Every thing cleaned up and bolted together. With LCD in place. I will need to shave off part of the nuts for the LCD to sit lower in the frame Where this will fit and how it will attach to the box... I may end up bolting this to the 4 raised parts in the lid. The hinge is riveted to the case i should be able to drill a few out and replace these with bolts to hold a frame in place. The handle and locks are held in place in the same manner. A frame for the faceplate will be mounted in this way and it may work for the LCD. In other news a name has been found for this project. Turandot
Great case, I hope it turns out well. Looks rather messy but I guess it should be only for test. One question about your avatar: Is the cat a Colorpoint Persia?
bsodmike, I am not sure why some people cant see my host but others can... Thunder_return, it is messy. Cleaning everything up is on the to-do list but can wait until I get final placement of everything. As for Sphinx I don’t know what breed he is.
It looks like one of those posh computer operated bombs you see in hollywood films All you need is one of those toggle switches with the fighter pilot red covers, and you'll get security cacking themselves Cracking work, chap. Very portable, indeed.
Flat pannel fun! The rivets for the hinge looks like a good spot to hold. The holes are about 1cm deep and 1/8" wide. When drilling out a rivet use a size larger drill bit on the head. A line of bolts paves the way to a mounting point. The different sizes were temporary, as I did not want the case to fall apart on my table. The idea here was to bolt a plate to the case here and use that plate to attach other things to. The plate attached. The shorter bolts were just a little too short so I now have some extra bolt length sticking out of the plate. I may end up cutting these off at a later point in time. The backside of the case with the bolts. It looks like I might need to replace all the rivets with bolts to make this look nicer. The bolts will also be painted black. The topside was easier to attach, as there were already holes and screws for it. Although the screws for the locks were too short and were replaced with a bolt. I modified the frame by changing the direction of the long end of the mounting frame and adding a new flange to the top. Test fitting how this will look in the end. The new flanges will bolt onto the plates on the case. The whole frame will slide into place here. A few more changes to the frame were to turn around the bolts along the corners where the lcd will sit. I wanted some Lucite between the lcd and the outside world. My original idea was to encase the outside of the frame in Lucite but the way the frame was build the lcd would have set on nuts in the corners leaving a gap. The Lucite piece acts as a spacer and protects the lcd from outside damage. The lcd is bolted on its own to the outside of the frame and holds the Lucite piece in place. My ideas for mounting the controller and inverter changed. I wanted an insulator between the controller and any metal. I had thought of suspending both the controller and inverter from a Lucite piece but found both to be too thick for my longest bolts so the insulator would need to sit underneath both. I had a piece of scrap Lucite that was cut to the same dimensions as the mother board plate this was cut down to be used as a mounting plate and insulator for the controller and inverter. The original placement of the controller put the cables going to the lcd at a 90° angle. The connection from the controller to the lcd is weak and fragile, this is where that loose connection is located at. I rotated the controller so the connectors would face each other. A hole was cut so the cable would be able to pass through and hide underneath the controller board. The inverter was placed as far as the cold cathode leads would reach and still be able to be plugged in. The lcd finally bolted in to place. At the places where the bolts are would have close to imposable to get a nut on the other end so the bolts are threaded into the metal. Note to self always test the lcd rotation before you drill and bolt it to any case. The finished product does not look too bad although I should polish the metal a little. The entire system tested and running. That flying ide cable is for the cd rom. To-do. Test powering lcd with power supply and if this does not work mount lcd power supply to case and merge all power cables into 1. Construct Io panel and find placement for usb, etc Power and reset buttons need a place to live too. Mount cd rom better.
Plugging in the power supply is not convenient due to where it is located. I should have plenty of wire to move the connecter somewhere else in side the case. The fan plugs into a 4-pin header but only 2 pins are used I should be able to add another fan. That is a 10A EMI filter on the input to the power supply. A blurry picture of the power brick for the flat panel rated at 12v@ 3.3A. Way over kill for the lcd as will be shown later. The backside of the flat panel. I want to know how much current things are taking from my power supply. To get the current you put a multi meter in-between the banana plugs. The current plug with a adapter to power the flat panel with. The test setup. I used the Antec 400W to power everything. The LCD draws 1.341A from the power supply a little under half of what it's power supply is rated for. While I have this out I connected this to the hard drive and cdrom. This was taken on the 5v line while doing a virus scan on a cd and defrag on the hard drive. The 12-volt line with the system doing the same thing as above. I had a pic of the digital meter but could not find it, so here is a blurry pic of the analog just under .5A. Next would be the fans. This is a 80mm and a high cfm 120mm running with some what of a load. (Sucking dust from the carpet) The startup current of the 120mm stalled running at 12v! I did remember that I had my kill-o-watt on this power strip and found with out the lcd power brick I use 10 watts less power from the wall. The pics of this are really crappy so they wont be posted here. The reason the kill-o-watt was on this power strip is I wanted to know what Christmas lights would take earlier that morning. Anyways, since I should have enough over head with out overloading the power supply to cover everything I decided to take Mr.Red's advice and drop the lcd power brick and go with the 12v from a Molex to power the lcd. I get a benefit here of only needing to plug in one cable to a power strip, although I do need to relocate the plug on the power supply to a more convenient spot. My power cable and 2 Molexs are hidden in a channel underneath the lcd frame along with the signal cable, And yes the unused 5 volt and ground pins on the Molex adapter are taped. I have been thinking of putting the power reset and a few indicators lights above this and using the other side of the lcd for cable storage.. To-dos: Add frame to support face plate, cdrom, etc... Create io panel stuff.... Mount buttons and lights
From thinking about where to mount things in the lid, it looks like I should have added the mounting flanges to the front side of the lcd instead of the back. I have found a nice location for a button or 2 on the right side of the lcd. I will need something to mount things to at this point. This looks like it may work but I need to do some playing around with bits and pieces to get a better idea of what will fit. The space dimensions look to be about 12" x 2.5-3." The idea is based on bard's vandal resistant switch. I want a switch that is 1" to 1.5" square to be lit up with both the hard drive and power led and maybe have an etching of the power symbol on its surface. Since I don’t know the dimensions of parts to the button yet I drew up a diagram, in paint, of what my thoughts are on this. Some explanation on my crappy sketch, the light gray bar is what holds the button in place. The button will be switched by a micro switch and pushed back out with a homemade spring. Either clear or painted Lucite will surround the button. For the main faceplate frame I will need to tear down my system to drill and attach the 2 15" bars to the side. I have been gameing on this system from about day 1 and I am a little reluctant in tearing it down for a few days to attach these in place. There will be 2 or 3 cross bars one will help hold the video card in place another for the cdrom and drive cage, and the third may be needed to hold the io panel and 120 mm fan. The way it looks now I may need the faceplate in 3 pieces. I need to make another trip to home depot to look at small piano hinges for some pieces. Smaller things that I have been looking at: The point where cables go into the lid I want to hide these in some sort of tube. I had been looking at energy chains to see what could be done but I don’t think I can get any small enough that are totally enclosed. Along with the video and a Molex power cable their will be wires for the 2 leds both power and reset switches and maybe usb and serial. The main io panel will include; keyboard, mouse, serial, parallel, network and sound. I don’t want to make permanent changes to the board so I will need adapter to be made for this. But I wont need to make these for a while until I start cutting Lucite for the face plate. Question comments or complaints are welcomed.
That is totally awesome work Keep it up to the current standard, and you're sure to have a pooter that will be envied by many. Darkside.
I am in the process of doing a hand me down upgrade on a few systems that make Turandot non operational for a few days. I tore her down to do more construction on the case. This also keeps my fiancé’s little sister from wanting to play GTA3 on it. Before: After: I drilled out the rest of the remaining rivets in the case. The longer bolts are for attaching the faceplate frame to the case. The frame will attach in the same way as the flat panel is. The 2 rivets that were unused in mounting the flat panel were also replaced with a bolt to keep everything looking nice on the outside. Since my fiancé is getting an upgrade to her box, I happen to have another board with a heat sink that I would like to use in this project on it. The flower fits nicely inside the case and has enough clearance but it has one problem.... The arms that hold the lid upright takes a little more room when closed than I thought. To-dos: Build and attach the faceplate frame Find some memory. Find a heat sink. Solder up parts for io panel Cdrom...... Buttons.
Support frame mount. The frame is 16" and not 15" as planed; this should give me more support and leaves more material surrounding the outer bolts. With a bar cut to 16" 2 holes were drilled at both ends for the out side bolts to fit. The nuts on the inside of the case were removed along with all of the bolts except the 2 on the ends. These 2 bolts were kept in place to hold everything in place and to aid in mounting the bar. During removal one nut did not want to let loose from the bolt so it was cut off. After all bolts were removed except the 2 on the outside edges the bar was placed and attached. I came back and drilled the rest of the holes for the bolts. The bolts were then placed back into the holes and a nut fitted. Some of the bolts were bent or broke off during removal and were replaced. This except bolt problems went a lot smoother that what was done for the lcd. When I do place the face plate here the excess length of bolts will need to be cut off. On the other side the locks were removed and another 16" bar was clamped to the front for drilling. The screws that hold the locks were, like the lcd, were replaced with a bolt. I now need to place the motherboard back in to get the position for the video card a cross frame will help hold this in place. I also need to find a heat sink and memory. It also looks like the drive cage will need some more cutting to allow the faceplate to lie on top of this. Score: Number of bolts cut off: 1 Number of cut off wheels used: 2 Number of bolts snapped off: 3 Number of times the case fell apart: 0
Whoaa, you're not going to drag that case around with that Zalman CPU cooler eh ? I hardly dare moving my plexi case with that monster in it Looking sweet mate !
For you guys who cant see my host. This is not current but it is running. coorz: The Zalman uses the 4 holes to attach to the board it should not be a problem. I can’t use it though as it infers with the closing of the case. If you have any heat sink solutions I am all ears. Gnemelf: Me too.
well, the zalman is a pretty heavy heatsink... but u have the part aluminum version so it shouldnt be too bad.... its just a lot of people get quite paranoid when they have a 300 gram + heatsink on their board gettin tossed around... PCB is supposed to be pretty strong and flexible.... so i think you are okay however if you were to be worried about it, and want to keep silence in the option... there are a few other zalman coolers that are lighter.... but anyway great work! its lookin good
That Zalman pictured a few posts back went in to my fiancé’s computer, she got an upgrade and has the same board that is going in Turandot. I had wanted to use the flower in Turandot but I was unsure how it would fit inside the case so I used my fiancé’s board to test how it would fit. If I do use the Zalman it would be the solid copper one, although it would also need a side modified to fit so that the case will close, as would others. As for being quite I had originally planed to have a 120mm 130cfm intake over the cpu and north bridge.
