Case Mod - In Progress Project: Firewall, 19th February (Part one of Vinyl Dye)

Heres a few quick shots:



Shows the location and overall size. That fan inside the case is 120mm which will be what i'm looking at to keep rpm low as possible.



Still needs a little light sanding to get rid of a few marks but i'm very happy to say it was hand cut and filled.

Hopefully later tonight i'll get time to drill the hole out for the AC adapter socket and the venting holes on the lower sides on both left and right. I'm thinking 5 holes around 10mm each should be fine.

 

So I dug it out tonight and set about sorting those last few holes before i start with the epoxy and plastic paint / dye.

So heres the box as it stands now, main top vent hole cut and i've taped a grill in place to what i think i'll have it. If i end up going black i'll paint the grill black to match.



Close up of the hole and grill



Close up of the holes



I think some fine mesh on the holes on the side. Gonna look at a few hardware stores the next time i pass.

 

50 MB 50 MB HOLY COW and the top speed at this house is 512k DSL .

 

I found a computer case at work the other day which had a much better option for a grill covering which is much closer to what i had in mind:



Think it looks much better than a stock grill.

Also popped over to the local car store (halfords) and picked up some PVC and vinyl dye. Unfortunatly we've had a spat off snow today so don't fancy doing the test in the shed anymore so gonna see if we get a better day next week. This isn't for the full paint job, just to test on some out of site bit of plastic to see how it sticks / colours.

 

So I was doing a disposal collection at work the other day and came across a couple of heatsinks which i decided would suit a little better as the thicker base mean i should be able to tap threads into it so no nuts are needed for fixings. Also means i can replace the smaller heatsinks with one larger one which again screw fits from the underside. Given i don't have much in the way of metal working tools heres what i've managed so far:



Started out like this...



After a bit of trimming and sanding.




These two are the holes and cutouts i've made to accomidate capacitors on the motherboard. As you can see the work isn't amazing but i'm working with hand saws/files and dremel with little in the way of attachments. Most of it was removed with a drill, then a carbide grinding bit to tidy it up and remove the bits the drillbit wouldn't reach.

I've a few more little bits to remove then its onto the sandpaper to clean up the base. Not aiming for a waterblock style mirror finish but i'm going to sand until i'm happy its got a decent flat to it.

 

Went back to this today and tried a few things.... not much but its fair to say speed modding isn't my thing

This is my solution to the fan mounts, wasn't sure 2part epoxy would be strong enough but these ain't going anywhere!!



Did the first part of the plastic dye today, wasn't sure what to expect but its come out ok for a first go. sprayed in a shed and it was very windy today so few bit on it but its not too bad.

 

I like the function over form stylo here. It's really too bad we don't see more Via mods. They're great little boards, as I understand. I kinda want to build this same sort of thing now!

 

what's dimensions of the box? just looked on maplin website but can't find anything big enough for my needs, thanks

 

Did a power draw test today. Not sure if result is good or not but it sounds low lol

On post to boot up from USB DVD I measured it hitting 36w high and 31w average power consumption.

Is that decent?? How low power are the atom boards??

 

I've seen claims of mid 20's with some Atom boards but can't recall if those were idle, load, max, etc But I would say that 36w peak and 31w average is pretty decent.

I like this build, looks pretty good so far. I may have to make a firewall of my own... had thought about it, but never did it because I didn't really find a need for it at the time

 

Cool, I can live with that.

Need to do a test run with the replacement heatsinks to get a feel for the temps. I'm on a mission to find a self temperature controlling 120mm NO LED fan....

 

The problem with the VIA boards is the proprietary video drivers. At least that's how it was 5 years ago when I got my board. It's still sitting on a shelf in my closet because of crappy linux driver support.

 

Well the board came from a system which was used for years running some kinda of Linux based content caching system so fingers crossed I'll be ok. If not very temped to go with a single core atom board...