Project: EVGA Classified SR-2 Case

I've been commissioned to build a very large wooden case to house his upcoming watercooled EVGA Classified SR-2 rig. This case is designed and built to run cool, quiet and be ultra-flexible for future upgrades.

Note how the side panels are constructed as air ducts for supplying cool fresh air to the front and sides of the case:

The walls will be constructed of 1.5-inch solid oak face frames with 5.2mm oak veneer plywood "panels" bolted to the inside of the frames and with aluminum "adapters" bolted to the front of the panels. The openings in the panels are sized to the largest pieces of hardware envisioned to be mounted in a particular location. The adapters could be exchanged with different adapters depending on what particular hardware is to be mounted in a panel opening.

Here are the specifications and some of the features of this case.

Physical Characteristics:

• External dimensions (HxWxD - inches): 44 x 26.5 x 35.5

Materials:

• 3/4-inch solid red oak, 3/4-inch and 5.2mm oak veneer plywood.
• .100-inch aluminum sheet and 1/8-inch aluminum angle, channel and rectangular tube.
• 1/8-inch clear acrylic.

Features:

• The side doors act as air ducts to supply fresh air from the bottom, top and back of the case to the front/sides.
• Unique modular panel construction provides flexibility for the placement of drive bays, fans, power supplies, etc.
• Mounting locations for two power supplies.
• Air flow is: fresh air enters from the side/front and exhausts out the back.
• The bottom case has two custom radiator holders for mounting up to four 140x4 radiators.
• The case is actually two separate cases bolted together.
• Removable ten slot motherboard tray.
• Motherboard tray can be mounted in a horizontal or vertical position.
• Powder coated aluminum.
• Wood finished with black water-based stain and polyurethane.

The bracket to hold the two Black Ice GTX 560 radiators is a simple affair, consisting of some aluminum 1x2-inch square tubing and channel.

All of the pieces are held together with two long 1/4-inch threaded rods which act as clamps to hold everything together. The ~4mm tall acrylic bumpers get compressed down to ~2mm to keep the radiators in place:

All of the aluminum bits will eventually be powder coated gloss black.

Some serious real life events have kept me out of the shop most of the week. However, I did manage to create a couple of patterns which I'll use to router out the holes for the 5.25-inch drive bays:

And I built a jig to guide my plunge router to router out the 3/16-inch slots in the 5.25-inch drive bay rails.

A full size drawing is taped to the .10-inch thick aluminum to guide the placement of the jig.

Two sets of stops are used to accurately position the router at the beginning and ending of each slot.

lookin good! this should be neat :D

I missed this when you started; looks sweet! I gotta admit, when I saw 'EVGA Classified SR-2' and 'cool, quiet', my first thought was, "well, it better have an awesome watercooling system in there, or that's just not gonna happen. :P Those dual 560's look like they should be up the task. ;)

OOOOOOOOO! Nice I like wood cases. I'll be watching this for sure.

The case can hold four 140x4 radiators, but he's only installing three.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spotswood

The case can hold four 140x4 radiators, but he's only installing three.

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pff! Stupid clients. :P

Fabrication of the 5.25-inch drive bay rails continues. After breaking all 3 of my 3/16-inch woodworking router bits I ordered some standard end mills and they have performed awesomely. Because they are run without any lubrication I needed to keep the feed rate really slow.

After many hours I managed to complete 28 out of the total 35 rails for this case.

looking good so far! +rep

Great work on the drive rails. That jig worked out perfectly!

Tired of routing all of the 5.25-inch drive rails, I switched to fabricating the PSU(s) mounting plate:

I made a router pattern for 5.25-inch drive cage.

And routered out the .10-inch thick aluminum.

The round corners were filed square.

Another pattern was made for the two PSU mounting holes:

Here's the plate (it still needs to be trimmed to its final width):

Next up were the two internal mounting plates for triple 140mm case fans.

Another aluminum part requires another router template/jig. A 140mm fan was sacrificed for use as a router template:

3/4-inch aluminum flat bar was epoxied to the fan frame to keep it nice and square.

The fan housing was used as a guide to route out yet another full size jig. The jig was placed over a double layer of .10-inch aluminum sheet and routed out with a 1/2-inch flush/pattern router bit.

The finished cuts require zero cleanup (filing/sanding).

Next up are the bottom mounting plates.

Which requires fab'ing yet another router jig.

G]

The finished result:

Lastly here's a grainy video of me routing one of the 140mm holes:

Now that I know how wide the widest plate is, the PSU mounting plate was cut to width and mounting holes were drilled.

I'm really proud of how well this turned out.

Another plate requires yet another router jig.

Both plates were routed out of one big sheet because the big sheet is easier to clamp to the workbench.

A test fit:

Looks good. Those sections are coming together great!

truly nice work with the router. :)

Filed, sanded, scratched and test assembled the 5.25-inch drive rails to the PSUs mounting plate.

Next up are the 5.25-inch drive rails for the four bottom mounting plates.

These (unfortunately) required a ridiculous amount of time to complete.

The fan covers are the last of the aluminum parts (yippee!):

I used a 1/2-inch router bit and an old router template to cut the wiring and tubing slots.

Now I just need to (re-)prep everything for powder coating and send them all off to the painter's.

For a wood worker you do some very nice metal fabrication. ;) I really like how this is looking.

Its time to start making some sawdust!

Ripped and thickness planed some 1x8-inch red oak into 1.5-inch wide boards to be used as the lower case face frames.

Pre-stained the wood and drilled the pocket holes.

The bottom of the case was also drilled for pocket screws.

Face frames were assembled with some glue and screws.

A homemade depth gauge was fashioned from some rubber stoppers/bumpers.

The depth gauge was used to drill holes for #8 threaded inserts on the inside of the face frames. A hex driver made the task of screwing the inserts into the wood easy.

The lower case face frames and bottom all assembled.

Nicely done. The black paint makes me bit sad though. I think it's always a shame to cover up the beautiful grains of wood. But, ah well, it's the client's call, I suppose.

The top case was built the same way as the bottom.

Powder coating came back this week.

pretty. I approve

Nice finish.

Worked on the plywood panels that attach to the frames onto which the aluminum mounting plates are attached.

#8 threaded inserts were installed by "pulling" them into the plywood (from the back) by simply screwing in a #8 bolt.

The plywood panels are bolted to the inside of the case frame with six stainless steel socket cap screws via threaded inserts.

And the aluminum mounting plates are then bolted to the plywood panels (also with stainless steel socket cap screws) via threaded inserts.

All of this modularity allows for easily switching to different mounting plates and/or panels in the future.

Nice wood/metal interface there.

The back panel of the top case required three router jigs for the PSU mounting plate, 10-slot motherboard tray and 92mm fan holes.

Rear panel can be rotated for a vertical motherboard mounting orientation.

Another vertical member was added to the opening in the front of the case and the front panel was fabricated just like all the others.

That is gorgeous. :up:

The top divider was next.

Great work as always. Keep it up. :D

Cutouts for accessing and viewing the inside of the top case were routed out of the side panels. I was able to re-use two router template jigs for the cutouts, although one had to be mod'd to reduce the width of the cutout.

Threaded inserts were installed in order to attach removable plywood covers over the cutouts.

My next task is to build a shelf to fix that droopy motherboard tray.

I've been sick all week, but a few days ago I did manage to bang-out a simple support for the motherboard tray.

Ugh, now I need a nap...

Great to hear your well and back at it, coming along awesomely too!

I managed to spend a few hours in the shop this morning working on fastening the top divider to the case itself. But just like everything else on this case, nothing is fastened permanently, which meant I needed to install some more threaded inserts.

The divider is attached to the side panel's solid oak rails:

Even the most mundane aspects of a build often require many small steps in order for them to come out just right. For example, in this build the fastening of the side panel covers required having to accurately transfer the locations of several threaded inserts to the covers, which was accomplished by first screwing in some button head screws into the threaded inserts.

Followed by taping a cover perfectly centered over the cutout. And then using a deep throat clamp, transfer an impression of the button head screw into the backside of the cover.

Lastly, with all of the fastening and unfastening of bolts into and out of the threaded inserts, some of them started to become loose. After testing many types of glues, the best method for fixing the loose threaded inserts was to flood the area with Cyanoacrylate glue. Blue painters tape with punched-out holes was used to prevent getting glue everywhere.

wood is not my taste, i take Thermaltake Level10 case for the SR2 mobo.

but the build, how you make it is nice done.

Completed the upper case's bottom.

All holes are 140mm and the covers allow tubing to pass to/from the lower case.