Project : Far Cry

[Zero_Limits]

Finally time for another update. Haven’t done much on this lately… no excuse this time, I have just been lazy. Plus the garage is a bit cooler these days, stupid winter!!!

I did this little bit the other night but it was so small I couldn’t b bothered doing an update for it.

I started to mark out the mounting holes for the mother board. Then I thought there must be an easier way. So I went to www.formfactors.org downloaded the ATX spec guide type thing. Opened up the page with the motherboard layout on it in photoshop. Then copied the pic to a new document that was the size of a mother board and stretched it till it fitted nicely. All I had to do after that was put the pic in place on the mother board tray and drill. Much easier then trying to measure and mark everything out.

I didn’t take anymore pics of this as you couldn’t see much detail so there was no point. I did take the motherboard out of my computer to test fit it and it fitted perfectly. Unfortunately I forgot to take pics of that.


The night before last I just marked out some holes I needed to cut for the fans radiator and psu. Again no pics of that because they would be very boring :p


Last night was a little more productive. Time goes fast when you’re in the garage with no watch on and your mum falls asleep in her chair watching TV so isn’t around to yell at you to pack up… I got in from the garage at 2am :p Didn’t really feel like updating then.

Here is what I got done…

First I cut out the bits that I had marked out the previous night.

Didn’t cut out the 80mm fan holes on the right as I’m not sure if I will use them yet.

After that I started work on the hard drive rack.

Earlier in the day I had drawn up some rough plans on auto cad. So I stuck the template to the 20x2mm aluminum sheet that I got my brother to cut out earlier in the day at his work. Unfortunately they were 25x2mm and cut roughly on the band saw so I had to do a little trimming and smoothing. Still cant complain to much as it didn’t cost me anything.

After that I went through with a screw and hammer and went through and punched little holes in the centers to make it easier to get the drill in the right place. It seemed pointless to take a pic of that so I went ahead and drilled the holes.

I used my high tech bending device, also known as a vice and a off cut of angle to make a couple of bends.

Skipped a few steps here as they are all basically the same. I also used a countersink bit I had to neaten up the holes and take the burs off. Oh and I did it all again to make a second one.

Next I need some angle to join the two.

Used the same method as before for drilling the holes. This time you can actually see that I have cleaned up the holes before I took the pic.

Bolt it all together and you get.

Wooooo the hard drive fits!

I realized after that I had a couple more holes to drill that were covered by the angle at the bottom. Once I drill those It will fit 5 hard drives with 20mm spacing between. All the holes are there for better airflow as the rack will be mounted side on to the fans… plus they look kind of cool :p All that’s left to do on this is drill those holes, polish it (my dremel type tool is broken at the moment so I cant do that yet) and mount it. All that and you wont even see it once the case is done.

Going back out to the garage in a few minutes to do more. Hopefully be in before 2am this time :p

[tybrenis]

Snazzy! Thats really starting to look great, love the HD cages!

[xmastree]

I started to mark out the mounting holes for the mother board. Then I thought there must be an easier way. So I went to www.formfactors.org downloaded the ATX spec guide type thing.

Now that's a useful link.

In contrast, I used an old motherboard and drilled through the holes.

water should come up into the top lake type area and then run down the sides and front and into the bottom at the front of the case.

So, will that be the water cooling also?

[Zero_Limits]

Thanks Guys!

Glad you like the HD Cage, it took about 4 hours to make. Part of that was trying to find some batteries for the stupid digital camera though :p All worth it though

Yep that site has been very helpful. I used it for the power supply mounting as well. Also found Hard drive dimensions etc on the Seagate site. Very helpful as it meant I could accurately draw things on CAD up before cutting anything.

Originally it was going to be the water cooling as well. After much thought I decided to make it a separate loop. That way I didn’t have to make a filter to make sure no foreign objects got into the pump or other gear. Also with all the gear that will be cooled by the water isn’t cheap so I want the cooling loop to be 100% reliable. Only down side to this idea was I needed to spend more money on another pump

Another update with tonights work in the next hour or so

[Zero_Limits]

Wow!!! Work on the case to nights in a row. Hopefully a sign of things to come for me!

Small progress but lots of work tonight.

First of all here is a pic I forgot to include in my last update of the back plate I made out of 0.8mm plastruct the other day while bored at work.

Now on to tonight’s work.

I changed a bit on the hard drive rack so that I could mount it easily. Didn’t take a whole lot of pics as I went but its not hard to see the difference.

That means these go in the bin :p

This is part of the mount. The tab on the left in the pic of the hard drive rack slots into here.

Then a simple thumb screw like so and the rack is mounted. With only 1 screw to undo it takes way under a minute to get the rack in and out. Very handy for adding hard drives at LAN’s :p

Here are a couple of pics of the rack mounted in the case. You can also see where I made some cutouts in the internal panel for the hard drives and powersupply.

That’s all for tonight.

I hope to have most of the internal stuff mounted with just finishing work like painting to do by the end of the weekend. Hopefully this isn’t an unrealistic goal. If I manage that ill have about 45ish days to get the rest of the outside done.

More soon

[Rankenphile]

Wow, nice work, man. Very nice job on the HDD rack.

[Zero_Limits]

Thanks man

look out for an update in a little bit. Pics are ready just have to write Hard work keeping this up to date :p

[Shikimaru]

nice structuaal work, looks strong

[Zero_Limits]

Ok first off I will show my wonderful paint drawing of loop for the water feature and explain a little.

The light blue lines obviously represent the water.

The curved line under the top is roughly the shape of the pond type thing at the top.

The green line goes from the lowest point at top to the front of the case to allow water to drain from the upper area.

The red lines represent the tubing. As you can see there is a tap there so I can adjust the flow to the top area. This will most likely be set and left in one position. So that it doesn’t restrict the flow to much and put pressure on the connections there is a T joint before it where the excess water can go back to the res at the bottom. There is also a on off valve there. This is so I can turn off the flow to the top. Then the water will be just pumped back to the res and the water from top will drain to the bottom. This leaves all the water in the bottom res for transporting the case. The flow splitter will allow me to take many much smaller tubes to different areas of the top section so its not just one mass of water coming up in one area. They will be spread around the little island and hopefully look as if the water was heading towards the island like the waves in the game. It wont give the exact effect like the game but it will be a lot better then a single large lot of water coming up.

Now on to the actual work I got done last night. I was going to post this last night but I fell asleep before I got a chance to.

As you can see I got the power supply and radiator mounted.

This is a shot from the other side. The wires are hidden quiet nicely I think. (sorry for the bad pic)

Shot from the bottom showing the radiator

Once from the back of the PSU.

Then I cut some holes in the mother board tray to allow power wires etc to come up through. I had marked their positions earlier when I had the mother board in for test fitting. (again sorry for the bad pic)

Last but not least more water cooling gear Thanks to Razorfoot for the pump and Sapper Wang for the NV-68 (from game planet forums in NZ). I have been lucky to get all the gear at a good price second hand so far. Only thing left to buy is some Tygon.

All for now. About to get something to eat then head out to the garage to do some more.

[The boy 4rm oz]

lookn good mate. cant wate.