Stuxnet (case build)

[FurbyByte]

Intro

 

To start things off this is my first ever case build and DIY project involving aluminium and possible other metals. As of this my techniques may not be correct and the tools I use may be incorrect. Saying all of this I expect to have a good finish and to achieve a few goals (for the case and computer to go in it). The first of these is a computer which blends into its surroundings and acts as the furniture. It will achieve this by being very clean (nothing fancy in the design). Next I want a computer which is as quiet as possible. This will be achieved by having minimal fans and minimal power draw (power efficient components). 3rd it has to be powerful. This computer when complete will be my daily driver and therefore needs to be able to perform as I require. The components are yet to be selected but may include a Zen CPU when released. The final requirement is for the case to cost as little money as possible. This does not mean it will skimp on quality but more means every purchase will be taken into account and carefully planned.

 

I do not expect this case project (leading into the computer project) to go 100% smoothly but that is the fun of it all. It will take some time to complete but my plan is to have the case finished by the end of the summer and the computer finished at maximum in a year (if all goes to plan). The reason for this long time scale is I want to see what the Zen CPU's by AMD are like and as they are yet to be released I cannot currently see this. The next reason (and the bigger one) is I don't have the money. This will come slowly but currently I am raising money for a school in Africa which I am also helping in the building process and once this is finished I will be a student at uni and so will have next to no money. 

 

The project (plan)

 

So here goes everything I have done so far. just so you know the current estimated cost is about £40.

 

Project started - 24/6/2015

current project plan: Make a small form factor PC which is just as powerful as a full tower (the motherboard will be very important to add this ability). Possibly make into a tube otherwise make a small shell to go around the components. The computer should be able to fit full size graphics cards. Computer will be named Stuxnet after the computer worm which affected industrial programmable logic controllers in nuclear power plants (possible theme based around this). Colours will be white/grey, yellow and green. 

 

You may have noticed above I mentioned tube. This was from my original plan (yes I went through a lot of planning). I almost went through with a tube but what stopped me was either the price, strength or size. Starting with the price looking for metal tubes the right size would cost a fortune. I cannot remember the price but I do remember it was over £200 and would have to be shipped from America (from where I found it) and therefore following the resent Brexit it would be more now. Following this I started looking at products I could buy and take the tube from them. Metal bins looked promising but it proved very difficult to find one the correct high and diameter. I would have settled on one with a bigger diameter so I could get the high but the problem here was the metal used for the tube was thin and week. Not good for a computer case. So now with that scraped I started looking for an easy way to build a tube. For this I settled on a hexagon for the shape. The choice here was partially due to looking nice, no computer case as far as I could see used this shape and SketchUp which I used for modelling had this selected by default. A hexagon would be simple (just about) to make. I could make this with aluminium angles bent to shape and aluminium bars (later changed to steel). The planning for this was all done on ShetchUp and influenced by YouTube videos from a channel called DIYPerks. I guess this is also the time I settled on the case name (different to the computer name). This is Hive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The build

 

build start time: 5/7/2016 (dd/mm/yyyy)

 

materials used:

aluminium angle (15mm x 15mm x 2500mm)

 

Finally, onto the build! So now with the bulk of the planning out the way (more will be changed during the build I'm sure) it’s time to start building. I started by going to my local DIY store to pick up the aluminium bars and angles. The angles were fine and felt strong. The bars on the other hand were very week and I feel with my design these would bend. My design has all the weight being suspended from the top (the centre of mass will be in the middle of the computer (ish). I purchased the angles but left the bars. Once home I could start cutting and bending the aluminium angle into shape. I chose to go slightly bigger than my model so I would have a better time measuring and more room to play with. If you are yet to notice, the aluminium angles will be the top and bottom of the case along with a few supports here and there. The bars on the other hand will be the supports connecting the top and bottom of the case together. These therefore have to be strong which the aluminium is not. Fixing this problem can be completed with a few solutions. First the aluminium could be changed to steel. This is strong enough but will cost slightly more (by a few pounds). Next aluminium angles could be used which are strong and would cost around the same as the bars. Finally, long screw threaded circular bars could be used with adapters. This is likely to cost a lot less but would take away from the aesthetics inside the case.  As of yet this decision is still being made but I am weighing more to the steel bars.

 

I started the build with the top and bottom hexagons. These were made with the aluminium angles. On the model these are shown as just over 108mm long per side. I upped this to 110mm per side for the real thing. This will have a couple of reactions. The first and most important being more room to play with. This will best help with the motherboard which would have about 2mm room either side of it before it hit the case. Now it will have about 8mm each side. The next reaction is negative being more material is needed. I don’t know about the cost increase yet but it should not be much as I did not increase the size by much. Any other reactions are undetermined so far. So back to the case. The aluminium angle had slides removed from one side. Each of these are in the corners of the case and are 60 degrees slices. Once cut identically (as close as I could get) the angle could be bent into shape. I don’t have any special tools for this so I clamped down the metal and used my hands. On the first attempt I realized I was 5 degrees out on all corners. This was a quick fix. The bending went successfully with the only drawback being a slight misalignment on both the top and bottom. This will be fixed later.

 

That is it for this update. I will add more in the near future.

 

 

 

[21rkosta]

22 minutes ago, FurbyByte said:

following the resent Brexit it would be more now.

Dang brexit... lol, nice case build though

[FurbyByte]

Update!

 

Ive now been working on the computer case for a short while and have made a lot of progress. I have also completed a video showing progress up until this point: 

 

materials used:

3x steel flat bar (20mm x 2mm x 1 meter)

everything else from before

 

The first step I made for this update was to lay down the steel and aluminium in the rough shape I plan it to go. This was just to see what the case would be like and it may inspire me or something like that. Nothing happened but I did get a picture to show you.

 

 

Next I had to cut the steel bars down to 40cm pieces. All of these had to be exactly the same length. Something I expected but did not realize it would be this hard is steel is really hard to cut through. Matters were not made better by my hack saw being blunt but I managed and I had a good file so that made the fine adjustments good.

 

 

Following this it was time to add holes to attach everything together. The plan was to have two holes in the top and bottom of each steel bar and these to match holes in the aluminium angle. I made the mistake of drilling these holes in the steel and then the aluminium resulting in some holes not lining up. I'm still working on a fix for this. I also had the plan of using self tapping screws but this did not work. The alternative which I went with was using a tap and die kit to add a screw thread to each hole and then screw everything together. This worked perfectly minus some holes not lining up perfectly. This brigs us to the last part which is the test fit of the case. As this is only a test fit half the final number of screws are attached and they are screwed in the outside instead of the inside like they will be then finished. I am happy with the result so far and in the next update I will be moving onto improvements and component mounts.

[FurbyByte]

Update 2!

 

Its been a while since my last update and as much as I have not achieved what I would  have liked at this point progress has been made. If you go back and look at the top and bottom hexagon pieces you will notice there is a join on each piece which at that time still had to be attached to the other join. I've been attempting to join the two ends together for some time with an epoxy called JB weld. This is very strong but it does not match the metal it is attached to which resulted in it cracking and splitting many times. This would not be a problem but it takes 24h to dry and therefore each time it cracked it would halt production for 1 day. After about 1 week of trying to get a strong bond I started to look for an alternative. This ended up being adding a metal brace which I attached to each hexagon before using JB weld. The brace will stay on the pieces as it adds strength which I need. 

 

 

Once I had successfully glued the ends together it was time to sand everything down. This was hard in the corners but the result is very good. After this it was time to reconstruct the case which I dissembled for the gluing. This was mostly easy apart from one corner where I need to sand down the hexagon a bit more. 

 

That's it for this update. I will be back soon for more.

 

[FurbyByte]

UPDATE!

 

 

Its been some time and a lot of progress has been made on the case. This was all with the motherboard mount. To start this I had to attach a couple of steel bars to the case. Two of these were straight and therefore easy to add. The other two had 60 degree bends in them to allow them to be fitted to the case. Once these were made I could go ahead and make the motherboard tray. The original plan for this was to add two bars going across the inside of the case. This however would not have worked as during a test fit with paper cutouts I noticed the screw mounts on the motherboard were not lined up. This would have resulted in 3 out of 4 screws being fitted to the motherboard. The solution for this was to use a old case I had lying around and chop out the motherboard tray. This as much as it is wasting a computer case was a very good solution as it meant I would not have to drill the holes for the motherboard. With this I expected I would have had less than a millimeter margin for error. So with the motherboard cut out I prepared it and attached two pieces of aluminium angle to it to add strength and add the attachment points for it to be fitted to the case.

 

That is all for this update. AS much as I have condensed it down into a small paragraph I found this part of the process very difficult and many times I would have to repeat some steps due to damage and errors. This also will be the last update for some time as I am at University and therefore cannot work on the case until I am home later on this year. 

 

Enjoy

 

 

[FurbyByte]

More pictures 

[FurbyByte]

[FurbyByte]

[Heesleemer]

awesome, reminds me of silverstone

[FurbyByte]

It has been some time since my last update but over Christmas I managed to get a week or so of work complete. Over this time I worked on the fan mount, PSU mount, GPU mount and side panels. 

 

For the fan mount like with the motherboard tray I reused one from another case (the same one I got the motherboard tray from). This was cut into the same shape as the case so it slot into place and then was secured with self tapping screws before the ends of the screws were cut off and sanded. 

 

Next with the PSU mount this is made with some steel bars. I will be using a SFX PSU in this case due to the size restraints I have. As The mount for this only needs 3 screws which is quite nice and the treading is in the PSU which is less work for me. I added the mounting holes but I expect I might need to make the holes bigger in the future as I used the drill but I use before adding screw thread which in itself enlarges the hole a small bit. 

 

As for the graphics card mount It uses a piece of steel bar and aluminium angle. The aluminium is holding the graphics card in place whereas the steel is supporting it so it does not move. Both of these pieces are attached to the motherboard tray which is not ideal but my original plan to also attach them to the steel bars already in the case would not work due to other changes I have made since starting the build. It is still strong though I don't expect it should be a problem.

 

Finally with the side panels I have only started this section. The panels are made up of 6 strips of aluminium sheet cut to size so there is one strip per side. I have only got to the point of cutting out the strips. I still have to prepare the case a small bit for the side panels (changing the direction some screws are attached), cut the strips down to size, attach the strips to the case. The strips will be attached to the case by either 2 or 4 thumb screws.

 

That is it for this update. There is still a fair bit to do but the end is in sight. Once the case is built I will be painting it and then building a computer it in (cant wait).

 

[FurbyByte]

750

[FurbyByte]

[FurbyByte]

[ccRicers]

Nice progress. It's clever what you can make out of stuff just picked up from a local hardware store.