So I've been wanting to post a build log of my custom case that I built from scratch (to think it's been more than a year since I started X_X). Technically my build log starts here. There's a bit of irony considering the goal was to make a slim ITX case. Anyway, I'm on my second revision of the case so I thought I'd start a proper build log now.
So I initially started with the motherboard tray with 1/8" thick plastic, but that didn't last for long...
A lot more happened in between those two trays, but I thought I'd start my log with those. As the week goes by, I'll post more of my build log; but for now I'll leave it here....
Edit: Almost forgot to mention, you might have noticed the mother board changed. At one point I had the MB tray on the floor with the CPU socket exposed and to my misfortune I had some heavy objects fall directly on the socket.... X_X
After building the tray, I continued building the case in a modular fashion as I didn't know what hurdles I'd run into or what parts I needed to throw out. The entire build was a "learn as you go" process. Unfortunately I either didn't take any pictures or lost them (I have a feeling they're in a disk that I've put away in a box) while they were in their individual parts. However below is a sketch of parts separated. There's 3 columns joining the top with bottom along with the PSU module. The MB tray holder also was a separate module with two rods that would screw into the tray and a third screw to hold it from the bottom. At this point it became clear that thin wasn't a reality. I didn't want to get a non standard ATX PSU and I didn't have the resource to build it into the bottom.
You might of noticed in last post, there was an empty chamber in the bottom. Something I forgot to mention when I started this build log was the over all design. The idea behind my case was to make something silent by having the air pulled from the center of the case rather than the fans being mounted to the wall of the case. So my case is technically both negative and positive airflow. Also inside that negative airflow space is fan controller and where all wiring is hidden.
Here's how it looks from a top down view (before joining everything) and from the front.
As for the fan controller and hiding ugly wiring, here's 2 pictures of that. You'll notice the controller changed, I'll get back to that on a later post. As you can see in one of those picture's, there's an H100 pulling air from that chamber.
As for things that changed along the way, there were a few things that didn't work out or broke. The H100 I got was refurbished, but one of the stock fans was faulty causing the fan controller to short. So in the end I gutted out that PCB and replaced it with an arduino microcontroller that lit up a bunch of blue LEDs.
Another thing I changed was two 1x2" platic blocks with a nut glued in as a mount point for the fan controller tray. I ended up replacing it with two large surfaces (as shown) with the nut snuggly fit in a nut shaped hole with glue.
So as promised; on to the next segment of my build log...
As you saw a few posts back, I changed the fan controller enclosure. After realizing I was wasting space by having a fan controller that was more empty space than circuitry, I rebuilt the enclosure with the added benefit of having the knobs facing up.
Rebuilding the tray was easy as I just had to cut off the rear segment and glue a rear wall with 2 holes to screw the enclosure in.
After putting putting the main body together, I then worked on the side panels. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of that being put together but basically they amounted to 5-6 pieces of 1/4" acrylic being glued side by side with magnets glued into holes in the top and bottom segments of the panel, 2 countersink holes in each rear segments and 2 painted iron flat bars glued to the top and bottom of the case with E600 glue. In later posts you'll see how those panels look.
With 4 fans attached to the radiator I needed an easy way to install the radiator with it being center mounted, so I ended up building an enclosure that screwed onto the case where it pulled in air. You'll notice in later posts and in some of the earlier posts, there's 4 threaded rivets for bolts to go in.
So in total there's 5 fans that attach to this enclosure with on of them being a 90mm fan blowing air towards the motherboard and PSU. The 90mm (or 100, I forget...) fan is actually inside the enclosure unlike the radiator with mounts to the outside.
So the next part was to build the front panel. Unlike your typical case where the front is just a detachable plastic cover that's more cosmetic than function, mine has the drive bay attached to it which is nice when you want install something. Building it took a few iterations. The basic idea is the front panel has 6 4x1" bays with 4 stacked and 2 on the sides such that things like the the power button and io ports are just bays the can be added and placed as need.
As for attaching the front pant to the case, I used some acrylic clips and square blocks. The blocks prevent the panel from shifting side to side (and add a little friction grip too) and the clips hold it in. To get things accurately placed, I taped the panel to the case as I clued those parts in and also masked off the areas where the glue would bleed off. In this case I used the gel kind as acrylic cement would just go everywhere that is tightly pressed.
As for the io and power buttons, those were just a matter of drilling the needed holes and fitting them into their 1x4" enclosures with the exception of the power button. I wanted to go the extra mile and have it so that the button pulses rather than flash with the computer sleeps, so I wired an arduino to read the power led and output accordingly (basically check for a solid on or if it goes in and out). FYI: the arduino is powered by a battery and 4 pin pwr.
For the remaining 4 bays, they're composed of 2 Roswell hot-swap drive bays (4 in total) and a custom 2x4" component I made. After watching a few youtube videos of some other builds, I decided to mimic so of it. So I got 1.3" OLED display, 2 small fans and SATA extension cables/adapters. The idea here being the fans cool the other 2 bay drives, the SATA adapters allow me to externally connect 2 extra drives (full sized drives that is). As you can see in the photo, there's cover over those 2 SATA connections which is magnetically held.
Here's how it looks with the panel put together. I had to reduce to the exposure so the display and power button doesn't show up as a blur of light. @WhiskeyRanger you can see where this is going..... :P For now it's a spinning gear, but that'll eventually change....
You may have said this at some point, but what tools are you using? Do you have all of the pieces machined somewhere or do you have a bandsaw or something?
Since I don't have a garage that I can do this in, the square cuts are from Tap Plastics (+ edge routing of those cuts), the rest is done with a dremel, drill, vice, file and the usual hand tools. Basically all of this is pretty much built in the kitchen of my apartment. There are a few exceptions, Tap Plastics also glued the base frame as I couldn't quite get a perfect square shape with the clear acrylic rods. You'll notice I link over to another thread I started on the start of this thread, there's some helpful pointers there. For those who have a table saw, I recommend getting an table router too as table saws will produce jagged edges. As for getting a nice polish, the sanding order I go with is: 200, 400, 600(wet), and buffing wheel with Novus #2.
So now it's on to revision 2.0 of Mini-Monolith. After running the initial build for some time, I realized it wasn't cooling as well as it should and found some points of failure. The first is that air was being pulled from the positive space back into the negative space through the grommet and the other was a bad design choice for the fifth fan in the radiator box (the yellow fan) which didn't push any air out.
Fixing the first issue was simple as I just added a cover plate and foam under the grommet.
For the other issue it was just a matter of getting a thinner fan, but I'll follow that up in another post....
As for my initial custom water loop design; that was a complete disaster. Everything was a tight fit, the pump was loud, there wasn't an actual reservoir in the system and one of the two aluminum water blocks leaked.
At this point things are almost caught up with the current state of the build. So I should have things wrapped up and posted in another week or two (or three)... it's funny how much of this was the original build and not the second revision.
The challenge with this one is that it's 3/4" thick so I can't get a cut at that width. So to get around this issue I glued a bunch of 1/8 thick square rods to build up the wall. It kind of looks like the lined pattern of those old translucent iMacs.
One of the things that didn't work out that I removed for rev. 2.0 is a button behind the motherboard tray that lights up some orange LEDs below in a pulsing fashion when the tray is removed. It didn't work as the button worked 1/2 the time and the wiring got out of hand. As a result, a large gap was left after removing the wiring and extra plastic which I used to add a reservoir that I built. On a side note, a chisel comes in hand when removing glued plastic.
As for the reservoir, it's made up of 5 layers, 1/32" thick top cover 2 laser cuts 1/4" rectangle frames for 2/3 of the body, another 1/4" piece that screws into the case and a 1/4" rectangle for the bottom cover and inlets/outlets.
