Scratch Build – In Progress Dual PC case MK3.

Hey fellow builders and modders.,
This is the third dual PC case I'm attempting and my first worklog
on Bit-tech. In the previous attempts I've built cases from an alloy
frame and then dressed this with alloy and timber panels. The mother-
board trays were placed back to back with one mobo inverted, while
this set up had some benefits it was less than ideal so this time I'll
be making a wooden case with the mobo's one above the other. The
PSU's will be housed on one side of the case and a basic ventilation
scheme is planned whereby cool air is drawn in from below and expelled
via an opening in the top.
So let's start........

First up the design will be simple with little decoration, preferring the wood
to be the focus of attention.


A basic frame needs to be made. This is made from a meranti frame and a
West Australian Jarrah and meranti front panel.









The three pieces of the front panel were glued up with biscuits and the frame was glued up with
dowel and screws and then glued to the front panel with biscuits.





For the top vent four pieces of wood were cut and glued together with mitered corners.





And then this frame was glued and screwed to the case.





Then the bottom intake and base was made but with this part simple butt joints with dowel was used.



Now a baffle or cover needs to be made to cover the top vent. This must use the most interesting
pieces of wood because it's the most obvious part.







I like to sand down the parts and give them a thick coat of polyurethane to protect them from
stains.



And it looks like this so far with the baffle/top just sitting on some scrap.



A close up.



Now I need to make some door frames from the Jarrah.





With the frames assembled a recess needs to be routed on the inside to house a panel (that I haven't
thought too much about yet).







And the corners squared off with a chisel.



Some wheels added to the case and I can now think about the inside.



I guess it's not very clear how this will work, well there will be two access doors and nothing else
showing from the outside that this is a PC. The two PC's inside will be controlled through a breakout
box that will sit on my desk, there are still some things to workout but you will see what I mean as
the project goes forward.

 

nice work, why do you need a dual mobo case?

 

Thanks Burnout21., I've been using this setup for nearly four years and
have grown accustomed to it. One PC is a media centre and the other
is the workhorse, it's tidy and neat to have them in the same case.





Here are the motherboard trays That will go into the case. They are from two
old coolermaster praetorian cases. I have to cut off the PSU supports but I
need to keep the sections of frame that the mobo's attach to.



With the frames trimmed down they are reattached to the mobo trays for the next step.



A piece of 3mm angle is riveted to both cut down sections of the original frame. This angle will wrap
around one of the rear support timbers.





Next, using some U channel the same size as the original I made up the center support.







Some gratuitous shots of work so far.





So next the left side of the rear needs to be made. Here the same 35x15x3mm angle is used to wrap
around the left rear timber support and some U channel is riveted to this.





Now the rear panels need to be made, these are cut with a jigsaw from 2mm alloy sheet. I decided
to follow the tabbed style of the mobo trays.





Now this is the side for the PSU's and all the connectors for the breakout box, so I have to cut
some ventilation holes for the PSU's.









I "found" some stainless perf at work so they can go into the PSU vents.





This is the top left hand rear panel, it will hold some 8 pin DIN connectors for the breakout box.





This is the finished rear of the case! Now to move inside.

 

I must say, this looks reely amazing!

 

wow ........ beautiful color .......
I love wooden cases and would like to have one that
fits in with the rest of my furniture,but ......
my skills with wood are limited.I'm more a metal guy
when it comes down to skills and tools availible.

What is the overall height of the case and what will
be in it?


Alan

 

Any idea where I can find those mobo trays? They look really easy to scratch build off of.

Excellent work so far

 

The quality of build is absolutely amazing!! The photography is also excellent! Lighting, composition, to the point, just the right amount of extra info (like tools used and how neat the workshop/home is, etc..), everything top notch! I'm very confident that this log is going to be one of my absolute favorites. It has everything... it's a scratch build , superb craftsmanship, beautiful photography, ingenuity, wood & aluminum, etc! I'm itching to give this 5 stars already.. but it's really too early for that imho.. rating is a serious thing *nods*.. will probably want to give it 6 stars in a couple of updates. This probably doesn't mean much coming from a no-log-guy like me, but I'm very picky and quite the perfectionist, so I hope you understand where I'm coming from.
[OFF TOPIC]
Heh, was about to write something about having an anal but decided on perfectionist instead, 'cause I know someone (Cheapskate??) would have pounced on that.. and I'd rather leave my anal side unpounched ...aaanyways
[/OFF TOPIC]

I love the way you think! Like the steel ruler + rivet pin mock-up before the center support was installed (pic 4 in post 2). =) Speaking of the center support, how/where is it fastened into the wooden frame?
Those ancient Greece temple roof things in the background with the pillars.. what are they.. mirror/bed frames (pic 6 post 1)??

Please keep it up!!

 

Nice mod so far. The wood is very nice in combination with that alluminium. It gives the case a very clean look.

Keep it up!

 

Beautiful combination of wood and aluminum there, gotta love your work on both materials. Keep it up! Didn't realise from the first photos how huge it was.

 

Very nice indeed as its good to see people making cases out of wood

 

I don't know what Macros is implying about me...
I didn't see anything that wasn't PERFECT about your work. The wood is beautiful, and your joining work is flawless.
If I owned this I would KILL anyone who tried to put a drink on it, even with a coaster.
I did get a sudden inspiration to veneer the front of my refrigerator reading this. That mutha's huge!

 

Vidko,theAlien,MonkeyNutZ,Macros_the_Black,badje,Jipa,b1g-d0g,Cheapskate, thank you all
for the kind words.

theAlien: The dimensions of the case are H840mm X W455mm X D590mm. Yes it's big.

MonkeyNutz: I don't think they make those cases anymore, but I see used ones for sale all the time.

Macros_the_Black: The center support is screwed top and bottom via a spacer to the inside of the
case, you will be able to see this later. Yes those are large frames for mirrors or paintings, they
will be finished in gold leaf (some time, maybe ).

 

very cool idea, love the way it looks. Great job

 

Very nice work!

 

Yee! That's an awesome mod man! Nice and clean cuts. Can't wait to see more updates.

 

Thank you keir, craigbru and ednismod.,


I started this build in November so I better keep posting till it's caught up to
where it is now.


This is the lower/intake vent area. Because it's almost at floor level the fans will
suck a lot of dust into the case, so I need to make a frame to hold some filter
material to keep most of the dust out.



The frame is made from some 25mm X25mm angle.



The frame is riveted together with a small square of 2mm plate in each corner. This is enough to
hold the frame together till it's fixed to the case.



And then it's screwed to the case. Fits quite well.



Some alloy mesh is riveted in to finish the job. This will hold the filter.



Next I decided to have a think about how to mount the hard drives. I wasn't sure how many HD's
would go in the case so I made plans for about a dozen. I settled on a cantilever design whereby
each HD is mounted to a caddy on it's side. This design allows air to flow past the drives easily, if
this explanation is not very clear then follow me and I"ll show you.......

This is one "fork" to hold one hard drive.







These forks are then assembled into units of four. Don't worry they are very strong.







Now these hard drive units need to be fixed to the inside of the front panel.



So a substantial alloy beam needs to be made up to hold the HD units. This is made from 25x50x25x3mm U
section.



Some 25x25 angle is then riveted down each side to make it attachable.



Then a slot arrangement was made up with two pieces of alloy bar for the HD units to sit in.





And this is the hard drive "tree". Each caddy slips in and the top is secured with one screw, most
of the weight is supported by the bracket at the bottom.



And it all looks like this.

 

Gorgeous build so far with that wood and aluminum. Now that we can see the relative size, I think Thermaltake's tall Mozart case is minor league in comparison.

 

Thanks Scirocco, yeah the height was determined by the mobo trays but
it's always better to have a bit of extra room, although it could be a case
of if there's more room then you put extra stuff in to fill it.


Anyway time to think about how to mount the PSU's. The power supplies will
be housed in this area....



A structure to hold the two psu's needs to be built here so a support needs to run across from
side to side, but I can't make this structure go past the mobo trays. In fact
because I need plenty of room behind the hard drives a beam has to go across and then step back
a little and the structure will attach to this. OK I know, I don't even understand that.
So here's what I mean....
Here is the cross beam with the step back. This is just made from some U channel and plate.





Then I attach some plate, as well as being a place to mount the the two levels for the psu's this
gives support to the center of that cross beam.









Now I need to build up the other side. You'll notice here that I'm using old material for this, in fact
anything that could be used from previous builds, was. This is all very basic so just the pic's.









You'll notice that the outside top level support is shortened a little, this is to allow the lower psu
to be placed into position without disturbing the hard drives.







OK it was around this time that I realized I (and many others) couldn't come up with a practical
scheme to fix the psu's into position. Thought about this for about a week and in the end I bit
the bullet and trashed the lower rear panel. Made a new one to mount the psu's in the conventional
way, all to boring so just some pic's.

 

Dual PC case MK3 Jan 2008

The hard drives will be cooled by a couple of 120mm fans from below.
So a shroud needs to be made to hold the fans.


Using part of an old side panel, a rectangle of plate was cut out with the jigsaw.



Then holes were marked and cut out.



The piece of plate was then reinforced with angle all the way around.



And the complete fan shroud looks like this.



For about a millisecond I thought about mounting the fans on top.



But quickly came to my senses.





So now we have this.





Now I needed somewhere to put the optical drives.
So I decided to use the 5.25in cage from the original Coolermaster case.



The two sides were tied together with some plate.



Now one side of the drive cage will sit on this cross beam.





And I now need to make a bracket to support the other side. (this is not the bracket).



This is the completed support bracket for the 5.25in drive cage.





And it's screwed to the inside of the front panel like so.



And the whole assembly looks like this.

 

After I'd got to this stage the case was completely disassembled and the
alloy parts were cleaned and or polished.
I finished this about midnight, here are some pic's.