Hi everybody!
My name is Femke Agnes Toele, in short F.A.T. I’m a goldsmith and silversmith by profession and I have a small workshop at home where I can work.
I have a lot of tools at home, and make a lot of things, not only jewellery. I have always been interested in electronics but never really got the chance to master this.
So when a friend of mine saw the ECS Casemod Contest on the internet, he said that this could be the chance for me to work with both electronics and a nice design.
I thought; ‘ I’ll give it a try, (not knowing that It would turn out really well : ) !
I went to Computex Taiwan last week to promote my computer with 4 other Modders. Great experience and I won the ‘Viewers Choice’ award on top of that!!
This is my first scratch build. So if you want to see how I made the build.. just scroll down : )
My Mod is called “Little Scratch”, it is a very compact build. The build is 22 cm high and the case around the motherboard is only 19x19cm.
I made a video for the Contest, if you want to take a look, here is the link:
BUILD LOG:
I started to make a few designs out of cardboard just to get an idea about the size of the build.
Immediately I noticed that I liked a smaller design. So in the end I didn’t use any of these designs, and I started with someting else.
A friend helped me with the basic computer knowledge and made me some styrofoam blocks in het shape of the MB, PSU, etc. So I could start to puzzel with all of the parts and give them their place in the build.
I printed an image of the motherboard that I used several times to highlight the main features of the motherboard. In this contest the motherboard really had to stand out!
After I made the design for the build and decided on what hardware I was going to use I ordered everything.
The Motherboard
Paracord To sleeve all the cables.
A box full of LED’s, always good to have!
The Processor
And a Pico PSU!!
Ofcourse the RAM
An old fan
So now the most fun part of all, starting the Build : )!
The plates which will cover up the motherboard are made out of poly carbonate. This material is also used in bulletproof glass. It will bend but not break when you cut it.
First drilling the holes and after that cutting away the parts.
Here you can see that the poly carbonate plate almost fits on the motherboard.
I had to modify the motherboard a bit to make the front poly carbonate plate fit. I used a file to cut away a few edges.
For the Mosfeds and capacitators I made small aluminium coolers. They will show at the front plate of the build.
The Heatsink I wanted to use was very big and not really....good looking. It would cover almost half of the motherboard if I would have left it the size it was.
I cut it untill it was only 5,5cm in diameter. I did this with a disc cutter. To make the Cooler nice and round I used a Turning Lathe.
The Chipset cooler is made from a solid piece of aluminium also made on the Turning Lathe.
I made a special frame for the cooler to fit to the motherboard.
Under the heatsink I also solderd a solid frame, which is quite difficult because you want to have your heatsink exactly on the processor when you screw the part to the motherboard.
To make the last cooler look nice I engraved the ECS Logo.
After I cut the Logo I filled it up with a Blue paint.
I had to make a frame for the motherboard. I wanted to keep the build as small and thin as possible. I bought some aluminium angled profile and cut these to the right size. Made angles and solderd the frame together.
Here you can see the aluminium solder on the corner of the frame. This type of solder doesn’t ‘flow’ like normal solder does. It is very strong, but I only cut away a little of the extra metal. I will modify the front plate of polycarbonate to the frame.
The aluminium has a special coating. I wanted to take this off to let the aluminium shine more and give the material a more ‘metal-looking’ look. Here you can see the differences.
To create the base of the computer I took a sheet of aluminium and folded this into the right shape and soldered it.
The frame has to be held by the base so I cut a hole in the base. One of the corners will sink into the base to create a stable form.
The base is quite light, so to give more weight to the build I made some pewter blocks to fit in the base. The blocks will be tightend to the bottem so the case is stable and will not fall over or anything.