Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Cubeleon

WOW just checked out this MOD, great work i mus say. Looks great will be checking back on this one

 

Update 8

There we go again This update will mainly be about mounting my new power supply. I have quite a bunch of pics, so let's get started At the moment I knew what power supply I was going to buy, I made a cardboard mockup:



The power supply will be mounted in the left side of the case, that is the section in the front on this pic:





Like every ATX psu, the 230V and the on/off switch are on the back. I want that to be in the back, not to the inner aluminium wall. Most of the walls are double walls and I don't want that here. So I take the piece of aluminium that was fitted there:



And I cut that piece into three pieces. Obviously, I won't use the piece on the left:



Mouted the first part:



And the second one also:



I decided to make two pieces, instead of just leaving it in one piece, because it makes it a lot easier to mount my hard drives. My original plan seemed nice, but it wouldn't work, because mounting the hard drives would be impossible. Now I can just bolt the drives to their plexi brackets, and slide it in the case. This is the hard drive compartment:



The power supply will be on the other side of the case. I already mounted the devider plate a while ago, but the brackets I made then are a pita to mount So I made new ones:



The power supply compartment now looks like this:



And this is how the PSU will fit in I am now able to mount it flush to the back side of the case.



A few days later, I recieved a package, containing a Corsair HX620W PSU I bought it at the review sampe sale at www.Bouweenpc.nl, a dutch site about hardware and casemodding.

This side is looking pretty normal:



And this side looks pretty pretty, it's a modular PSU Three cables are already mounted though, the 24 pin ATX power cable and the 4 pin and 8 pin mobo cable.



With the psu came a lot of cables. Two pci-e cables and seven cables with molexes and sata connectors, of which five can be used simultaniously. That will be more than enough for me, I think I will only use three or four. The finish of the cables is excellent, in my opinion. All of the wires are black, and stuck together to give it an even cleaner look. I love this thing



This is how it will be mounted:





In my plan, I wanted to mount the psu like it was hovering above the ground, but that wasn't possible. So I had to remake the left bracket:



Because the 120mm fan is at the underside of the psu, I will have to cut a big hole:





And when I saw this picture....



... it instantly reminded me of this



Dharma Initiative from Lost

Anyway, it was time to open this thing up. The warranty was voided already, as the reviewer opened it up to have a look inside. If he hadn't, I would have broken that damn "warranty void if broken" seal The first thing I did was soldering a connector in the power line of the fan, to take it apart easier:



After that, I drilled some holes in the case, and marked these on the power supply:



Drilled and tapped, nicely next to the fan:



And it's really just those two bolts





Time to cut out a nice piece on the back of the case. Before that, I removed that big red sticker from the psu.



Marking the back plate:



Cut and filed:



I just thought this didn't look right, it had some round corners and some straight corners, and the thingie next to the switch looks out of place to. So I modified it just a little more, so it would fit my needs



I was already working on the bottom of the case to mount the psu, so I thought it was time to mount the second fan to cool down the hard drives. This one will push fresh air in at the bottom of the case, a second one will suck out the warm air and blow it out. This one will be the intake:



To make sure it blows the air into the hard disk compartment, I made two brackets:





Mounted, it looks like this. A little weird, but it works



I wanted to mount the fan this way so that it isn't necessary to mount the bottom to mount the fan. I want to mount and fit everything in the case, and mount all of the panels last.

The last thing I did was dremeling a big hole in one of the frame tubes. I can fit the cable of the man through, and some more cables in the future





This is the end of my update, I will post another one shortly I'm working on two projects, as you may have noticed, so keep an eye on those two topics

 

Nice work

How are you going to let the PSU breathe though? Are you going to cut a hole in the aluminum tube or put the case on feet?

Looking forward to the next update

 

Well it will be on feet, and I've already cut out a hole in the bottom so the power supply will be able to breath

 

very,very and very nice !!!!!! the side panels looks realy good.
are you going to paint it or will it just be brushed aluminium (sry if you already said it) ?

 

that is an ingenious idea for the hdd cooler

 

Thanks a lot I will sand the side panels with (I think) 280 grit sandpaper. Just decided that a few days ago, so you couldn't have known

Tnx, it's almost stealth cooling

 

Ok that sounds good, and what hardware are you going to use ?

 

The original list of hardware that I planned to use when I started this mod (more than 2 years ago) was:

Amd socket 939 mobo, Atx or E-atx
Skt 939 processor
2x 512mb memory
GPU unknown
At least 4 Sata hard drives, maybe more
Slot-in dvd or dvd/rw

As you can see, that list is a little dated I will buy new parts for this PC within a month or so, and right now it looks like this:

Core 2 Duo E4600
No motherboard selected yet
2x 1gb of memory, because I will use a 32-bits OS
ATI HD3850 GPU because of the lower power usage, will not be used for games, just 3D CAD
Between 2 and 4 sata hard drives
Laptop dvdrw
Corsairs HX620W psu

That looks more like it

 

Posted twice

 

Wow i'm very interested in this mod 2 kudos

 

Looks great! *Subscribed*

 

Coming along nicely!

 

Update 9

Update time Haven't been thinking a lot about casemodding for the past few weeks, cause I was really busy at school. But I managed to get the material for an update together All of these pics are on my own website now. My internet host only gives me 50mb, and I had almost reached that. Now I have 3gb of space and 60 gb traffic, that should be sufficient

Last time I mounted the power supply, and it made the bottom of the case look like this:



Because I don't want a lot of dust in my psu, I bought some oven hood filters:



Cut out the piece I need:



And here it's mounted. The same way as I mount everything, with M4 hex bolts



To make sure the psu only draws fresh air from the bottom of the case, I made a 1mm alu barrier.



And quickly cut a hole in the bottom. It's not as nicely as most of the other parts, but who cares if you'll never see it





I will also filter the air to the hdd's, so I started drawing:



I'll use two standard fan grills to mount the dust filter. A little off center for easier mounting:



Cut and drilled:



This is how it works:



Mounted, a view from the inside of the case:



From the outside:



You can't really see it, but I used countersunk bolts to make em stick out less.

All of this wasn't really spectacular, it just needed to be done Now it's time for the fun part, the psu shield. On the side of the psu, there's a big red sticker saying Corsair HX620W, but I don't want that to be visible. I will cut an alu sheet, and bend it to a 90 degree bend. If you paid attention, you will see that it has about the same design as the pump cover Designed and printed it, and stuck it on the alu:



Started cutting the slots. I will not cut the slot on the left, because it will hardly be visible. I prefer no slot instead of a barely visible one, making it look like the design hasn't been thought through carefully.



Drilling a bunch of holes for the psu connectors:



Cut out using the jigsaw:



Filed



A quick test to make sure all of the holes are the same size, and they were





You can attach a sh*tload of cables to this psu, but I will only use 3 or 4

The left side of the piece of alu already looked like the pump, but I will bring in another piece of water cooling This is a blind stop that I use on reservoirs:



After tapping the holes



The back now looks like this:



Usually I leave the tape on way too long, but it has to come off already It's clear that the slots need some more filing. I'm using a 3,5mm file to file the 4mm slots, finally found one that thin



After the filing, some sanding:





More sanding, up to 1500 grit:



I 'just' need to polish this piece, and bend it after that. I'll show that in the next update

Because the end is near, I started taking some tape off, from the radiator bracket. This took me at least 1,5 hour and quite a lot of aceton



Also removed the tape at the plexi layer:





Toghether, they look like this





The alu part is a little curved, so there's a gap between the two parts. I didn't notice that before, but I fixed that by bending the alu some more. It's a lot straighter now

I gave the radiator bracket the treatment that most of the alu parts will get, some sanding with 280 grit sand paper.



This pic really shows my dremel mistake, but it's nearly invisible with the plexi layer on, so I will not try to fix it.





I already polished the psu plate, so I already have enough material for another update Just need to get some more done, before I show it to you. You just have to read, respond and wait

 

Still going great

 

Ill have to warn you, if you used the same hood filters as i did, allmost no air will come true and you pc will start to heat up

 

nice sharp edges ... which tool do you use for making them soo sharp ??

 

Very nice work ,the grill and pump house looks amazing.

 

The structure of the filter was quite open, and I just need a little breeze, so I guess it will work

Ehm, a set of really small files and a lot of patience and time I wouldn't make them that sharp if I had to do it again, they're really hard to make.

Thanks a lot

 

awesome work ............ I love the grill ..............


Alan