The Back Story: I currently have the ubiquitous O11 Dynamic lightly modded to have 3 vertical gpu's cooled by a 280 up top and a 360 on the side. They do alright with perfect airflow buy my aesthetic mods choke to much air and coolant temps can reach mid 40's while rendering. So my search began for something with more capacity and airflow. I looked at the Spectre 2.0, Eris Evo, Enyo, Barrowch, Yuel Beast Atlas, Level 20 XT and HT, and many others without being entirely satisfied. I toyed with scratch building a bit but then found the 909EK and thought it was perfect and ordered it pretty much right away. After a month with no shipping in sight I explored scratch designs again and this current design evolved. After six weeks and another back order delay I canceled my 909EK and went all in on this design. The Case Design: One of the biggest problems with the other cases was their sizes and they are right hand cases (except the 909EK which is why I liked it). This one is compact (about 1'x1'x2') and able to sit on the left side of my desk. Some elements are not complete. Mostly fasteners. But cable management is going to be a major design element but I'm keeping that secret till the end (mostly in case it becomes too complicated to implement). I have a crazy amount of cad time in this thing. I've started over in fusion many times because a design flaw early on would require so much work to fix the time lines would get really messy. Materials: The frame is 1/8" and 3/8" aluminum. I'm aiming for a brushed looked. I think polished would not look good. The motherboard tray/distro plate is 18mm and 9mm acrylic. Components: **rendered components are just place holders for modeling** MSI X570 Godlike AMD 3900x Nvidia 2070super x 3 EK 420CE Radiator x 2 EK D5 Pump x 2 Corsair 140mm Fans (TBD) Corsair HX1000i PSU Status at time of 1st post: Most materials and parts are sourced. Right now I'm upping my CNC game and making test cuts on wood to verify fit. I'm nearing the point I have to take down my current system to cannibalize it leaving me with just my laptop. So time frame should be fairly quick. I'm hoping to be 90% done with a working system in just a few weeks with some final touch ups and accessories some time later. Big thanks to Alex and his channel for giving his time and knowledge.
A render of a previous design idea. It was a bit larger than my current design. Obviously wider which would have caused me to put it a less desirable location. Plus I started seeing it more of a coffee table than a PC art piece.
Expectation meets reality. *The red color in the render was just to differentiate the piece* Getting to this point in construction was why I decided to start a build log so there will be some out of sequence progress postings. I just wanted to share what I as able to do today. I'm fairly new to CNC work and this piece was my first time cutting aluminum. Why learn to crawl when you can run full speed. Started out fine.... But then this.... So I went from running to just walking. Tried to get greedy and speed things along and welded my bit. It was a really cheap bit not at all optimal for this cut but it was what I had. Some new bits in the mail should much better when I cut the 3/8" stuff. Actually this in my second piece. The first one turned out fine but my EK radiators were actually just a hair wider and the 145mm spec and I didn't allow any margin. They were so tight it actually bowed my bracket. So I added 1mm between the two halves in Fusion and recut. Works great now. After murdering a chamfer mill on the first piece doing the countersinks, I went with a ball mill and 3D adaptive clearing for the second piece and it worked out well. Used 320grit on an orbital sander to clear the surface and just loved the finish so I just put on a matt clear coat finish and called it done. Gives it a brushed look. I thought I'd try blasting it like Alex's current build but I am very happy with this finish and it takes a lot less effort. I'll post some test cutting I did on wood and acrylic prior to this piece soon.
Great set of first posts! Welcome to Bit! -Murdered a bevel bit: I'm guessing you used the same cut depth as a standard cut? Just sneaking down .032" per cut on plexi is hairy since it starts taking a wider cut each time. I've had parts break free on the last pass.
Side Frame Update: Been working on the aluminum side frames. Cut from 3/8" sheet I used the slow and steady method. Took forever but got both pieces cut. The first one I have an issue with my CNC bed. I think the weight of a 2'x2' panel of aluminum made it sag significantly in the middle. Significant for a CNC router anyway. Had issues with the zero height but I already started cutting and it was secured to the bed so I just powered through. Had a adjust a lot of setting for each section causing lost time. I got everything pretty dialed in for the second panel on day two and it took half as long. Cutting a relief for the radiator mount and hand tapping for the screws. I can and have been tapping using the shapeoko but the part was obviously to tall to use the machine. Coming together Next week I'll try to get the acrylic motherboard tray/distro plate done and hopefully have a usable system. Had to take apart my old system to get parts and measurements. See you next week.
It has been a few weeks of frustration trying to get the distro plate done. First I had alignment issues which I finally traced back to, of all things, the dust shoe on my cnc actually causing my spindle to rotate slightly when deep drilling. I then had issues with the mounting the pumps because one of the four fasteners on each pump is shallow due water channels under neath. I ended up resizing the bolts to 1/4-20 instead of 6-32 to get better hold. I also had issues with the orings leaking so I went up a size on the material to get a better seal. So far so good. I actually cut three pieces of the thicker rear distro piece to get it the way I liked. These leak testing pics give an idea of the distro layout. Most of it is hidden behind the motherboard and PSU.
Some half done pictures. At this point it is operational and I've been spending time playing with the new motherboard and CPU. I think it is the first time I've ever had an AMD cpu and I must say I am completely disappointed. Nothing but stability issues. This whole build is intended for new components for 3D rendering which will include new GPUs when they are released so I wanted a PCI 4 set up. But all that is for a different thread. Next step is the PSU shroud and a mountain of cable management.
Some shots of the PSU shroud cut from 1/8" aluminum. A design flaw left me with no way to add fasteners to the top and bottoms pieces so I ended up milling a small channel and gluing in little magnets. They are surprisingly strong and it ended up working out better than I imagined. I used regular fasteners on the front piece to add structural rigidity to the whole case. It looks a little out of place without fasteners on the top for it is how I'm leaving it.
Well it turned out to be a much bigger pain than I had hoped or intended (the entire case for that matter) but the main cable management is done for the 24pin and the CPU 8pinx2. I'm pretty happy with it so far. More work yet to be done.
This project is going on hiatus for a while. It was always intended to house next gen components so I have to wait until I can source a couple new GPUs and waterblocks before I finish. I'm wanting Founders Edition cards with the new 12pin cable for compactness. It'll cut the number of GPU wires in half. Once I get those I'll measure and cut cable runs for them that match the Mobo/CPU. ** I may re-cut the acrylic distro plate so the GPU inlet/outlet line up with the new cards. After practice cutting on this design it won't be to big a deal to make new ones.** In the mean time I also have to edit some fan cables to a more manageable length as well as adjust the USB lead going to the corsair commander pro I use. I also want to add a power switch, front panel USB type A and a USB type B. I have parts on order and will see if I can squeeze them into the very tiny area behind the PSU. Thanks for following along up to this point. I realize I am not providing a ton of behind the scenes construction but it's mostly just the CNC churning along. If anyone has specific questions on something I'll answer the best I can.