Scratch Build – In Progress Homemade Alu case /w copper highlights. FINISHED.

Lol, you got it. That's exactly what I did. I did a big face+palm when I noticed it (which took a while). Cookie for you!

 

Doesn't matter, really. Looks good anyway.
Really love the black / aluminum contrast

 

Update 17!

Worked on it quite a bit today:


I drilled a whole in the reservoir mount to allow the tube from the pump to go up. Then I bolted it to the lower-inner panel.


This is what I was talking about when I said that the gap was intentional. It's there for the PCI cards.


Got the hard drives mounted; 1.5Tb of space.


Running the wires through the lower inner panel before screwing it down. This really was a pain to do. Some of them are a tight fit.


Got the mobo and video cards installed. The mobo sure is heavy with all of that copper on it.


Got the hard drives connected and everything. Cables are nice and zip tied.


Connected the reservoir to the loop.


The only reason I made the case BTX style was to have the video cards "upside down" so I can see the waterblocks.


I hate using right angles, but they were my only option here.


Fill port and bleed point. I need to find a less green plug.


Awesomeness occurred when I mixed water with FluidXP. Apparently FluidXP isn't water based, so seeing the two interact was pretty cool.


Black light sweetness. The machine is not running in this pic; just leak testing the water loop.


To reduce the amount of screws I have to take out to take off the right side panel, I cut 26 of them and JB Welded them to the panel. That leaves 12 actual screws to hold the panel on.


Gimped screws.

And that's where I stopped tonight. I JB Welded the screws to the right panel and they are drying right now. So no more work on it until they're done. Comments? Suggestions? The plan is to fire it up tomorrow if all goes well.

 

Looks sweet!

 

I have read something of this log in the beginning, but it seems like a missed a lot of great stuff. Just finished reading it from the start, so I think that should compensate it It looks really great dude

 

Nice! keep the pics coming!

 

Also, its not BTX style. It called Inverse ATX
Btx is different.
Anyways, I see how you had to leave the space for the PCI- cards.

 

Yeah..

Whatever happened to BTX anyway? Wasn't it supposed to be the next big thing? I don't think I've seen BTX mobos for sale.

 

verry nice but is'nt dangerous to put your harddisk lik that ?

 

dangerous how? Numerous cases have vertical hdd mounting brackets.

 

o i just have never seen it. i thought it woud hurt the lifetime of the harddisk

 

No, you can mount em anyway you like. A lot of commercially available
NAS boxes and storage solutions have the hard drives mounted vertically.

I remember seeing some Dell boxes using BTX solution. BTX was basically developed
by Intel to help with the heat their line of CPU's were generating and at the time they
thought the heat would just keep increasing. But they made their own solution
obsolete by developing cooler more efficient processors.

 

Update 18!

I turned on the machine for the first time today! More on that later, to the pics:


I JB Welded the mesh to the hole I made (the mistake).


I should have bought 1/4" screws and not 1/2". I needed to grind down more than 40 screws so they didn't hit each other.


I drop the screws into a bucket of cold water after grinding them down.


The reason there are nuts on all of them is because grinding them leaves residue that makes actually using the screws again impossible. So I put a nut on each screw, gind it down, then take the nut off. Removing the nut removes the residue and makes them usable again.


Backing a screw out of the nut to rethread it.






I attached all of the side panels to get the full effect. In hindsight, it probably wasn't a good idea because I had to take them all off again.


I sized and cut the window for the right side panel.


Reset button, power button, and power light cables going up behind the motherboard.


Then going over the top to plug into the mobo itself.


All of the Sata and power cables for the hard drives. It may look like a mess here, but none of this is actually visible.


Mess of cables in the lower chamber.


And powered on for the first (well, second) time. The first time I pressed the power button, my x1800xt started smoking! I quickly turned it off and investigated. It turns out I had the 6pin PCIE power connector plugged into the jack for the 6 pin mobo power connector on the power supply. So I simply switched it to the correct plug and then it fired up correctly. Good thing it didn't nuke my video cards.


The smoke came from below the 6 pin power connector. It is still functional, thankfully.

And that's all the pics for today. I started to polish the copper triangles and the front of the case, but they're not done yet. I need to get Windows installed on this beast and start overclocking. I got it up to 3.2ghz (Q6600 is 2.4 stock) but I don't have any way of testing the stability without Windows up and running.

So until then, comments? Suggestions?

 

Good work dude, you are really moving along! I wish i was moving half as fast

Only suggestion i can think of is to do some work on the cable management, also in places that you don't see. For one simple reason: you posted the pics here, more people saw those pics then are ever going to see the finished case!

 

Well, some cable mess inevitable, I haven't seen a case without it Hiding it all is hard, but it seems like he has done a great job here.
The hole case looks great, it's just the left and front panel that look a little too plain

 

legoman666 that looks terrific all together, you have to be happy!

 

you are really lucky .... the 2 inner solder spots do look like they got pretty hot
..........slightly "melted"



Alan

 

Final Update!

I basically finished the case. It's set up in it's final resting place right now. There are a few small things I want to do, but nothing major.


I did not polish the copper to a mirror finish but it is still reflective. I also polished the front to a shiny but not mirror finish.




I attached the copper triangles with JB Weld.


All of the panels attached.


How the mistake looks.


The back.


Topish angle.


I love staring at the blue glow.


I might do something to the left side to make it less boring. But I'm not sure what.




The inside.


Vista install success (oxymoron?).


My dad, who helped me occasionally while building the case.

Images below; click for BIG
Final photo shoot:
























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Comparison shots between original plan and final result:



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It's safe to say that I stayed pretty true to plan.
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Pics of it in action (also click for big):




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And that's all folks. It sure was fun. Metal is a lot different to work with than wood. Comments? Questions? Everything appears to be working normally. The video card that I almost fried functions fine.

 

Now you have a unique desktop. Congratulations on a job well done
Going do do another? I'll watch for sure!
John

 

Great Job.
Here, Have Some Stars!