Scratch Build – In Progress Project Windtunnel | New Camera - High Quality photos!

Project Windtunnel

Welcome to what will be a painfully long project and my first scratch build.

I'll get straight into it as pictures mean more than words.


This was the starting concept, an even amount of airflow provided by 4*250mm fans moving 440CFM of air at 20 db. I wanted to achieve maximal airflow without the sound.


I decided that I would move all my hardware over from my other modded case (the arsenal mod) and thus I had to accomodate for watercooling. I dropped a fan as 4*250mm fans is 80 dollars and the 20 id save could go to buying another acrylic panel!


I finally settled on this for the design. The PSU will hang off the side, as will the hdd's. The cable management will be damn good even from the back it will be routed nicely. Its a concept that I dont think has been done before, to have the two totally different sides of a computer presentable, the technological side and the very clean motherboard side. I have to stress that this is as much a cable management project as it is a scrap build.


What I would need to cut out, this is a big case, 32cms wide and 60cms long!

Materials Arrive!



Three*3mm thick*600mm*600mm Clear acrylic
Two*6mm thick*600mm*600mm Clear acrylic
One*3mm thick*400mm*400mm Black acrylic


Work begins!


Bending the acrylic, its not as easy as I would have thought, I'm lucky I got a good heat gun (does 650 degrees)!


Safety first, This is another reason why safety goggles are essential, whilst dremelling some acrylic a rather small bit flung off and hit me square, I'll count myself lucky this time around.


Base completed






As you can see, I accidently dropped the acrylic and cracked the end bit, ill heat gun plus super glue it together at a later date.

Im waiting on quite an extensive amount of hardware, fans, plugs, watercooling tubes, acrylic....you name it I'm quite happy with the starting progress of the project and I will be doing the main case bit tomorrow! Until then...

 

The top is being shaped, im waiting for the two 250mm fans before I bend the otherside upright as itll be easier to jigsaw.





I also went and ordered two tubes of the weldon-16, I wasn't sure how much id need but just to be safe and save on shipping I thought id buy two. Im still doing up plans and trying to work out how im going to save acrylic so that I dont have to buy another few sheets. Its going to involve me skimping on acrylic wherever I can manage.

To do this, might have to remove the backplate so most of the motherboard backing is exposed, edit the harddrive and PSU configuration so that it attaches directly to the back instead of having two plates there. Im horrible at describing these things so ill do some sketches up later.

 

Bending, bending what am i making?




Its the waterfall res, taking shape! Going to weld the rest of it to the side panel.

The text "water" is cut out and the water flows around it quite well, the res is an interesting challenge as it has to not only hold alot of water, it has to do so without leaking! I'll see how weldon-16 can help me out there, the actual waterfall bit will be attached or "welded" onto the side of the case for all to see. With any luck the results will be quite stunning.

 

That water fall is going to look awesome if you can pull it off... Will get air all through your loop if you want it to look like it is flowing though. Ah... the price you pay.

 

Yes, it's tricky to keep air bubbles from getting pulled into the loop. Your best bet is to make a deep well for the intake. Some baffle walls between the waterfall and the sump well would help too.
You should cover the areas you don't want to bend with wood. -otherwise the heatgun heats all of the panel, and it ends up lumpy.

 

The res will be deeper than that, what you see there is the run off drip into the main res which will hold all the water. It has to weigh alot (around 1 kg) from my calculations to offset the amount of weight hanging off the other side of the case.

See the 5 harddrives, the powersupply and the motherboard all hang off the very edge of the other side of the case, just applying that much pressure to that one side has caused the case to become quite unstable.

The three 250mm fans come in today so hopefully ill be able to do some drilling and get the side of the case upright! Its all go from there! I got tygon tubing (ooooh tygon!) for the front tubes that you can see and el cheapo swiftech tubing for the water that will be routed behind the case.

I know its strange but im trying to hide the watercooling tubes as much as possible (im not much for the tubes everywhere look) and im also going to be hiding the PSU + harddrives. What your left with is a watercooled mobo and waterfall to look at. Ive got a sheet of vinyl that looks like carbon fibre that will surround the motherboard. It should all look very clean

 

I have come up with a fix for the PSU and HDD placement, basically it would involve "bending" the acrylic so that airflow from the three 250mm fans remains uninterrupted whilst allowing the PSU and HDDs to stay hidden. Here is what I have come up with.

Basically the back of the case will be left open, the hdd's should be able to keep themselves relatively cool without any airflow although if temps are too high I might start looking at a discreet cooling solution.

The point of the case is to have a windtunnel sort of, HDD's and PSU's would interrupt the airflow and arguably they dont need alot of cooling themselves (PSU's provide their own cooling for example)

 

I love the postal service. Actually, I love receiving things in the mail! Its like christmas without the nasty surprises everytime something comes.

So What came in the post for me today!



The 250mm fans! These things are impressively massive, Ill be modding them so they dont look...so...cheap (gonna put carbon fibre vinyl on them!)


Cable ties, coz they are always needed.


New Coolant for the theme of the mod.


My new switch, can ANYONE point me to a guide on how to install this thing so I can turn on my computer?


LEDs for the pump.


Ahhh the good stuff, dont we all love tygon


Weldon for all the acrylic glueing ill be doing. Im hoping that a standard spray paint mask should block the fumes, I hear they are pretty dangerous...



You can see everything, the two noctua fans are for the radiator and the mx-2, well thats pretty obvious. This computer shouldnt be louder than 20 db and for the amount of airflow ill be getting, thats immense!


Time to go modding!

 

I assume that it has 4 pin outs on the back. 2 of them are for the LED and 2 for the switch. Run some current across them (from a battery or whatever) and figure out which ones are for the LED (hint: it lights up...) then, if you just want the LED rim alight when the comp is on, solder that to the PWR LED out which connects to your board (if it doesn't work, then flip the connection on the board, you probably messed up the LED polarity), switch gets attached to the PWR switch bit of your board front panel section.

If you want the LED rim alight all the time, you have to find the 3.3v line in your motherboard header (IIRC, it is the purple wire), then solder it to that and to the ground lead in the header...

I have had a look at those Works Power 250mm fans myself, they do look cheap... but they are huge! Hence, they have that awesome CFM/Noise ratio. I want a few, but they don't fit in my case plans at all... Maybe if I ever get around to modding a full-tower...

Laz

 

OMG ITS A HUGE UPDATE!

Cheers mate! will look into it!


Update time!

Get ready coz this ones huge, actually I managed to build most of the friggen case in one single day. So where to start? I’ll try and structure this post.


Fan Installation: Well the fans are impressive, large...yes, very large. Like all large fans you need a big place to put them and luckily I designed the case 32cms across so fitting these big boys was easy. Just a bit of jigsaw action (in an out ) and bam, we had made a very wide hole




Bending:



Next on the agenda was the bends, the case needed the PSU to stay internal and the HDDs to stay internal leaving only the motherboard and waterfall as major features of the case. It all gets interesting from here on in, once the main frame of the case is all good then I can get down to the nitty gritty features and all the smooth sanding. It looks close to complete but I assure you, theres at least a good few months work to be done!



Is there anything weldon 16 cant do!

More Weldon 16....







Alright, so this is where we take my original plan and turn it into reality (excuse the photoshop with a mouse work). The motherboard and water feature are up front and the PSU and HDDS are out back, the two 250mm fans blow air up to provide the motherboard itself with 220cfm of air, the noctua fans blowing air in also provide another 60 to 80 CFM of airflow and thats around 300cfm at 20 db!

I really hope this case turns out to be as quiet as that, my case atm is way, way too loud...deltas with a fan controller are still hell loud!



Where to from here?
Well theres still the sliding door, the side panels, a motherboard tray if I EVER FIND ONE SELLING IN AUSTRALIA, the radiators, watercooling, the top fan....hdd bays etc etc

The part I cant wait to do is the carbon fibre vinyl, it will just look so slick (I think ) . Lots of work to do, id be doing it but im waiting for glue to dry...im hoping that weld on can live up to its hype, if it can keep that frame panel together forever then ill be one very, very happy man.

Oh and the case is around 68cm's high and 32cm's wide. Its bigger and wider than most primary school kids

 

i've been looking for an aussie shop to buy a mobo tray, but i found and old pc case and just cut out it's tray. looking pretty good so far. BTW: sure that acrylic will hold all that?

 

Holy **** are you modding inside a parking garage?
Good luck on this mod!

 

Where abouts in Oz are you? If you are nearby I can probably throw a steel MB tray at you... I have a couple spare. (non-vic numberplate... not looking good...)

Anyway, I like where this is going... but it looks like there is a heap of work still to do... I mean, that case seems to be lacking sides at the moment... and fronts, and backs...

Looks to be worth following... You got a colour scheme in mind?

 

Should do, I mean it is 6mm thick I will be bolting the motherboard tray through that joint as soon as I get one.

Cheers! Yeah its the parking lot of my units. Great amount of space and good ventilation as well. Its hot down there because the air con units pump the extracted hot air into the parking lot (dunno why) so yeah things dry quick!

I live in Brisbane.

Blue is the theme as it signifies wind and water both of which play major roles in the mod. The backplate where the mobo is going will be adorned by carbon fibre vinyl and the front will be partially black acrylic. The front and back can only be installed after the mobo tray has gone in and after the sides are finished. The sides should be able to support themselves.

And yes, there is plenty of work to do, the HDD bay for 6 drives will be an immense amount of effort. The sliding door will also be an effort in itself, I have a few ideas already. What we havent talked about is the CD drive which will either eject the cd up or down from the side of the case, im still working out how that will be done. Ive got a funny feeling that ill need more acrylic and carbon fibre sheets before this mod is completed.

Oh and there is no "back" to the case, the PSU and HDDs will be exposed as per the current design. There will be a front however. I will be making sure the main airflow within the case is completely sealed, that is air gets in via the bottom fans and leaves via the top fans. I dont want air leaving through the unused PCI slots and IO bay, that will all be modded air tight.

 

I was going to say you had more than enough glue, then I saw the size of your first seam. You should skip the mobo tray and mount the board to the plexi. A metal tray will look like crap in a clear case.
...And yer garage is HUGE!

Edit: There should be a circuit diagram in the specs sheet for the switch. The places that sell them usually have a PDF version linked somewhere.

 

Yeah the only thing im unsure of is how to get the PCI setup right so gfx cards etc installation will be easy. What ill probably do is dremel around the mobo tray so you cant actually see it and then use black plexi over the IO panel area and PCI area so what you cant see the metal.

BTW does anyone know if weldon 16 will keep that top half together with the weight of a mobo and a 3 fan radiator on top of it?

 

THAT sounds like a good trick.

It's a heavy weld seam, so the plexi should fail before the seam.

 

ITS ANOTHER HUGE UPDATE!

Ah yes its update time and what have I done today?

Well for starters, I went out and got a bit of lightning in a box to fuel my two 4870x2's that im planning to buy once I stumble upon large amounts of cash.


Its a huge box, its mostly padding though. The tissue is purely for comparison


Cutting out the little pieces to keep the PSU in place, I sanded them as well just for a bit of a different look.


Works like a charm!



After that I got started on the top, sanded some of it so that the weldon would have better grip (gosh going a bit overboard with all this sanding!).


Started on the HDD bays, to explain the holes, a long 40mm bolt will come through the hole and ill put a little U-channel on it. The HDD's will rest on these. To explain in words, the hdd cage will take advantage of one of the 250mm fans airflow and will be housed as an exhaust system.




The top being installed!



I think from these photos, you can tell how massive this case is, its probably got the biggest side window ive ever seen in a case...Its pretty clear that i'll need some more acrylic to get this mod complete and unfortunately gam mods isnt open till tomorrow (which means I wont get the order till monday >< )

 

Another...update.


When will it ever end?



Couldnt sleep so I got cracking on some more modding work! HDD bay, done, glue for the side panel, done. All in a mere 4 hours lol. (time flys)


HDD panel, fits a family of five, will be decked out in u channel to reduce vibrations. Very simplistic and effective.


I like this photo, why? Well it shows what the front panel of the case will look like. Most importantly note that the 250mm fan will be supplying those hdds with some nice, cool fresh air.



The base isnt even on in this pic, the case is just massive...its like godzilla case!

I know everything looks a bit flimsy atm but once the sides are on, itll be as stable as a 10 legged chair. Ill be moving all my stuff out of my old mod so I can deck out the watercooling in the new mod. The watercooling will be the most painstaking challenge of the entire project, a waterfall in a case thats tall enough to have one is just begging for a leak to occur.

So without further ado, im gonna bid my old mod goodbye!
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Y8RW_87vA

 

UPDATE

Im at uni, pretending to study. On my way I bought a thermal take wing chasis, i just wanted the friggen mobo tray and got sick of looking, picked it up for a 50 and went on my merry way.

I also managed to desgin the components to be made for the cable management.


The watercooling will be very managed, not a fan for tubes roaming wherever they like. Fan modules, ATX power cords and other little annoying cables will all be neatly routed and displayed at the back of the case. The back of the case is open air and the inside is all sealed and closed air (weird much?) so it all goes in with the original design.

The little cable tie pieces will be a godsend I can feel it already, I have plans to attach them to the watercooling routers and also weld them directly onto the case as I wish.I want cable management thats neat but also cable management thats easy on any upgrades.

Its no use if I have to tear apart the case just to replace a power supply, add a gfx card or remove a hdd. I might have to go back to the drawing board to help me implement a greater use of cable ties into the build. Any cable management pros out there?

Tips and suggestions are always welcome