Scratch Build – In Progress Project: MHR²

Well, my H.A.B.T.T mod is nearing completion, and already I’m planning my next case. This one however, WILL be LAN-worthy.

Don’t expect a worklog for this anytime soon, as I have no PC to put in it yet, but I got excited and had to post a teaser for it.

It seems my place of employment is great for finding things to mod, after all, H.A.B.T.T came from there, and so did these. My store is being renovated with new paint and lights being put in, so I just had to take some of the old lights home. Can’t use em, since they require a 347 volt line.

I snagged 6 of the shades since those are the only part of the light I’ll use. The shade’s diameter is 16 inches at the rim, plenty of space. If you remember my long-ago scrapped Wolfenstein project, the light covers came from these fixtures. The bulbs have a nasty habit of exploding, so the covers prevented the bulb from showering the area and starting a fire. Below is a pic of a fully-built light.



Useless 175W metal halide lightbulb (un-exploded).



Boobies?



Boobies without nipples�



Screwed together






Work on this should start around the end of summer.

 

I look forward to seeing your efforts with these reflectors, intresting shapes to start off with. Should prove to be most intresting, good luck with it!

 

3 bloody years!!!! and I only started actually working on modding the reflectors this weekend. HAHA.

I win Procrastinator of the Year award.

Due to its odd dimensions, the only motherboard that would properly fit (other than an ITX board) is a Shuttle board. I'll be hacking up my old SN27P2 box and using that. But that comes later. First I wanted to work on the lower hemisphere first. This will contain the powersupply, optical drive, 2 120mm radiators, and possibly the pump. Yes, this will be a watercooled case. Air cooling the CPU and GPU is not feasible considering the constraints.

The finalized specs for the machine are:

SN27P2 motherboard, 450W PSU, various hacked-up pieces
Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition
Sapphire Radeon HD4870
2GB Kingston HyperX PC8500 RAM
Plextor PX-716AL slot-load DVDRW
Swiftech H2O-120 Premium WC kit

First thing to do was get the glass out of one of the covers. This will be on the bottom of the case and will be supporting the optical drive, pump, and possibly the HDD internally.







Next i started working on the frame. The cover snaps onto the lip of the reflector with these thin aluminum hooks. Two of them will be removed and serve as a starting point for mounting aluminum flats.



Popped the 2 rivets out.



Basic run-of-the-mill 1/8x3/4 aluminum flats and L's. I cut the piece to approximate length and then lined it up to the frame. Marked the curve with a scratch awl.







I cut some of the L-channel pieces and took them to task with my portable disc grinder. Sorry I don't have photos pre-cut, but these were the end results.

 

Time to work on the actual reflectors now. I'll need to cut 2 holes for the rads, and a hole & square in the back for the PSU. This is a bit tricky for the Dremel being a curved surface, and no proper way to actually stabilize it. What worked for me though was to lightly groove the surface repeatedly until it was "almost" through, and then used an Xacto blade to cut the circles out. Actually worked better than I thought it would.







Mounting the PSU was going to be a trickier problem. It was one thing to measure/cut out the sections for the rads due to the ease of using a 120mm fan as a guide, but this was another. An old CD case cover would be the solution.







First drilled the mounting holes and tested its fit. Good so far.







I`ll get around to cutting the PSU fanhole and plug tomorrow.

 

Moved, but don't leave the final bits another three years!

 

Holy thread retrieval, batman! But for once it's worth it

Interesting shape for a case, that's for sure!

 

haha no it wont be another three years. I plan on doing some mods to my current P160 case and will need a working computer to tide me over while this machine is disassembled. Might be a month or so as I need to order some WC parts before it starts to take shape.

 

Damn I thought it was going to be an IronMan's wife tribute case!

Oh well it still looks cool, nice start!

 

Just 2 quick mockup shots of the PSU and rads mounted.





I wont be using these ugly black fans though. I havent decided if I want chrome or green LED fans instead.

 

After 3 years, you should have enough parts for a dozen cases.
It's good to see you back at it. There are so many modders here that just stop posting, and you fear they were hit by a bus.


Also symetrical docking BOOBIES! )(

 

Meh, I'll give it to you tomorrow.

Very nifty Idea, keep it up.

 

From a few weeks ago...

Just a quick mockup of my case. Awaiting arrival of my MCW60-4870 block.









Worked on the PSU fanhole awhile back, but never got around to posting.







Empty beer bottles are great for sanding!

 

From this weekend...

Today I was working on the mounting of the DVD drive in the lower reflector. Originally I wanted to have the drive angled up about 20-30 degrees, and had cut pieces for such a mounting. After a bit though I realized that this was somewhat more complicated than I had thought, and would have required an extremely steady hand to properly pull off in terms of marking drillholes and the slot opening with only one hand in a very awkward position. My hands are hardly steady.

I settled on a more basic horizontal mount. Blessing in disguise as well, since doing so rotated the base frame 90 degrees. If you look at some of the photos, you'll notice that thin metal "hook" that latches around the rim of the reflector. If I had kept the mounting to the original plan, that hook would have been on either side of the case (depending which direction the drive was mounted.) It is now at the back underneath the PSU, hidden from sight.

 

Crappy digicam video of the DVD drive in action. Ignore the lame commentary on Tom Cruise in the background. The wife loves E! Access Hollywood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3OsAMgGPPw

 

I try to be courteous to my fellow apartment dwellers and stop the modding by 9pm. Dremeling/filing/drilling metal as we all know can be very loud. I had to go back and cut a rectangular hole for the PSU cord and switch.





Next I drilled some holes so the circular rim base can be securely attached to the reflector. A single hook in the rear won't suffice.





Now onto the fun part! Hacking up a Shuttle chassis. Those of you that love SFF cases, please forgive me.

 

Now the test fit. Due to clearance issues with the cover, I will not be able to use the standard vertical barbs on either the CPU or GPU blocks. I have some Bitspower Rotary Angle fittings on order. I also put a standard cutting disc on top of the glass to illustrate exactly how much space I have. It's only about 5/8 of an inch between the 4870 and the glass. The 80mm fan has about 2mm to spare!









Not much else I can do tonight really. I'm thinking of mounting one of the Shuttle's harddrive trays directly underneath the mobo tray for my HDD. I have really no other place to put it.

Just placing it for looks. I'll do the mounting tomorrow after work. Also need to get some rubber spacers to add a gap between the top of the drive and the mobo tray. Just a spare HDD for looks. Bad enough that my DVD is IDE, no way will my HDD use that as well.







Not looking forward to mounting the CPU block. Shuttle doesnt do anything standard, so the holes for their ICE cooler are customized for the mobo.

 

Dont feel like typing much, so i'll let the pictures do the explaining.















Almost there!!!! I had a broken rad. Just how broken? Very broken. As you can see...



Half my 1L bottle of FluidXP ended up on the dining room floor. Gonna see tomorrow if any PC shops downtown carry any.

Still to do:

• 
  Buy 2nd 120mm rad and install.
  Wire up/mount power/reset switches.
  Add fan grills to lower section.
  Add 2nd 80mm LED fan on upper section.
  Let mobo and HDD dry.
  Add plastic piece to hide big square hole in the back.
  Boot.

Then come April/May, dismantle and paint.