Project Stealthlow

[Waynio]

Stealth merged with flow = Stealthlow = Project Stealthlow
Because it's going to be quiet & powerful with a great air flow layout.

Finally got the magic ingredients .

Funds
I sold a pile of my things to fund much of this project, so new system components for the finished project too , won't be for a while so I need to get saving, had a couple of extra things to sell thanks to everyone involved at bit-tech & Dennis publishing for the magazine spread on Project Air Cube, highly appreciated, those parts helped me buy a 12 inch disc sander which will get a lot of usage in my modding & covered the cost of the fans for this project & a little extra towards the components which I'll buy later :thumb:, I went crazy & bought a GTX 580 though but I can enjoy that in between working on this & logging, awesome card btw runs metro 2033 @ 1080p dx11 max settings smoothly & runs GTA IV excellent with awesome settings, 2 very demanding games out of the ones I have.

These are the fans I'll be using, the 80mm & 140mm are for replacements on my enermax galaxy 1kw & the 120mm ones are for the case.

Sleeving, this is a first attempt at doing a quality sleeving job, wanted to buy a psu & sleeving but couldn't afford both after splashing out on the GTX 580 so was split between buying a Corsair 850w 100% modular psu & MDPC sleeving from Nils, I opted for the sleeving all black because I'm a beginer in this area of modding so wasn't sure how much I'd need so this first attempt should let me know what's needed for future cases. I'll be replacing the fans & sleeving my aging but trusty enermax galaxy 1kw psu & possibly give it a paint job too.

Layout
HDD air tunnel push/pull/pull out the back.
PSU fan facing down with vents that catch the excess air from the HDD fans.
A bombardment of low flowing air coming from the front & bottom of the motherboard.
Colour undecided until I figure out what hardware is going in, waiting to see next gen CPU's up next from Intel but I'm keen to see what the new AMD cpu will be too.

Updates
Had the materials sat in my room for about 2 weeks now but been busy tweaking the design & making a solid game plan for the project so I know exactly what I'm doing when I go to the garage, every other time I've done a case I spent heaps of time in the garage just pondering on what to do, not this time, being far more organised about it & will keep the work area clean after every session .

Idea
It all started with me wanting to remake my first scratch build which was based on the Lian-Li x2000 & was awfully planned & shoddily done as I was learning metal work & construction from scratch so was a thoroughly half arsed effort & was put together very fast but I definitely learnt a good bit from it so this remake has evolved massively imo I started doodling silly concepts & quickly came to the conclusion unconventional pc case shapes often equal wasted space or cramped space compared to a square type form like most cases although some people are doing a fine job of proving otherwise :thumb:, so I ended up making a curved front/top while keeping all the rest square, so this is my first go at a slightly unconventional shape to break out of the square box mode & to keep it so I learn something new on each case .

These were the first models that were presentable :hehe:.

Size & planning
The final design is definitely a tall case, 77.6mm taller than the Lian-Li PC-X2000F but it will be good for maintenance & cable management & have an excellent fan layout.

During each update I'll paint the aluminium pieces as being cut-out in grey & once the particular pieces have been completed I'll paint it blue like this, keeps it really well organised like a check list but more in depth & easier to know what stage I'm at on the project.

Also every piece has got to be done 100% perfectly accurate to my sketchup model for all this to work so no 2nd tries on this project, gulp , ordered just enough materials, bad idea maybe, extra challenge definitely. But have planned heavily on the stages of the case so it should be pretty straight forward other than the acrylic curve, I haven't even done a simple acrylic bend before so if I'm careful & lucky I'll manage it, got a heat gun & a range of hard tubes so if I clamp them down good in key spots I should manage it ok I think, if not plan b to the rescue .

Almost every single bit will be DIY like my others, I've looked into anodising & no I'm not DIY'ing that, way to hazardous for my liking especially for big panels . It's possible I'll paint or powder coat but I would like to get it all anodised ideally.

So since my last post on the concept I added structure supports, case feet, grills, mobo mounting holes, expansion card mounting holes, the slot piece for holding the HDD's in place & added simple vents for it to get the ambient air & also worked out a plan b in advance for if I fail or don't like the middle curved acrylic piece.

Had to scrap the full length acrylic piece as I was out by 11mm once I figured out how to accurately measure the curve, the bottom area will be easier to do, stronger frame, better looking & more functional like this.

Anyway, I've officially started , a tiny bit but still it's on.

First cuts & they went very nicely, I left about 1mm for error which I'll need to file & sand down to the exact spec, I really put the reciprocating air saw to the challenge by starting on the thickest sheet of 4mm, it took a while & was pretty deafening but got the base level & a few of the bits for the HDD cage mounts done, would have done much more but didn't get any sleep last night so went to make a coffee for a quick break & while I was doing that it hit me how totally shattered I am so need a rest else I'd probably mess up if I continued .

Looking forward to a fresh day after a good sleep to get stuck in on the other panels , just cutting out what is needed to do the bottom level & the hdd slot stand & cages & fan mounts to start with, then I can focus on the tricky part above.

Sorry about the huge splurge of text, hopefully I won't need to type too much on the updates & you can all just check the progress out with very brief details of how or what or why I done things like I do.

06-feb-2011 got sponsored for feet from Bill Owen .

[Waynio]

Wow Converted the 1000x1000x3mm & 500x250x3mm sheet to the sizes I need them at so they are ready for the detail adding to them , don't know how long it took to mark up correctly but it took much longer than cutting it all & I'm glad I bought a good few sharpies, with the cold it was making them useless pretty fast, should be able to do all the rest of the marking indoors with the sheets being smaller, this is what's left of the sheets.

Before the cut-up.

Started cutting (point of no return ).

Here's the pieces ready for details.

And to think I was never going to use this tool, it seriously kicks booty .

And here's the status of what's done & needs to be done, grey indicates cut to size & bits that are done will eventually be painted blue, seems a good way to tell what percentage it's complete .

[Waynio]

Got all the marking up done yesterday .

Another bit I was slightly worried about was cutting the acrylic, worried if the saw cracks it so tested it out on a small

corner first & it did the job fine at a lower pressure .

Cut the pci/IO pieces & the hdd fan holders to size.

I coloured the cut to size bits for the acrylic white on the checklist.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully put the disc sander to use & get the aluminium & acrylic slimmed down to the precise sizes needed, then they will be ready for marking up again for details .

[Waynio]

yea it is. have fun with that one

So glad I bought a disc sander .

Woooo, package from Nils Germany & with his funky personalised drawings on, awesome , can't say I know another shop that does anything like this .

Anyway molex pin removal tool, crimping tool & nice stack of fan/atx pins which came with the crimp tool, 9 sata power through, 6 sata power ends, 150 pre-cut heat shrink, sata heat shrink, 2 lots of each sized cable management clips, 40 metres of small sleeving, 10 metres of sata sleeving & an example of a good crimp.

Just gutted I didn't order a 1 metre sample of all the other colours, something I really should have done D'oh, he did put a sample of grey & red though .

All of this won't be used for quite a while yet but it's here & ready for when I get to the sleeving stage of the mod which will be near the end of the mod.

Here is the disc sander , super awesome tool.

Here is the mess it created after slimming down all the acrylic & aluminium pieces to the precise size .

And here is the aluminium & acrylic to perfect size ready for adding details but still need to polish the edges of the acrylic .

Also ran the unigine heaven benchmark 2.1 with the GTX 580 & wow it really out performed the 5870's in crossfire which I just switched from, I knew it would be good though after trying out metro 2033 with it being able to run maxed with dx11 & physx & was very playable, the 580 is not as long as the 5870 also, really amazing GPU honestly if the 480 was this good at launch I wouldn't have bothered with the 5870, not seen temps go higher than 70c & it runs quieter too, brilliant GPU & I'm enjoying Two Worlds 2 at the moment in-between the project & logging, the game looks & plays amazing .
Here are the Heaven results, ran it default 1080p no tessellation, default, default extreme tessellation, default extreme tessellation + 8AA & it performs awesome & all this was run on a p45 motherboard with q9650 @ 4ghz & 8gb ddr2 @900mhz so with even better system specs should perform even better.

Up next, polish the edges of the acrylic arrrrrrgh lol.

[Waynio]

You could always make steel toe covers for those trainers...we are modders, after all.

LOL .

Here's pictures of the edges after cutting & using the disc sander.

Couple of action shots while I was doing the 240 grit, I found switching between these 2 grip styles kept my hands functional for longer.

And the mess & result from many hours on 240 grit.

Then did 600 grit, then 1200, could go & do the 2000 & polish but feel there is no need, now all thats left to do with these pieces is when I get the new drill press cut fan holes in all the big pieces, sand inside the hole & start sticking them all together with the clear acrylic adhesive, then that's all the hdd fan holders made, I'm going with light, dark, light, dark, light

Holy sheet an entire day of wet sanding 6:30am to 6pm so I think I'll have no problem getting to sleep tonight, feel like I've been doing the twist dance all day lol .

[Waynio]

Good job man, that's a ton of work! But you will really notice the difference in the end, so it was worth while.

Thanks Brian & yeah it sure was but it's worth it .

I put the tensol 12 acrylic adhesive I bought to work, holy crap, nasty toxic fumes come from it, I was on the edge of not using it because it's so bad but made sure the front garage door & the other door was wide open & wrapped a thick towel around my face & got on with sticking the little pieces together, I used an art brush to apply it, my heart was beating way faster than normal & felt a little shaky (might have been because of the cold though), awful adhesive, I should have a quality respirator but they cost too much for one that offers genuine protection.

And here they are stuck together.

They are a bit wonky so I'll need to sand them all down to be level with each other, yay more sanding, also mucked up by filing down all the middle pieces instead of just the 3 for the fan wires , but luckily they won't be seen thanks to the flat bar which covers the bottom area phew .

Just made a nasty discovery.
The 5mm sheets of acrylic are more like 4.9mm so all the fan holders are out by 0.5mm which is bad as the fan holders don't connect to each other now, so my only option is to sand down the bottom 3 fans by 0.5mm how s*** is that, so yeah this means anything I'm making with the 5mm sheet is not going to be correct thanks to the bad materials, the hdd fan holders is bad enough but I was going to make my own pci/io piece too, but might just about get away with 0.2mm error from the material, but holy sheet this isn't good , I can only guess they measure the materials with the protective backing .

Here is the new drill press with my hole cutter attached, I find it to be better & cleaner cutting than a hole saw .

[Waynio]

I've never come across a piece of acrylic that actually was the size it's supposed to be. .25" sheets are more like .22" in reality, and yet they are sold as 1/4" lol.

Suppose 0.1mm out is very very good then .

Update .

Razzed through doing the fan holes & sanded the fans down just enough so they fit in the holders, the fan holders still require a bit more work & then sticking them together, then the fans can slide in & out.

[Waynio]

Update

A day just doesn't feel complete to me without making some progress & an update while creating something lol.

Decided to change the hdd cages a little for more air flow & this will make it less work too .

Cut out & marked the extra hdd cage piece I messed up the other day from the new sheet of 3mm aluminium, so I have some spare if anything else goes wrong on the smaller parts, still only have 1 shot at the mobo tray & side panels though so I'll have to be extremely careful doing those .

Woke up too late in the day to be using noisy tools but had a very long 14 hours sleep so I'll be up all night & all tomorrow so I'll try to get the hdd cages, hdd stand & fan holders completed tomorrow but can do some drilling as that's not noisy.

So here is the hdd cage pieces ready for drilling.

And drilled, still need to use this nice stepless cone drill bit so I can get a nicely rounded ends & so I can use the reciprocating saw on it, then file & sand.

And a quick test of the hdd mount holes, had to let them acclimatize to the warmer room, condensation aplenty .

Also with my brain not freezing up in the garage & being well rested I've had a chance to figure out how I'll make the multi layer curved front/top pieces & in theory it works excellent & is pretty simple to be honest so that's 1 less thing to be concerned about , I think the bulk of the hard work will be making the side panels.

[Waynio]

looking very good. cant wait to see more

Thanks mate .

The supercharge from the long sleep wore off by the time I was able to get busy today but still got a bit more done today, took just over 3 hours to do these.

And thought why not do a step by step picture update for a change.

Piece ready for drilling with big enough drill bit to let the saw inside.

Start & end points in.

Clamp & cut.

The finished cut with selection of files.

After the coarse file.

After medium file.

After round file.

After rough sanding unwanted marks off.

Another test fit.

Not sure if the reciprocating saw needs a new blade or because it was a hard piece to clamp properly but the cuts took ages & left a nasty mark on the pieces so I used the disc sander to level it all off so they just need wet sanding now.

[Waynio]

Sheesh, very insignificant update here considering the time spent on it today .

Took all day to sand the hdd cage bits.
I have learnt not to use the reciprocating saw without good masking tape on to protect the surface & never to use the disc sander on surfaces, edges are fine but definitely not surfaces, creates way too much work & as you can see on the piece at the top it left quite a big scrape, I did wet sand them but when I cleaned all the crap off the water must have had a bad reaction with the aluminium & left blotchy stains so I dry sanded them with 240 grit.

I'm not happy with these to call them finished so I'll have to put another day into these pieces, all the inside edges are good though so at least I did something good on it today lol .