Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Cubeleon

That is what I call a "big-ass" update..
Nice clean project..
MS

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I will keep it in mind, but that'll be a little expensive for $10 worth of cables.

Which cuts aren't straight

Thanks modsquad

 

loooks great man. i like it alot

 

Update 52

A few months ago, I started cutting new hard drive racks, but I didn't want to show them until they were finished. Now is the time to show them, I guess Fortunately I had a lot of leftovers, which were large enough to cut four new racks:



We'll skip the cutting and filing for this time, that has been shown a million times by now. These are the four parts, sanded till 400 grit:



Just to make sure, I tested all of the parts. They didn't fit very good the first time, but this time there were drawn in CAD before cutting so every thing fitted perfectly



The polishing went surprisingly well this time. After sanding with 1000 grit I gave Dremel polishing a shot, and it worked like a charm. My normal buffing wheel is too large for these parts, so I used the filt wheel:



Just halve an hour later, they looked like this





Because of the altered mounting height of the hard disks, a new backplate was needed also. The old one on the left, the new one on the right:







When it was time to give that part the same finishing as all of the aluminium parts, I resanded the front pieces also and gave them a touch of clear lacquer. They felt a little rough and different from the other finished pieces, so I didn't know if I coated them before. Better save than sorry



The same for the top plate, which didn't look good enough after the first try in November. It had some visible stains, not anymore:





Someone asked me a while ago if my graphics card would need heat sinks on the memory. I said no back then, because it's just a passively cooled HD3650, but I thought it would look cool so I made some

So I went though my metal collection and found a heat sink set I got from Frenkie a little while ago



This part will be cut to pieces:



This is how they looked after I cut them with the jigsaw. Four square pieces for the front, 4 for the back. I didn't have enough heat sink to cut eight square ones:



You can't exactly call the heat transport ideal with this design, so I sanded and filed until the bottoms were flat. It's a good idea to use tongs when you're holding these parts against the disk sander, because they tend to get really hot For a better look I painted them black:



This is how the card looked stock:





The four memory chips on the back:



And with custom heat sinks





The thing that bugged me again when I tested if the hardware still worked, were the two leds on the motherboard. One is bright yellow, one is bright red. That ruins the look with the white leds, so I needed to cover them or complete remove em from the motherboard. This is one, with LED2 next to it:



And here are the leftovers from LED1, because I decided to cut them off That should leave the mobo working fine, but cutting of a capacitor in the process isn't very good I guess Let's hope it was a redundant one:



The last thing I've done is replacing all of the push-in connections. I initially thought they would make things easier, but the combination of push-in and the other connections didn't look good. To top it off, they all leaked at first, but that was my fault. The use of Feser fluid stopped me from ruining my hardware.

The two connections on the right were replaced, I made the pieces of tubing exactly the right size again and I removed the text on the tubing with a bit of acetone:



A few connections at the pump were replaced also:





And for now I will leave you with this, with the case being almost finished. The last things I will show you is what I will do with the northbridge cooler, and with the right SATA-cables I finally found! See you next time, thanks for reading

 

looks good man very clean gw

 

Amazing
Waiting to see more!

 

Holy cow, this mod has taken more time than my own - lookin' good so far. Subscribed!

 

The new HDD racks look amazing. I really like your plumbing to the pump, very clean.

 

I have some very good news to share with you guys. It took over four long years, but today I have finally completed Cubeleon I can't wait to shoot some pictures and show them to you, I will do that tomorrow or the day after! I need some good daylight to get good pictures.

 

WooooHoooo, I can't wait to see the pics buddy .

 

looking forward to this new up!

 

yeah nice to hear that !
i was wondering what happend to this project !
can't wait to see how it looks

 

Sweet, one of the everlasting mods with high promises goes onto the list of the completed ones...
I hope the weather improves, or you find somebody with a decent lightbox, because the weather here in holland is absolutely hopeless for the last week now...

I'm waiting!

 

It had to happen someday, and today it's that day. Cubeleon is finished, complete and completely working! In september 2005 I started working on this case, and I couldn't have imagined what a journey it was going to be. With its highs and lows. The highs of finishing intricate designs and difficult parts, the the biggest low of not finishing in time for The Benelux Casemod League, about a year ago. I took my time to iron out all of the little flaws in the design, make everything leakproof and to make it look like I wanted it to be. With pride I present you Cubeleon!





































Lights up!!



PLED's up!!





















And two more overview shots to finish with





So that's it then. I want to thank everybody that ever visited this topic, and them that took the time to reply and spill their thoughts. A big thanks goes out to mister Geurkink from the Saxion in Enschede, but CNC'ing a bunch of aluminium sheets, even when I was in a hurry and couldn't be there to help him with it. And last but not least, to all my friends and family that didn't complain about my constant talking about a computer case all these years. Thanks everyone!

 

Gongrats on the finishing of your cubeleon, it took ages, isn't it?
I remember you started with it back in the days of casejunkies
grtz!!

 

Prety amazing... just dont like the silver or grey color ... needed more color on it !

 

I actually really like the single color. I think this build is fantastic. Nice work!

 

What????
From 26 months of watching this is all we get?

/end sarcasm

This is nicely done and well designed. You should be proud of it.

john

 

Wow, very nice indeed

 

very nice i like the semi industrial theme.