I plan on building my own case from scratch. I want it to be fairly small and a cube. My motherboard is about 9.6 inches, square. It's a Micro ATX, that's why it's so small... But how big do I need to make my computer so that my other stuff will fit in it? Here's a list of the internal hardware I want: AOpen "MK89-L" nForce3 150 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 754 CPU eVGA nVIDIA GeForce 6800GT Video Card, 256MB GDDR3, 256-Bit, DVI/TV-Out, 8X AGP, Model "256-A8-N344-AX" OCZ PowerStream 520W Power Supply With Adjustable Power Rails With LED Indicators, SATA Connector, Model "OCZ520ADJ" AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 512k L2 Cache, The Only 64-bit Windows Compatible Processor Kingston HyperX Series Dual Kits 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 Seagate 160GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model ST3160021A Lite-On Black 52X32X52X16 Combo Drive, Model SOHC-5232K Thermalright Heatsink for P4 & k8 CPUs, Model "XP-120" (with a 120mm fan on top) Four 80mm fans (one on top, one on each side, and one in the back) Two Blue Cold Cathodes I need to take cords into consideration too. I was told plan for 2x the space I think I need...but what do you guys think? Would a cube 14" on each side work?
get the sizes for all your parts thn draw say your mobo then add bit by bit but go on the sizes if ya no what i meen
Alot of people use cardboard and tape to make a life sized model to work with. Others, like me, use sketchup.
I'm really unfamiliar with Sketchup. Is there any way that I could get somebody to make me a mockup of it using sketchup, with everything to scale? I'd be willing to pay some money for it if it's that much of a hassle.
If I were you I'd go with cardboard then. I think you'd want a side of the cube to be around 2" longer than the long side of the mobo, and work from there.
The small components dont really matter, such as ram and the processor and such, you would just need to take into consideration how much room you want above the motherboard. So the mobo could be drawn as a box, 9.6 square and x inches tall. The power supply, hard drive, cdrom and fans are all available in the sketchup thread. I'm at work right now with nothing to do so I'll throw them into a box for you. I don't know what type of design you are looking for though. How tall is the heatsink/fan combo on your processor?
Dimensions: 110 x 125 x 63mm (LxWxH) for the heatsink. 120mm fan on top, probably 25-30mm tall. The case ideally is going to be a cube. PSU in the back or underneath in the bottom of the case, and cdrom drive at the top and room for two hard drives, maybe vertically along the sides would be cool to save room.
I have a suggestion on your space dilemma: Ideally, you don't need any of that space, because you're about to come over to my house and drop off all that hardware, particularly the graphics card. Smallest you can go is about 10x10x7 inches INSIDE if that helps you, that should give you enough space to fit everything without having to tilt your motherboard (I have managed to fit a full ATX computer in a 10.5" cube without losing any functionality). And since you've got a MATX motherboard, tilting it won't even help you, so I guess the dimensions above are it. If you're building out of plexi, figure in the thickness of your walls on top of that.
*EDIT* BLAST! IE crashed and it saved my original post, so this was unnecessary. Sorry for the double.
I think that 12" will be fine for the motherboard. The thing I'm worried about is if it'll be enough room for my hard drives, cdrw/dvd drive, PSU, HSF, and all the cables.
Ok, Ive thrown something together. Took me about 15 minutes, but being that I am at work, I actually had to earn some money. Do you have sketchup? I can host the model for you to download. If not, these pics will suffice I suppose. This is a 12"x12"x12" cube. You see that there is alot of room. With alot of care you could make a 10" cube work. The box where the processor is simply shows how high the heatsink and fan are. I didn't bother showing the width as this probably isn't your mobo, thus the processor might be positioned differently, and that high of detail wasn't needed anyway. You really need to get sketchup if you don't have it. I am not an expert in CAD/CAM, yet stuff like this takes no time at all for me. It lets you play with setups as much as you want without destroying anything in the process. BTW, this is a 12" cube, not including the thickness of the acrylic. Here are pics of the five sides and the link for the model if you want: Front Left Back Right Top Iso Model link After making the pictures I realized the harddrives stick out the side slightly. Oh well, no biggie, theres still room.
Very impressive. Is that all relatively to-scale with the hardware I'm putting in (mainly worried about the PSU)? Thanks a TON that is great! I have the trial of Sketchup but I suck at it.
I grabbed all the models from the sketchup thread. I believe they are all accurate. The mobo is 9.6"x9.6". All ATX power supplies are supposed to be the same size, and it looks about right compared to the tiny mobo. Again, its just a quicky model. Hope it helps you visualize it.
Certainly does. I think I'm goign to make some changes with that, like moving the HDD onto the front inside of the case if there's room. I will have to see once I get the hardware, but regardless I'm now sure that there's plenty of room in a 12" cube to fit stuff it seems. Might be a tad bit tight on space but I am used to it.
14" I had originally planned to go with a 14" cube for my full atx case, but after playing around with a model i realized it would be freaking huge so now i've got about a 14 x 14 x 9tall rectanguloid and i think i could still make it smaller, but im using binning connectors because they are chrome and those take up space in places the mobo could go, so 12" is good, but you could probably do a 10" or 11" as well with clever cabling, etc...
11" would look mighty appealing, as the sheet metal I can get is 24 inches wide. If I were to do 12" I could only do one side per sheet, as if the edges weren't 100% perfect it would be messed - but taking off an inch on each side is defenitely doable, if I can cram it in.
A bit Off-Topic: can anybody give a short explaination on this "sketchup" thing? cause i'm doing my sketches on PowerPoint and it SUCKS!
