Hi, I'm Haofeng and I'm pretty new to the weird and wonderful world of case modding, but after following some of the amazing stuff on here and OC3D, I've been inspired to do a build of my own. I've been working this project for a while now, and I started planning it Summer last year, but I didnt think it worthwhile to start a project log up till now. Hopefully, by doing a project log, I can convince myself to stop procrastinating and get this thing done by the end of the Easter hols before I get back to school. Basically, I wanted to watercool my cpu (and possibly gpu), while still having everything compacted in a relatively small cubecase, but there wasnt really anything on the market that I could easily mod to fit the bill, so I decided to do a scratch build. I was inspired mostly by Craigbru's "Rogue" and Barry/Mankz's "Watery", so my project, which I'm yet to name, is kinda a culmination of the two. Enough of boring you all with big chunks of writing, now for some pics! Sketchup design-I'll explain stuff as I go along....I know the black is pretty monotonous, I'm hopefully gonna liven it up with some white lighting/racing stripes Front view Top view- motherboard(striker extreme) etc pretty self-explicable, except the gpu's should actually be gtx260's and the cpu waterblock is in fact an ek-supreme. Cooling for the top section- i think it'll work ok, and keep the motherboard ticking over. Better solutions? Lower level Watercooling setup-the res was exluded for simplicity's sake. Thats all for now, will have some actual work up very soon... Thanks for looking
Whoa, you've got some fine lookin' sketchups there. Love the all black theme and cannot wait to watch your project log.
Update 2 Thanks for the encouragement guys So, heres the promised update... But first, my humble workspace... ...and my home-made brake, which i will show in action soonish I have a distinct lack of pictures of early work- I'm sorry guys, but tbh, it wasnt that exciting anyway. I started off with a 2mm sheet of aluminium 1000mm by 1000mm. I cut it with my trusty old jigsaw into 5 pieces: front panel and bottom which are joined together, top panel, 2 side panels, and the rear panel. Today, I'll be concentrating on the front+bottom (frottom?) panel, which I have bent . The main frame of the case will also be attached to this piece, and the other panels will be attached to the frame. Dont worry if it seems a bit confusing...it'll all be explained more clearly once the pics come out... I know the masking tape kinda ruins the effect of the whole thing, but I've heard some horror stories about scratches, so I've covered just about every single bit of bare metal just in case... My piece de resistance...so many hours spent filing this to perfection! The front has been cut out for the rad and the 5.25" drives, again involving a jigsaw and a lot of filing... Pretty pleased with the performance of my brake Layout of the bottom The frame is made out of 20mm by 20mm alu angle. It will be held together by a number od M3 countersunk M3 bolts. I started off with a 2m length of angle, and... After a lot of measuring, marking, cutting, filing... ...drilling... ...tapping... ...countersinking... ...and some careful construction work, we have a rather complicated joint countersunk goodness With the frame done (there is still a motherboard support which needs to be added, more of that later), I moved on to the back panel, and the motherboard tray, which is integrated into it. This is in effect a removable m/b tray, and an added bonus is that the psu is also attached to the rear panel, so none of the m/b power connections have to be disconnected when removing the m/b. Rear panel with motherboard thingy (i cant seem to remember the proper term ) The cutout is of course for the psu. Held together with m4 hex bolts and heres the actual mobo tray. Both of these are salvaged from my old coolermaster elite 330. I'm going to cut out the shaded bits because they annoyingly stick out and will cause clearance issues. I know this will decrease the rigidity of the mobo tray, but I will strengthen it with alu angle or a sheet of alu. This is how it fits together Now, heres some exciting dremel action of me cutting the mobo panel Some more of me filing the cut-outs My meaner, leaner, but sadly flimsier mobo tray And to finish off this monster of an update... And, yes, the piece of wood will eventually be replaced with something with a bit more substance... Will have some more soon...
its more or less just 2 chunky pices of alu angle between which you sandwich the metal sheet. Then, using a combination of a wooden board, rubber mallet and sheer strength, you bend the sheet around one of the corners of the alu angle, forming a right angle. A pretty simple diagram:
Very nice! Great design and a very good start to your project. I'm watching this one. Do you think your brake would work with 3mm aluminium?
That looks great, congrats on such a great start! I also would like to know this. Up to how thick of aluminum do you think it could bend?
That's not really a metal brake...more of a clamp than anything. If you need to make a clean bend in anything beyond fairly light gauge sheetmetal- like murtoz's 3mm aluminum- you're going to need a fairly industrial-sized brake. Fortunately- for us, at least- the economic apocolypse has idled a lot of metal fabrication shops and piecework projects (like a custom case), which were previously laughed at can be negotiated pretty reasonably. I recently needed some panels flanged for a custom car project (floorboards, firewall, etc...pretty simple stuff) and negotiated a straight $50/hour price. This might seem a bit pricey but access to the expertise of the operator made it a bargain...everything fit like a glove. All told, we paid for 3 hours time, which probably saved us at least twice that had we bashed out our own panels and then had to fudge them into final shape. There's a lot of know-how and tooling sitting idle these days and as much as I like D.I.Y., it's sometimes worth taking advantage of when your own expertise- or capabilities- fall short.
yeah, I've been pretty lucky with getting some pretty clean and accurate bends out of my clamp/brake. Actually, I've been thinking of going to the garage near me to see if they'll help me out with bending my side panels, since using my clamp/brake is pretty laborious. Though I was thinking that they'd do it free of charge-or possibly for a very small fee. Anyway, thanks for the advice.
thanks guys! murtoz + mokey: I think it'll depend on the width of the material you're bending. The widest panels I've had to bend with 2mm are around 40cm, and thats been a pretty tough struggle involving a lot of hammering with a rubber mallet. I recon with 3mm, anything under 15-20cm should be just manageable, but unless you can find a way of getting more leverage, I don't think a basic contraption like mine will be able to suffice. I think for bending 3mm alu properly, you'll be talking about some pretty heavy and expensive brakes, and as clocker said earlier, finding a proper metal workshop would probably your best shot.
Update 3-top panel fabrication ok, time to get the top panel cut and bent Cutting it up... Filing the edges Here are the requested images of brake in action- they didnt come out as well as i'd hoped, but I think they demonstrate how simply the brake works pretty well. In the brake. This is after levering the sheet with a wooden board- it was difficult to take pics of that...the clamp is there only because the sheet is a bit too wide for me to fit the end screw in, and I don't really fancy drilling and tapping another one, seeing as the clamp will suffice. side view of the sheet then, after I've worked on it with the rubber mallet-it looks scrappier than it actually was... the right angle (oh the joy of double meanings...) close up shot and after a trim... finished!
just realised how long this page is- takes ages to load properly. How do you start a new page? (apologies for noobness)
Looks nice and clean so far, taking notes and looking forward to the rest! EDIT: I don't think you get to choose when new pages appear. I think forum default is 20 posts a page. You of course could place your images in separate posts, and that would help, but I don't think anybody minds.
Wow really cool scratch build man, and I like the homemade brake lol. Subscribed. Also, a question, which direction will the watercooling setup flow?