Case Mod - In Progress Project: Hutch (Qmicra v2) The reservoir v.2! Aug 16

Thanks Breach! Yeah, the Qmicra2 is a great case to work with, but there are quite a few things you are left to figure out for yourself. There are also quite a few things that go unmentioned. Like the fact that you lose two of the stock hard drive mount locations simply by adding the radiator to the side...

Thanks John! I've kind of made myself a little niche here, and intend to stick with it. I love planning things from the engineering side. There's always a way to make it fit!

Thanks mate! Can you believe I've been pondering it for months?!

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, finding a great spot for the pump and multiple hard drives was a challenge. I manged to get it worked out, and with the pump mounted, I could move on to the hard drive mounts.

There will be room for 4 hard drives total, in two different locations. What you are about to see, are the drives that will be mounted below the center support section in the case.

I decided to use a channel type mount. What you see here is a piece of aluminum channel cut and bent. You'll have to forgive the lack of few pictures here. When I was live streaming this part, I forgot to grab the camera...



In each of the channels, I've placed some rubber 'U' molding. This will act to dampen vibration.



Here are the approximate locations for the channels. Due to the way I wanted to mount these, bolts or rivets wasn't going to cut it. I decided to break out the torch and HTS-2000. The channels were brazed in to place. I was live streaming during this portion as well, hence the lack of in progress pictures.



The braze..



Next up, I needed to make brackets to mount to the hard drives. These brackets will slide in to the channels.





I drilled a few holes, and mounted the drive...



And finally, the drive mounted in place.



Next I'll be working on the remaining two hard drive mounts, as well as a custom shroud to cover the center section of the case. Stay tuned!

 

Now that is bad-ass. So simple yet genius. Probably works better than many stock solutions, right?

Excellent work, Craig!

 

Thanks Jeremy! As a matter of fact, I do like it quite a bit more than most solutions I've come across. I'm already planning on integrating this in to future mods where applicable.

 

Very well thought out design, I had sketches for something similar but I was going to use rod, tube and grommets with a locking mechanism; a bit bulky yes but would work .

 

Can't wait to see more great job long live the SFF Modders!!!!

 

Rod, tube, and grommets? That sounds very unique! Any plans on implementing it?

Haha, thanks mate!

 

Very unique way to mount the drives.

Great thinking.

 

Thanks! The idea just came to me last weekend... Sometimes procrastination does pay!

 

In a future project? No not really. In my next project I was going to use a HDD water block to cool a 1TB drive and an SSD, hardly need a full caddy for that. Perhaps I will use the idea later, you never know.

Feel free to implement it yourself though .

 

agreed, Great idea Craig, this project kicks major butt.

 

Haha, I just might! For some reason I'm always big on needing hard drive space. If I don't have multiple terabytes, I feel closed in...

Thanks Bill! I appreciate it!

 

Ha I saw this project ages ago then forgot about it. Silly me..... I love what you did with the hard drives. I always seem to forget about them when I design cases.

 

Thanks mate. It was easy to forget about for a while. I wasn't exactly hammering out the updates. An extremely busy summer kind of did me in.

Yes, the hard drives do seem to a second thought for me as well sometimes. Even in OSIDIAS, I know where they will be, but I've not worked out an actual mounting system yet...

 

I like your idea for the hard drive mounting as well.
Have you thought about using 2.5inch drives? These perform
almost as well as 3.5inch (VR's even better), and you can get
four into the space of two. And when SSD's come down in price
(and keep performance longer) they are a simple swap over.

 

Thank you! I have indeed thought about using 2.5" drives. It sure would have made for huge space savings, and the prices really aren't that bad. However, capacity was what this case needed. The project is for a friend of mine (Hutch), and will be used for storing quite a bit of media. If he ever does decide to go with 2.5" drives, a simple adapter could still be used with the existing mounts.

 

Who's ready for another update?

With the completion of the first two hard drive mounts, it was time to move on to the second pair. In order to mount them, I needed to have something to mount them to... This came in the form of a new shroud for the center of the case. This shroud will cover all components there, and provide for a streamlined look.

Here I've got the panel marked out and ready to cut.



The panel all cut...



After cutting, it was time to bring out my trusty brake. It hasn't really had a good workout since the completion of the Rogue. That's about to change though...



Now, before I can give the shroud a test mount, I've got to get these studs gone.



Let's see how it fits...



Like a glove!



Okay, now that we know it fits, I need to get the holes cut for the hard drive mounts. I'll be modifying and reusing the original mounts. Their modification is soon to come, but it won't change the way that they mount. I'll be duplicating PCDL's original method, as it's so simple and elegant.

Here I've got the holes marked out.



The first two holes cut...



One down, one to go!



The second one is done!



Now all the drives have a home. I just need to add new mounting studs like the ones I cut off earlier. A also have some other detail work to finish up on the shroud, and that will be in the next update.

Before I wrap up this post, I've got one more additional thing to show you. For anyone that may have clicked on the 'Losias Live' tab on my site, you'll see that I'm working on doing some live modding broadcasts. I've done a few test runs, and came to the conclusion early on that the picture was a little dark. As of today, I took care of that little issue. Needless to say my worktable is no longer dark...

 

YAY, another update . This build is coming together very well mate, really really nice work, keep it up.

 

Very nice update craig - love the shroud!

 

Lovely shroud bro - nice work!