DIY ITX Layered Wood and Acrylic Glass Air-Cooled PC [First ever build]

[demolitionGoat]

Hi Guys,

 

I just wanted to share the result of my first custom PC adventure.

 

Here's a Picture of the completed build:

 

 

Here's the hardware list:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel - Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$484.99 @ B&H
CPU Cooler	Noctua - NH-U9S 46.44 CFM CPU Cooler	$59.95 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus - ROG STRIX Z390-I GAMING Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard	$199.98 @ Amazon
Memory	Corsair - Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory	$261.00 @ Amazon
Storage	Western Digital - Green 240 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$49.89 @ OutletPC
Video Card	Asus - GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB TURBO Video Card	$771.80 @ Amazon
Power Supply	SeaSonic - FOCUS SGX 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply	$117.63 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1945.24
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-05-21 05:33 EDT-0400

Shut up! I need a 9900k for REASONS!

The general idea was to create a case with direct airflow pretty much directly from bottom to top in the smallest doable form factor.

It's not perfect by a long shot but then again i am no craftsman of any sort.

With it now running and having gone through a few benchmarks and stress tests I found that i can comfortably run the cpu to a clock of 4.9 without the fans going crazy or temps going over 80 degrees.

The tower cooler is definitely sufficient.

The GPU is also suprisingly silent for a blower stly card but definitely the loudest part of the system. If i were to do it again i would probably not take a blower style card again but it's really no big deal.

The system is overall almost inaudible even under some light load (i.e: games)

The GPU will of course be audible when doing a render.

 

If anyone is interested I'll pack out some of the pictures i did inbetween and share the build process.

I am also open to any questions or suggestion of course.

 

Update: Here's some pics and description to serve as a little bit of a buildlog. half of those are "reenactments" though, since i did not make many pictures while building unfortunately.

 

The initial idea:

I had this old can for imported olives that i liked the look of and so i had the whacky idea of putting a pc into it. I made a first prototype... which worked insofar as it fit the can over it.

I realized though, that the whole construction was a little to shaky while also being pretty heavy, so i started again:

 

I created this model in blender of how it should look like. It has all the components in it and should fit since it is all to scale ... or so i thought.

I went to building then...

Here's a tutorial on how to do teethed connections the dirty way. Don't do this in front of a woodworker. They might just murder you.

Draw the teeth (preferrably with a breadth that is a divider to the total length, so that there isn't one little tooth at the end):

The depth should usually be the same as the depth of the plate.

Set a tablesaw to the depth and draw it towards the plate holding it like so:

#

Be careful doing that of course. tablesaws are dangerous. I recommend putting a second sacrificial plate behind the first one, so that the first plate does not fray.

Lastly... you use whatever you have or the actual 90° clamp to put the two together after wood glue was applied:

Now.... before any of this... which i did not do... you should make all the holes for screws. In my experience the tons of glue used in good layered wood should easily suit the needs of pc screws.

I used a sacrificial plate to determine the right sizes for the holes. You could trust the measurements of the screws but why not try is before using it to hold hundreds of euros of hardware.

Everything else was pretty much just holes and screws. There is only more truly custom thing:

I made clamps to hold the PSU from brass:

 

I put felt in between the metal and the PSU to absorb vibration.

 

At this point i realized, that the components would firstly not fit as intended and secondly that i had not considered how much space cables need.

I had to rethink the arrangement and ended up with something like this:

I then rebuilt my blender model:

It came out something like that.

The final form is a compromise, since most IO is at the side, which i wanted to avoid but i am pretty happy with it.

I then bought acrylic glass, cut it with a tablesaw (not recommended. dont be cheap like me and get an acrylic cutter.)

sanded the sides down up to 800 grid and drilled holes with a metal drill. be careful when punching guide holes for the drill. acrylic is pretty easily cracked as i had to learn.

I drilled holes into the sides of the case and inserted threaded bolts until about a cm stood out. I then cut off the head of the bolts. The glass goes over the bolts and is held with wingnuts.

 

As you can clearly see, i painted the case with varnish before installing the hardware.

The feet are currently a temporary solution. I am not sure what to do for fee yet.

I taped a patch of airfilter sheet from the internet to the bottom to filter the intake. Also a temporary solution right now.

 

If there are any questions left open i am happy to answer.

Edited May 26, 2019 by demolitionGoat

[jiyeon]

9 hours ago, demolitionGoat said:

The general idea was to create a case with direct airflow pretty much directly from bottom to top in the smallest doable form factor.

Oh you definitely acheieved that with that gigantic fan at the bottom there, that's a big one!

 

Excellent work! It's an awesome first build.  Are you gonna post any pictures of the build process? I'd be interested to see how this final product came together.

[Xkillerpn]

You can still change the 2070 cooler to a Acelero 4 from artic it will do  wonders.

[demolitionGoat]

On 5/21/2019 at 9:40 PM, seoz said:

Oh you definitely acheieved that with that gigantic fan at the bottom there, that's a big one!

 

Excellent work! It's an awesome first build.  Are you gonna post any pictures of the build process? I'd be interested to see how this final product came together.

I'll post some stuff soon. I did not make all too many picture of details during the process as i found out (my memory was a little wrong there appearently), so i need to... dramatically reenect some of it i guess xD. 

[demolitionGoat]

23 hours ago, Xkillerpn said:

You can still change the 2070 cooler to a Acelero 4 from artic it will do  wonders.

We'll see how the cooling goes in the future. I am happy for now and as long as it works... easthetics is also a value .

That thing looks like it'll do the job though... holy moly that is a lot of heatsink.