Hi this is my first project log for my first scratch build. The inspiration for the chassis came from looking at development/testing rigs at my place of work, most of which are highly complex, made to such a high level of detail and accuracy they are almost works of art. From this i have decided to use aluminium extrusion for the structural parts of the case, brackets/panels/component holding/support will be mostly milled from alu, some laser cut from acrylic. I've wanted to build a pc for many years and over the last couple, I've been following a lot of project logs on this site among others and have finally got the ideas and resources at my disposal to enable me to make said pc build a reality. Most of the photos along the way may be taken from a mobile phone camera but mainly a regular digital camera. I don't have any fancy (D)SLR equipment, however i do have a tripod, so i will try my best to get some high(ish) quality shots for you guys where possible! I intend for the machine to be water cooled so the design incorporates space for radiators. I already have some hardware that i've picked up on ebay over the last few months for bargain prices: Asus P7P55D Pro, Intel i5 760, Windows 7 Pro 64bit, 2x4GB corsair XMS3 1,600MHz RAM modules, Kingston 64GB SSD. First image shows the first hiccup I encountered along the way: Warped motherboard You can just about see the connector stacks are wonky but the board is bent to the point where it spins about the middle if you put it on a hard surface. As long as i find a method of supporting the board underneath to straighten it then hopefully all the I/O connectors should line up with the shield fine, the worst victims have been sorted by wedging a rubber grommet between each other: Despite this problem the board works fine, me and a mate have had it running bare bones and it got to the windows install screen, it was happy as larry until the power supply (which suffered orange squash damage in the past) decided it wasn't up to the task of powering the GTX295 we had lying around for the purpose of a display adaptor. Ah well better luck next time. WARNING, MOBILE PHONE IMAGE: The milling of the motherboard tray (3mm Alu plate) The finished part with standoffs! Test fit: This image shows the distortion of the board better. Stay tuned, more to come, cheers.
