Heyyyy everyone!
TLDR I’m building myself a computer case. Come and take a look if you are interested.
I started to build my second computer case in 2012, and this has been kind of an ongoing project since then. I used to work on this during summer breaks, but for the past 3 years I haven’t done anything to this. I’m now on holiday for few weeks, and decided to continue working on this, maybe even get the case done, so that I can start planning new projects.
Originally, I was going to use custom watercooling loop to cool CPU, but my plan for now is to modify this case to use regular aircooling. Also, my original intention was to make custom I/O plate for GPU, which I did for my GTX 570, but after I upgraded to 1060 I decided to modify the case so that I can install graphics cards without having to make custom I/O plates each time.
When I started to plan out this case, I wanted to use the hardware I already had (2500k, mATX motherboard and GTX 570), snice I had just upgraded my computer in 2011, and didn’t want to invest money for new hardware back then. Goal for this project was to build small case for existing hardware that wouldn’t take too much space on my desk. CPU and motherboad are still running as my main rig, GPU got upgraded to 1060 in 2017. For storage, my plan was to use 120gb ssd and laptop HDD for local storage and dump all media and other data to separate file server. Well, since SSD prices are much more affordable than in 2012, I will use only SSDs for local storage. Currently I can install two 2,5 inch drives, but I’ll see if I can make space for a total of four 2,5 drives.
Anyway, I try to chronologically document where is started and where I’m now. I’ve lost some of the pictures for some things I’ve done, so there might be some gaps in my workflow. AND since this case project has been going on for years it’s hard to remember every detail, so I might skip some things that might be interesting to some of you. If there’s things you want to have more pictures of better explanation, just ask!
Some of my original ideas have since changed or discarded, but I’ll document them here anyway in case someone else could use them in their own projects.
HEY! What’s up with that project name?
I used to post my worklogs to other forum, where users named their projects. I took names for my projects from music. Strobe is a song by Deadmau5
This was the original plan. PSU is mounted on top of the CPU.
In the beginning the case looked like this. Just some 3mm aluminium plates and aluminium L-profile. At first my plan was to attach all plates together using alu L-profile, but later I noticed this method was not strong enough.
Starting to look something. Bellow you can see where the SSD/HDDs was meant to be placed. Drives are mounted with rubber grommets since I wanted to reduce the noise that spinning disks might cause, but now this is unnecessary since all drives are solid state drives.
Holes for the I/O.
Motherboard tray
And here’s all put back together. I’ve lost the pictures for cutting the opening for bottom fans, but tbh it’s nothing special really.
I’ll continue posting more once I get more pictures sorted out and resized.