Hi all, Here is my latest project, all completed for your viewing pleasure. I've got a few notes to get out of the way: 1) I re-summarize the main points of the work log in this thread, but you can check it out for further details. Click here for the worklog. 2) I will be re-posting this in other locations, pretty much cut'n'paste--I've felt insecure ever since the Abit forum went down! 3) Please refrain from posting until I am complete. Without further ado, I give you: The Navig Exoframe Right side of the case. Backside of the case. In one sentence, I’d describe the Navig Exoframe as: A DIY scratch built watercooled exoframe covered with plastic panels. The 2 basic elements to this case are: 1) Square tube aluminum box frame 2) Translucent plastic paneling (dark bronze on the front, top, back, and bottom, and light blue on the sides). 3 Additional elements: 1) Aesthetically, rather than end up with a plastic cube type case, I actually wanted to expose the square tube framing—that’s the “exo” in Exoframe. 2) Size—since I was hand fabricating the frame, I could choose any size. I decided to go ultra-large to accommodate any future upgrades and additions, especially regarding watercooling elements, which always take up a lot of space. Basically I wanted to build a case where I would never find myself requiring more space. 3) Watercooling—going for a fully inclosed native support for multiple loop/radiator cooling. .
Construction: Concept. My original basic drawings. Again I wanted large and native support for watercooling. I went with a double wide concept, with an upright motherboard. Double wide would allow me to have my hard drives and 5.25 drives side by side, motherboard and power supply side by side, and the possibility of 2 rows of 2 radiators side by side. Yup, I know I'm a sucky artist. But I've built enough scratch builds at this point to intuitively know dimensions and layouts--one day I swear I'll do a little sketchup first. Once I had my general layout conceived, I needed to develop my method of framing. First I started with square aluminum tube, cut to length and miter cut at the ends to meet at the corners. Next I fabricated corner brackets from hand cut plastic, bonded to form a 3d corner bracket: Put these 2 together and the corners of my frame can be secured like so: With this basic principle, I built a box frame: .
. This frame is at the whole heart of the design of this case, which is why the project is titled the Exoframe. All the necessary intrinsic components hard mount to this frame. The plastic panels give the illusion of a fully enclosed case, but they are pretty much just decoration. For this reason the frame had to be solid by itself (paneling does add some rigidity). Here is a test showing both the lightweight and stable nature of the case: Notice I actually smack the frame against table, hey no probs! Then I laid out all my internal components and planned out all the methods to mount them: Next I constructed a removable motherboard tray: Then I cut all the large side panels: And now it looked sort of like a completed case: .
. But there was still a lot of work! The panels had to be carved out to accommodate fans, and bays. Spent weeks wiring the case. At this point I had settled on 2 2x120 radiators—so with fans in push-pull that alone requires wiring for 8 fans! I also had to work in wiring for cold cathode lighting. And remember, the switching panel is close to 1.5 feet away from the motherboard! In the end I constructed a custom cable harness. For example, illustrated above is the cable harness for my cold cathodes. That’s 3 cold cathodes, powered by 2 inverters, with a switch on the front panel some 3 foot of wire away. One trick I did to keep the case clutter free was that I actually ran many cables within the tube framing itself! On the left, you can see how I strung the cabling into the framing. On the right, when I reassembled everything, it appears that the cable is disappearing. Now that wiring was complete, I installed my watercooling components. 1 resevoir-pump column, 2 radiators, 2 blocks (one each for the cpu and gpu). Here I’m filling the system: Finally, you put in the pc components and turn it on! .
. Enough of the re-hash, now let's look at the completed project, where I'll point out some of the features built in. Starting with the front of the case: 1) I wanted to add a little architectural interest, inside of a straight cube, so I add a sloped panel at the top. It houses the switching panel, which features 2 vandal switches (power-on and reset) and a toggle (cold cathode lighting). The vandals light up (orange for power-on and purple for hard drive activity). 2) The main panel holds the bracket for 5.25 bays, up to 5. I’ve got a Lite-on DVD burner, and a Sunbeam rheobus to control fans (currently controlling the two front intake fans and the pump). 3) There are 2 intake fans with dust filters. These blow across the hard drive rack to keep drives cool. Side view: This is the main viewing angle, displaying the motherboard. When unlit, you can get hints of the underlying components. Or hit the internal lighting and everything is now visible. I’ll remove the side panel for best viewing of the internal components. Starting with the motherboard: I’m running a Abit IP-35E with a q6600 clocked at 3.6ghz, 2gb of Crucial Ram, and a G92 8800gts. I kept my watercooling simple: inflow and outflow to the cpu, inflow and outflow to the gpu. Gives it a simple clean appearance, with low restriction to flow rate. I’m using a Swiftech Apogee GTZ and a MCW60 waterblocks on the cpu and gpu, respectively. To give it a sleek look, the tubing appears to run parallel to the surface of the motherboard, with the last turn-ins done by Bitspower rotary adaptors. No giant loops of tubing (at least on this side). The tubing itself is standard Tygon ½” ID ¾” OD tubing with black anti-kink coils. You can also see the hard drive rack—I’ve got a 1TB and a 300gb Seagate drives. The racks are borrowed from Lian Li components, with tool free slide-in slide-out mounting. You can also see the Pump-Resevoir column. I’m using an EK resevoir and a Laing DD5 pump with a Petrastechshop top. Even tho the big ticket items are watercooled, airflow is still very important for overall performance. Motherboard components are kept cool with some dedicated fans: 2 120mm fans take air from under the case and fire at the graphics card. 1 120mm exhausts from the standard motherboard tray location, and 2 more up top exhaust hot air out the top. There is also a mini-40mm fan on top of the PWM heatsink, which gets quite hot with a overclocked quad. There are a lot of fans, but all of them are controlled down, running in the very quiet realm of 1000rpms. This diagram shows my overall air movement scheme. Blue boxes highlight intake fans and red boxes exhaust. .
. Back view: Here is a view of the backside. 1) As you can see, the motherboard tray is fully removable. 2) The power supply sits behind the motherboard tray, giving close access to components, while also helping manage cable clutter. All of the panels are translucent, so even thru the back you can see hints of the internal components. Left side of the case: Lights off: Lights on: And again, without the blue plastic panel so that you can see the components: 1) The left hemisphere of the case, pictured here, is mostly dedicated to the watercooling components and the power supply. The clutter (water tubing and power cables) are sequestered to this side. 2) I used 2 radiators (Swiftech MCR220), with low speed fans in push-pull. You can see how the tubing is routed. Pump --> top radiator --> cpu block --> lower radiator --> gpu block --> resevoir --> pump. This loop separates CPU heat from GPU heat, which is important as this system runs Folding@Home, loading all 4 cores AND the GPU at 100% 24/7. Again, thanks to the case size and layout, there is plenty of space to run tubing without worry of kinking. 3) The 2 major areas of cable interface are accessed from this side—and are still somewhat difficult to spot. I use the areas underneath the 5.25 bays and underneath the powersupply, to tuck away my cables. In a case made entirely of translucent panels, you must find areas to hide cable management. .
. More Features: I like to change our hardware on a regular basis, so component access was a priority. With a powered screw driver, all it takes is 2 minutes and a dozen mounting screws, and the side and top panels come right off. No need to even turn off the system: As you can see, with these panels off, pretty much every component is exposed. Also remember, all 7 panels are simply mounted with screws and can come off (altho for example the front panel, you must disconnect the bay drive devices first). To be honest, the entire case is held together by standard 6-32 machine screws. 10 minutes and a electric screwdriver, and the case can be reduced to a pile of aluminum brackets, some plastic parts, and the drive bays. Another feature I commonly use in many mods is my internal lighting. I like to use darkened plastic panels that are mostly opaque in normal lighting. However, punch one switch and the whole inside becomes lit up with 3 white CCFLs, displaying all the marvelous hardware workings inside. Now you see it Now you don’t style. .
. And my closing pics: It’s a blend of simple monolithic panels, but complicated internal workings. My modding typically does not involve much decoration (no paint or flames)—just plastic and brushed aluminum. I prefer radical and purpose-driven design, and generally use my PC hardware for décor. Plus, this was meant to be a functional case (hard to scratch brushed aluminum!). Altho the large side viewing panels are the lightest, all the panels are translucent, so hitting the internal CCFLs in a dark room allows you to see everything from any angle. It almost looks caseless. Needless to say, I’m a hardware junkie. Love showing off the internal components, especially the motherboard and the watercooling components. Components: Q6600 3.6ghz Abit IP35E Crucial 2x1gb RAM Seagate hard drives 1TB, 300gb Lite-On DVD burner Sunbeam Rheobus Corsair HX-620W Watercooling: Laing DD5 with PTS top. EK Resevoir 150 2x MCR220 Swiftech radiators CPU block-Swiftech Apogee GTZ GPU block-Swiftech MCW60 G92 iandh heatsinks Tygon ½” ID ¾” OD tubing with antikink coils Distilled water, PT nuke Approximate Cost: Stock aluminum square tube: $50 Plastic sheet stock: $150 Brackets, nuts n bolts: $50 Bay and hard drive brackets: $60 Switches: $40 Custom wiring: $10 Time: 5 months at about 6 hours per week. Total 120 hours. Must thank: my wife, supporters at the (now defunct) Abit forums, ocforums, xtremesys foums, bit-tech, and the raptor pit. Thanks, Navig Comments welcome now...but only if they are good ones ;> .
Some additional comments. For the watercooling crazy out there, this case currently has easy support for up to three 3x120mm radiators and one 4x120mm radiator, as illustrated by the diagram below: Additionally, I've had some requests for possibly building such cases for sale. I think its possible--I think my concept is solid, its not so difficult to put together. However, currently I don't have specific plans (my other custom for sale projects have a wait-list 10 deep). But I might consider it if I could get a machine shop to fabricate those corner brackets for me. Hand crafting them is a PITA. enjoy, navig
Yeah, your Mithril is pretty awesome. My designs are much more industrial-monolithic, even my wood builds. Besides MM, there really isn't much out there where you can say its easy and a pleasure to work with multi-circuit water cooling loops. Makes scratch builds really stand out for functionality. ps. I should add my sources. Note that I am NOT sponsored by any companies (but hey, if a company checks this out and is interested, contact me....:>). Performance-pcs Mountain Mods Jab-tech Petrastechshop svc mcmaster-carr onlinemetals Delviesplastics Home Depot Lowes
