it was I would have a solid rock of resin inside a tin can but like I said, never used this stuff before... Anywhoo, I ended up looking at it today and it was still just sticky putty, figuring out where I went wrong I'm now left with a mess to clean up... Kinda sucks. :facepalm: