Phobya water-cooled case design thread - Stage 2

Thanks Nitrix, and yes I would like to know more....

 

Hi everyone, here is a small update to see you the HDD rack system. Sata connector and sata power are 90° ones to have the two racks pretty close. This would reduce the depth of the case while having decent space between HDDs and PSU. Hope you'll enjoy it

 

I like the idea, good for space saving. The only thing I would think of is the design of the sliders for the drive bays. I would try to come up with a design that can be easily made with just a laser and a press break. I like the layout just keep ease of manufacture in mind.

 

You can easily cut a groove like that with a router and a matching bit. It's basically nothing else then a dovetail

 

Thanks for the advise, but this is not what I'm afraid of. I had in mind to make it out of plastic, like in most HDD racks.

I'm more afraid of the case front and side panels. I'll try to make something easy to manufacture. A blacksmith case would cost too much .

I still have a long road ahead too match roboduck's or razer's cases, but this is what makes competitions interesting.

Stay tuned ...

 

Plastic would be a great idea if we were doing high volume production (more than 5000). Plastic is hard to use in low volume because of the high cost of tooling 25 to 50k and up for simple parts. In this case we have a low production (25 to 50 case i suppose) so low volume method will probably be used (laser, folding machine, press brake, press drill, Cnc Milling ) i can't speak for Phobya but i think you should steer your design in this direction. I must add that CnC milling is a costly production method that they will probably try to avoid. With this in mind you can check on you tube for sheet metal folder or press brake and you will see all you can do. Lian Li is also a great example of how to do a quality case whitout the use of plastic.

Keep up the good work GuilleAcoustic I love your Baywindow style and the hotswap is a nice feature

 

Tooling isn't that expensive actually. My brother in law owns a company, which does plastics, and you can mill the parts to pour in out of aluminium actually.

 

Thank you mate . I'll keep that in mind.

 

You gyus are lame. Why only progressed 1 page in 3 days??

EDIT: sorry, I shouldn't have said that. not all of you are on school holidays.

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You are doing a good job on the nice detail GilleAcoustic.

I'd like to see some work on the exterior lines and style soon

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Snowy Owl, don't you want to post a few nice pics of your awesome case, so that we can help you out a bit too?

 

Be patient ; ) .... but thank you for your words

 

wonder when I'll sit and do the fan filters....

 

Ok just for you Razer these render are bad but i'm posting them anayway.

Here you can the last version of the side with window added...not sure but i think a water cooled case needs one...you gotta see those tubing.



This is the tool less all metal hardrive bay, i'm pretty proud of that one but again the rendering is not on par with Roboduck....Wish my i7 wasn't doing FEA.




Keep up the good work

 

That is truly art ... I like it !

 

Looks great! Nice little piece of engineering on the HDD bay.

If you want any help rendering Id be more than happy to help. I like the Wall-E model in the background btw.

 

Hhaha thanks Owl man! It is a very cool Hdd bay there...

The case is obviously based on the G5 look right? But it is different enough to be different The front that is curved and not flat, is very cool.

Are you done with the design?

 

Hi all,

I have finally gotten some scenes put back together, and thankfully my original renders are already on the forum.

I just want to take this chance to add that I am also now working on a scaled down version of this case for Standard ATX size motherboards.

My entry centers around having two mostly separate bays for thermal control. As you see in the original render, there is a bay on either side of a main bracket, one bay has a large perspex window which will show the Mainboard, drives, and some of the reservoirs. The opposite bay has a large mesh cover to allow outward airflow. I had originally envisioned the covers being hinged, but have since decided that would restrict access too much. I am revising the bays to split open from the center.



My concept renders don't display the air inlets, so let me explain those here. The air intakes are situated at the bottom of the bays ( yes, both bays ) and are protected by mesh guards with filters held in place by clips. Air is allowed in the Main bay to cool the drives and motherboard, and then exhausts behind the mother board and into the radiator bay. The surface area of -both- intakes is equivalent to the average amount of surface area being directly ventilated by fans in the radiator bay. This helps insure that air will always be pulled in through both intakes equally. There are additional vents at the top of each bay to evacuate trapped waste heat. The mesh protecting the top vents are on a spring loaded hinge to allow them to be used as built-in handles. Directly below the vent/mesh on the radiator bay is where the fillports can be hidden. I will have this shown correctly in the next set of renders.

Now about the internals, I have had no luck trying to convert SketchUp parts to Solidworks, So I gave up and have redone all of the internals in Sketchup. The main problem now is that Sketchup doesn't like the complex geometry of the outer case. So until I resolve that ( or find the time to build the Mainboard etc in Solidworks - eek! ) I will be using both. The other funny part is that I am only able to get maxwell to render from Sketchup in "clay" mode, and I can't get Kerkythea to render anything at all - it just crashes.

So, here are several 2d pics of an example layout. In order to make everything easily visible I have hidden all wires, hoses, and brackets for now. Also, if you will note, there are some pics with dotted lines present. Those are just there to help guide the placement of all of the parts.

The first pic shows the Mainboard bay. The drive cages at the bottom are a very simple design. There is no bracket or sled, just plug your cables into the back of the drive and slide it into the cage until the clip locks it in place. Not visible from this perspective are the strips of vibration dampening material that line the drive bays. The cage is universal in that they can be used for 5.25/3.5/2.5 sizes ( I forgot to place a cage with 2.5's in the pic so I will get that posted asap also ). Each cage accepts a 140mm fan directly attacjed to the bottom pushing air up through the vents. The motherboard is vertically oriented and all cables can be routed behind it. There are 4 cylinder type reservoirs shown, the modular brackets they are mounted to will allow the use of several different sizes, and the shape of the case allows for the reservoirs to be mounted in the radiator bay if prefered.



The next pic shows the center frame with 2 ATX PSUs and an AUX DC PSU. below those is plenty of space for whatever pumps you choose. At the top are the externally accessible optical drives, USB ports, and power switch.



The next pic is a top view showing the placement a little better.



The next pic includes a Phobya 1080, and lastly a few pics with a TJ07 for a little perspective.







I am working on several more pics to wrap up the variations available in this case, as well as the renders showing the intakes, the revised doors, and handles.

Also coming is a revamped design for Standard ATX Motherboards.

Just as a teaser, I am hoping to get time to do layout and render of a crunching version of this case, it will have 10 Mini-ITX i7-quads for a total of 40 cores

 

What do you guys use to make all those renderings ? I thought about using maya, but didn't used it in 5 years.

But again, I'm trully impressed by all designs here.

 

Easiest way is to use V-Ray if you're allready using SketchUp. It's available as SketchUp-Plugin -> http://www.vray.com/vray_for_sketchup/

 

Hi. I follow with interest.