Hi all, Well my Main Engineering Project is currently on hold due to lack of interesting ideas and a massive oversight on my part which has pretty much killed my enthusiasm for it (at least for the moment, I will revisit it at some point). But for now, I have a new idea, one which will be realised. Anyway, onto it. The 'Brief' To design and create a case to act as a media server streaming tv/movies etc. to various devices around the house. Pre-requisites The case should be something that can sit quite nicely in a room and be noticed. So I've decided that a nice Coffee Table is the way to go. Inspiration I had a look at some Coffee Table designs that are currently available and decided to base it on something like these that I found. The Theme For this one I've decided on a Transformers (Original G1) Theme (some people may remember I made a G1 mod a few years ago from an old Shuttle case. The Hardware Being a media server the spec on this doesn't have to be insane. Having said that I have a fair few bits & pieces lying around that I'm going to use. Motherboard Gigabyte MA-790FXA-UD5P Motherboard Link Processor AMD Phenom II 955 (8 core 3.2Ghz) Memory 6gb DDR3 (Can't remember the actual memory off the top of my head, will edit this later) Graphics NVidia 6600LE PCI Express - I found this lying around, and it's passively cooled which is nice. Storage 1x 64gb Adata SSD Hard Drive (For OS and media server software) 4x 3 or 4tB (Haven't decided which yet) Hard Drives (Only piece I need to buy besides cooling) Cooling I'm not sure if I'll be watercooling this one at the moment simply due to cost. However I have made provisions in the initial design that will allow me to add the watercooling kit in the future if I decide to. These will be the fans I've decided to use Peripherals The Only addons to the system will be a 10.1" touchscreen monitor that I've had for a while and will use to display a Samurize config A teeny tiny usb keyboard I *ahem* salvaged from a tablet case that I don't use anymore And a fan controller Building Materials The table/case will be built out of a combination of acrylic and MDF. Overview of case design As I'm in a bit of a 'clean and simple' mood of late it will all be Black and White. The motherboard and graphics card will be painted black and white to blend with the design (there will be questions about this later ). All the cabling will also be black and white. As for cable routing, all cabling will be mostly hidden in the very bottom section and only 'pop through' the Main bay to connect to components, hopefully leading to a very clean interior. On the top 'opening' panel I plan to have an etched design of some description, but I'm still looking into deciding what design to have. Initial Design Renders Final Thoughts As you can see in the rendered images, I've got an opening panel on the top, ideal I'd like to have this open and close automatically when a button is pressed, unfortunately I have no clue how to achieve such a thing, but if anyone has any pointers/links I'd be most grateful. I think that about covers it for the moment. If anyone has any questions, thoughts or ideas, please don't hesitate to speak up Thanks TheMightySpud
about that opening and closing, you have some motorized kits for not that much money. they are typically quite bulky and ugly and with the see-trough top, I doubt it will be worth it for the few times you have to be in there. And if you are any little bit like me, you'll put stuff on top of it, and it won't open anyway If, on the other hand, opening it was necessairy for access to an optical drive or the touchscreen & keyboard, i can see why you would spend energy and money to get it so complex that it opens itself. Which would be ubercool and impressive, of course
You could use air cylinders, however they can get pretty pricey quite quickly depending on how heavy that lid is.
Thanks for the replies guys. For the lid opening I'm just going to keep it all manual, the only time it would be open is if I needed to change components or clean it, so it's not that big a deal. The white section won't be sliding I'm afraid, the plan is to have all the cabling sit in the bottom of the black section so a slide out main part would be a bit of a nightmare to figure out. Also, while I was looking at the design last night something occurred to me, I don't need the backplate opening I have on the model, the only thing that will be connected to the rear is the vga cable and I can route that internally very easily. Something that I forgot to mention in the first post is there are two 'gaps' on the top of the black section, these are for the small monitor and the teeny keyboard. I also need to make a smaller hole in there for the fan controller (it's not there yet as it was a late addition to the design) For monitor functions/power/lights etc. I'll be using anti-vandal switches, I just haven't decided where I'll be putting them yet TheMightySpud
