Hello fellow modders. I've decided to post my latest project here on this amazing site. and well it's a complete walkthrough more or less.. Project objective: Building a low-power, low cost, stylish Media Center/Fileserver. Materials: Intel Atom w. Nvidia ION platform. MDF sheets. Tools, Paint, ect... And off i where.. First off the whole case was to be illustrated for referance, and to chain my creative mind to some kind of flagpole, so i atleast was able to stick to one idea.. and not let the project drown in millions of twists and bends. Autodesk Inventor to the rescue: After the initial planning was made, and the measurements was done, time to get building First the perfect pieces was found, from the scratches dump of the local DIY-heaven. MDF in the perfect height and thickness. Boards cut for the frame of the massive 21x21cm (8.3"x8.3") box, containing it all. the hole for the rearplate of the MB has to be fittet, do note that this was a faliure on my behalf, since i made the hole from bottom and up... i'll adress that falw later.. The first assembled view of the huge case... in my dillusionate state of mind (and fairly worn down from my regular daytime job) i imagined that the uneven corners and screws could be sanded down to be nice and smooth... This was when i had a reality check... All the earlier images was from a friday, and let me advise any one who wish to enter the grand art of modding, case building and other such creatively testing feats.. Wait for the weekend, or atleast untill you are fully restet.. I returned the following saturday, and after spending somewhat close to an hour inspecting my... somewhat flawed masterpiece.. It went directly for the trashbin.. Back to the initial pieces of MDF.. After an hour, i had speeded the entire progress up a notch, and given very good thought into what to do, and especially how to do it. And the result speaks for it self: I made the whole with 11mm spacing from the baseplate for the MB, and sanded the edges. Corners glued and nailed in (using very thin nails instead of screws in MDF prevents the board to split along the sides, if improper pre-drilled.) Everything sanded down for a neat soft finish on the corners and on every edge. Perfect fit Well, after drilling the holes for the fan, and evening out the corners and other dented areas of the case. Off it went to the painter. I chose the easier sollution at this, instead of the, close at hand, aerosol powered paint spraycans, i choose to pay off a car painter.. well pay is somewhat overstated, since he used some leftovers he had in stock, and a beer is allmost less than payment.. But the case came back looking smashing!! The baseplate for the MB was made from sheet metal, and the harddrive neatly suspended in the airflow from the fan.. The pictures are absent, and for that i apologize, but when working so hard at something, you are destined to forget something.. luckily in my case, it was power for the camera i missed. And not something on the case. For a cover for the case i used an Acrylic plate, tinted with car-window tint. Holes for the power and reset buttons drilled and buttons glued in. A patch of film was removed for the 4x20char LCD display in the cover.. And end result is as follows: Thats it for now.. Hopefully a new project is just around the corner. Any questions are most welcome. Happy Modding
Lovely stuff. Quit smoking though That is exactly the sort of thing I would love to build, but every time I plan it out this little thing called money gets in the way.
Thanks. First off, smoking is my little retreat, what keeps my ends glued together.. (i get very.. unpleasent when i don't have my smokes) The entire thing, meterials and all, is less than 4000dkk or 800$, and that's incl motherboard, lcd-display hdd and ram..
Thanks DeadP1xels, but as i stated in the log, i jumped the low fence on that one The local car-painter (or, one of them even) just sprayed it a tad with your everyday gloss car paint i couldn't dream of making a build without spending a few bucks on a proper paintjob. imo, you can make the mod of the decade, and deem it to be the junk of the century, due to faulty paintjob.. (unless it's part of the mod naturally)
Ahh missed that i see what you mean though theres plenty of times i went to spray something and screwed it up im just no good with paint
Pretty neat So whats your next build ? Elsker din pakke cecil ved boksen og kender udem;rket den aflastende effekt de giver.
Thx.. Next Scratch (give at year properly...) is also a SFF, but more over on the gamer site. Hopefully featuring I7, GTX285/295 and WC'ed.. but still a project underways in the thinking phase. Next mod will be getting WC and some neat modding into my current rig (Stacker STC-01, Core2Duo, 9800GTX SLI)
