Modding ATTN: Custom Case Builders: Advice Requested

thought about this when i was debating what to do the case out if. it seems like the best, for the look im going for, will be acrylic, although fiberglass would make things a lot easier to put together.

im still up in the air as to what to do it out of, but i am leaning toward the acrylic. all of this is going to have to take a back seat though. i need to know what goes inside before i construct the outside, and that is giving me fits.

hmmm....wonder if those proximity switches would work through fiberglass.... i dont see why not.

 

UPDATE:

went home this weekend, and while i was there, my dad was spraying some chairs and a table for my mom. i tossed him a piece of my scrap acrylic and he sprayed it with the white primer. after it dried, it looked REAL good. i mean EXACTLY like what i wanted. i think that i have chosen to go with the acrylic for this case.

if you guys havent gotten bored with this slow process, i was wondering if you wouldnt mind giving some advice on the components to go inside it. should i expand the case a bit and fit a matx board in there? should i go mitx? i like the dimensions as they are, but they arent set in stone.

all you wiser modders tell me what to do. have you ever built a system then not been impresesd as you thought you would by its performance?

 

From your 1st post, I'd say that in terms of performance, anything equal to or over an epia 1000 would be fine for you.

 

thanks for the hardware advice. i will look into that.

 

I will be very interested to see your choice of hardware. I am unfamiliar with many of the small boards today and so would like to hear why you choose what you decide on (when you decide, that is). Glad to hear you picked your medium!

 

you and me both. i know nothing about anything smaller than ATX, and i dont know it very well. that is why i came to the experts here. im hoping they will give me some hw tips that will help me build this not so beastly beast.

my ideal of the perfect set of guts would be the apple cube mainboard upgradded to a 1.4 gzh sonnet processor with a 512 dim of ram. but have you seen the price of those mbs? out friggin rageous. its just under 8 inches by 8 inches and would fit perfectly. unfortunately i dont have one so im looking for a pc alternative. havent had a chance to look at the epia yet, but will get on that.

 

I've been looking at matx motherboards for a couple of systems I've been wanting to build. One line that has caught my eye is shuttle's MN31N and MN31L. It's probably a little bit of over kill for this application, but it's an Nforce 2 chipset with nice onboard 6 channel sound, a built gforce 4mx with dual vga outs, and 6 usb 2.0 ports. The only difference that I've managed to find is the *N has 1394 as well. The gforce 4mx isn't going to be playing farcry, but it sounds like it'd be more than enough for your g/f. Also the audio really does sound nice. You could hook it up to her stereo for her and she can play her music as mp3's, and with the surround sound, DVD's would be nice too. If you shop around you should be able to pick up this mobo and about a XP 2000ish for less than $100 total on ebay. Hope this helps.

 

this sound nice, ill have to take a look at this setup. i like the stats. it is a bit overkill, but its more upgradeable. will definately take a look at it.

i finally got a chance to search around for the epia series and found this. i really kinda like it. im just not sure about the integrated processor, but if it runs at 1ghz, i guess thats fast enough. but i know nothing about these things. i have no idea about the reliability etc. the best thing about it is its size, 17cm x 17cm. wicked small and would be a perfect size. the price at $159 isnt too bad either. also is this wicked cool power supply. that would also be perfect for what i had in mind.

im getting kinda excited and thinking about a full commitment to this project, including a project log if anyone is interested in watching it develop. just gotta muddle through some hardware decisions and see if final planning is fesable.

 

i took a look at the MN31L mb and i kinda like it too. one thing im wanting to do for sure is to have an external powersupply. i saw that the MN31L has both ATX and 12VATX connectors on it. do you know if you can have an external powersupply if both of these have to be connected? what kind of deal would i have to get to work that out? if you can point me in a direction, that would be great.

 

Go Steel

dont be trendy.

just go steel. better yet, dont go matx, go BIG. and still go steel, with a window

 

eh, steel doesnt look slick enough, and i cant go big. she has limited desk space since they are built in to the room so it needs to be small and unobtrusive. besides why would i want to waste a lot of space with just nothingness inside a case? and she doesnt really care about what the insides of the computer look like. she refers to that as "dorky." pft, cant imagine that.