the BOX - scratchbuild [FINISHED]

[tomaatvk]

Hello and welcome to the creation of my scratchbuild which is (for now) called "the BOX".

 

Having built a manner of strange cases previously in an amateurish manner, I felt like it was finally time to try my hands at building something premium (or to what degree that's possible from inside a student room).

 

A picture of the finished product:

 

The goal

The goal of this machine is to be a sturdy, not too heavy, as small as possible pc that can house normal ATX motherboards, normal ATX PSUs and have (nearly) all the PCI-e slots free with space for a reasonably chonky gpu (so at least 250+mm length and 150+mm width). It should also be able to house 2 2.5" storage devices, have front 2 USB 3.0 type A (and if possible a front displayport passthrough for my Rift S) and house the 280mm AIO I have lying around. Lastly it should be designed in such a way that it would fit in a modern looking interior without looking too out of place.

 

The parts

- i7-3770k @ 4.8GHz (delidded with liquid metal, have had it for 5 years)

- MSI GTX 1060 3GB (needed a fan replacement when purchased used)

- Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 (have had it for 5.5 years)

- a stack of 4 ram sticks totalling up to 20GB of 1600MHz DDR3

- Corsair CX450M (non original cables and needed re-pinning)

- Samsung 840 EVO 120GB (have had it for nearly 6 years) and a 360GB 2.5" HDD (from my first laptop, will likely be replaced)

- BeQuiet! Silent Loop 280mm

These parts being so 'janky' made them ideal for a scratchbuild in my mind.

 

The design

When it comes to designing something sleek and modern looking, the first thought is a box made of black/gray metal and wooden accents (and no gamer-y RGB). To be able to blend in easilly, making it kind of flat rather than tall seemed like a good idea as well.

 

The design quickly turned into a cleaner, better executed, overhauled version of the current case housing all the above named components (see the picture in the spoiler below), but with the motherboard, gpu and tubing placed inside the case. To stop it from being just a metal box and to allow for 'easy' maintainance on the inside of the case, a detatchable, wooden top plate could be used (instead of just metal). To fit everything including a PSU, the internal height case would need to be increased to 170mm. This would leave a 26mm strip above the radiator making room for the earlier mentioned front I/O. To fit everything within a volume of 170mm*270mm*319mm (the internal volume minus the space for the radiator), the PSU would have to be placed above the CPU area of the motherboard placing heavy restrictions on the space given to the AIO tubing. To not have it still require a height of over 200mm on the inside I would, in fact, also have to replace the current fittings with some right angle fittings (still have some old softtubing bitspower 90° rotary fittings).

 

Having made up my mind on how it would look I wrote down the dimensions of everything on paper including the locations of all the cuts, holes and bends, the design was pretty much finished. For the people that might be curious, not counting the wooden top panel which still has its details pending on available tools and material, the total volume of the case will be 175*320*320mm (including the feet) which only makes it a 17.92L case making it a small form factor case fitting normal ATX components, decent GPU's and a 280mm radiator.

 

Spoiler

 

The construction p.1

Recently having recieved some more decent tools and already having all the aluminium L profile in stock, I already measured out and drilled/sawed these to the required sizes. They'll be used for mounting the top panel to the case as well as stuff like holding the radiator in place. Having tapped all these holes the first screws could already be put into place between a few brackets for the top of the radiator (picture 1 in the spoiler below).

 

Getting really into the mood to power through this build I also couldn't help getting the metal sheet (galvanized steel, 0.75mm thick) making up the main body of the case already. I even drew the main 2 folds and started to saw it to the correct length, but due to reasonably tight tollerances it's taking quite a bit of time. Me being tired after getting halfway through (picture 2 in the spoiler below) I needed a break which was the ideal moment to write this post.

Spoiler

 

 

As of now my plan is to continue working on this case for the next few hours and continue wednesday which is when the next update can be expected (I'll add future updates to the end of this post in this thread as well as make a new post containing the update). If poeple want I can also add a (horrible looking) drawing of the design to clarify the looks a bit more in the next post as I don't currently really have one, only schematic drawings of the unfolded metal. Any opinions or questions, feel free to post those below because I'm really curious about what everyone thinks of it!

 

UPDATE #1: Part pics and test-fitting

Spoiler

The part pics

Nearing the point where parts are required to check the locations of the mounting holes, it is time to quickly show the parts off! In picture 1 in the spoiler you can see a complete overview of all the parts which will be 'featured' in the build (for the part list see the start of the first post). Picture 2 and 3 also contains a quick shots showing off my almost 5 year old 3770k from when it was already installed and when it was just delidded using the old vice & hammer technique.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The test-fit

After sawing the main sheet used to build the case and bending it, which was a pain due to the lack of propper equipment and it being 0.75mm steel, left me with a nice U-shaped base to build upon (picture 1 in the spoiler below). Before drilling holes all over this sheet, it's time to double check the planned mounting holes leaving me with an ideal opportunity to test-fit everything to get a better idea of the final look.

 

Putting the motherboard, AIO and all expansion slot cards (including a random PCI (not PCI-e) USB hub) into place left me thinking that this build is really going into the right direction (picture 1 and 2 in the spoiler below). Placing most components even gave me a chance to test if I could possibly upgrade my storage config from 2 2.5" drives to 1 2.5" and a 3.5" drive. When using the top bracket of the radiator as a support, a 3.5" drive can easilly added. To give the readers (yes, you) a better idea where the drives and PSU are going to end up, when looking from the front (where the fans are), the PSU will be in the back at the top right, the 3.5" drive in the front top left and the 2.5" drive in the back top left. This should still leave plenty of space for big GPU's.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Tomorrow will probably offer me the time to mount the radiator, 3.5" drive and maybe motherboard as well as start on mounting the PSU (which will of course be followed by another update). Tomorrow should also mark the point where I will also mark the day where I'll recieve the last part of the build (except for the top plate and a possible front panel displayport passthrough): the power button. Hope you're enjoying the build so far and once again, I'd be glad to hear any kind of opinions, feedback or commentary on the build so far!

 

 

UPDATE #2: Drilling, drilling and more drilling

Spoiler

The construction p.2

Waking up today I knew what was ahead of me, drilling, drilling, a bit of deburring and more drilling. It started off with drilling the already marked holes for the radiator and one of the two PSU bracket and ofcourse testing if it fit, which it did, like a glove (pic 1 below has the radiator only).

 

At this point I had to debate whether to mount the drives or the motherboard first and considering the motherboard is significantly more complex (smaller tollerances, more holes, you know the drill) I started with this. I taped up the whole bottom of the case so it wouldn't short anything while doublechecking, took out the BIOS battery as well and started drawing, drilling and tapping hole after hole. Suprisingly, eventhough I have to put some screws in halfway first, all holes aligned and it was time to mount the motherboard for a quick test fit (pic 2 below has the motherboard and the first PSU bracket).

 

Having filled the case quite a bit already it was time for the drives. As aluded to in my second update, I'll try to mount both a 3.5" and 2.5" drive. To still allow for brackets for the top plate and expansion cards of a decent width, the 3.5" drive had to kind of overhang a little bit of the radiator (allowing me to also make use of the radiator to support the weight of the drive) which made it a little bit more complex. After about 15 minutes of measuring and drawing I was confident I had the hole spacing down and as it turns out I did once again. Measure twice (or ten times) drill once really does come in helpful. I was even able to leave space to add rubber rings for noise dampening later on.

 

While fitting the 3.5" drive I also decided to test whether the AIO was actually mountable on the CPU without changing out the fitting (as the tubes collide with the PSU which will go right above the CPU). As it turns out, my PSU was the max length which still fit the original tubing/fitting configuration. FYI, the original plan was to add some softtubing fittings as described in the original post, but that would leave a big mess. This allowed me to test fit the build with most components in place (see pic 3 below, for clarity I left out the expansion cards).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Eventhough I don't have any more pictures I didn't add yet, I also drilled and testfitted the 2.5" drive and recieved the power switch. Later this afternoon I'll most likely start working on the second PSU bracket which would finally allow me to boot the computer and see if I didn't kill anything. If I've made any progress by this evening, another update can ofcourse be expected.

 

UPDATE #3: More drilling, but also cutting and more test-fitting

Spoiler

The construction p.3

Being bored I decided it was already time to continue working after only a short break. The next point on the agenda was the PCI-e, PSU and frontpanel steel plates. Remembering the nightmares of trying to saw through the panel from the first update (took me about 45 seconds for 1cm) I turned to my dremel to speed up the process to the dismay of my roommates. Having already previously measured the required dimensions of these plates I was at least able to finish all the cutting in about half an hour. After another about half an hour of filing the sheets to the point where they couldn't be considered lethal weapons anymore and removing all the burnt tape I was left with pretty much what I wanted (pic 1 below).

 

Having finished the cutting, the next steps were bending (pic 2 below), drilling and once again testfitting. Having almost doubled the number of holes drilled previously I'm kinda getting tired of drilling but at least we have picture 3 and 4 to show for it. Small explanation, the motherboard standoffs on the right of picture 4 serve to clamp expansion cards whenever there is a screw added (pic 5).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

The test-fit p.2

Having finished all brackets used to mount parts except for the front panel which will house 2 usb ports and a power button it was time for another test fit to see if everything still works as expected. Having already mounted the motherboard for testing the expansion card brackets, I already have a head start. The next part which doesn't go over top a lot of stuff is the radiator so that'll be the next part to mount leaving me with pic 1 below. At this point the pc is already getting kinds filled but it needs to go further!

 

Everything from here on out is basicly a puzzle but with the PSU cables probably being hell to cablemange in this case (read: get in there at all), I decided to continue with that. Manouvering the 8 pin and 24 pin into their connectors through the AIO tubing was suprisingly easy (only taking a few minutes). The next, and for now last, step is to somehow get cables to my drives which are next to be mounted. Laying down the cables first and then mounting the drives worked in the end eventhough the sata data cables are kind of struggling with eachother.

 

This left me with a small box filled with basicly a whole pc without a top and front panel. A bit of showing off is ofcourse required at this point, see pictures 2, 3 and 4 below for how it currently looks and notice how damn filled box is at this point (except for the space between the PSU and GPU for whatever reason. One thing I'd rather you not notice is how the PCI-e bracket is bent, I kinda didn't take the curvature of the metal into account when sawing this part although this is probably fixable with a bit more bending, maybe some drilling and (who knew) it might even require some more sawing/cutting.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

At this point my body is pretty much worn out for the day so this'll be the last update today. All I'll still do is try to see if the parts still work (if I can manage to reach the onboard power button). I'm genuently really surprised by how much progress I managed to make today. One thing I did realize while typing this post is that I really need to clean my room, having done everything except for using the dremel inside it kinda left the table area covered with metal dust (which is why the pc is on the floor). A second thing I'm realizing while typing this is that the stores are almost closing for the day so I'd better go. Next update will be tomorrow when I'll have fixed the PCI-e bracket and finished the front panel.

 

UPDATE #4: Reaching the endgame

Spoiler

The finishing touches on the construction

I had a small list of tasks to do for now, fix the PCI-e bracket which wasn't correctly bent and make the frontpanel. With the PCI-e bracket being easier, that was the thing to start with this morning. After noting how the bracket location needed to change I just started bending bit by bit and checking the new fit. After about 15 minutes I was pretty happy with how it ended up (it's not ideal but it doesn't look crooked anymore and fits properly).

 

At this point it was time for the big task, creating the front panel which is supposed to go above the radiator. The start was already good as I noticed that when I cut the part yesterday I forgot to cut it to the right length, I only cut it to the right width. To the saw we go. After working a little sweat I managed to saw it to size in one go. Now the next problem, the bends in the base plate of the case aren't extremely clean making it so one side of the side panel is supposed to be ~2mm thinner than the other size. With the error being so small I could only fix this by filing, but filing down steel doesn't go that quick. I think it took me a full hour to file down the whole thing to a somewhat good size.

 

Having the front panel down to the correct size, it's time for some holes to mount everything, This time the hole count is only 5 so that went relatively quick. This left a pretty roughed up front panel, but at some point down the line I'll clean it up a bit (pic 1 below). Mounting the USB ports and the power button does make it feel like a propper font panel (ignoring the slightly too large usb cutouts, see pic 2 below). The last thing left to do is to solder the wires to the power button and drill 2 more holes in the case to mount the panel to the case which luckilly went without any issues (pic 3).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The planning for the finish

Now that all metal sheets are pretty much finished when it comes to bending/drilling/cutting (aside from mounting points for the top panel and holes for a possible second 2.5" drive), it's time to plan the finish I'll apply to the sheets and decide on the wooden top sheet I want. For the metal finish I'll probably just sand it to a mirror finish. For the top panel, I'm currently thinking of going for an oak sheet that'll have an overhang of a few centimeters all around the case but who knows, maybe someone has a better suggestion. I'll probably start sanding somewhere tonight but any further major progress will probably not happen until early next week. I might share a mini update to show how the mirror finish looks on the first part I've finished. For now though, it's time to show off how it currently looks. One thing that kept suprising me everytime I put it together is its weight, looking at the size of the thing you don't really expect it to have the same weight as most normal pc's which are about 2.5 times its volume.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

#UPDATE 5: Sanding and assembling

Spoiler

The storage drives

When the case was filled with components I took a look whether it'd be possible to still add another 2.5" drive (as I had one laying around already) on top of the earlier 2.5" and 3.5" drives. Looking around I discovered that right under the 3.5" drive there was some space that wouldn't get used unless I'd be running multi-GPU (which I won't for the forseeable future). Drilling 2 quick holes was all that was required, finishing it off nice and quickly. While the 3 drives fit perfectly, the bigger problem is the cable routing as ofcourse the sata power and sata data cables have to come/go somewhere. With only 2 drives it wasn't all too bad, but with 3 I had to start planning. After a bit of trail and error I discovered a cable routing which seems like a tangled up mess at first glance but actually allows for the drives to be connected without having to put stress on anything. You'll see how I solved it in the pictures later on.

 

The sanding

With the exposed metal panels slowly gathering scratches from all the manipulating performed on it, it was time to sand the visible parts to the point where they'd be smooth to the point of even having a faded mirror finish. Not realizing how big the surface to be sanded was and how slowly steel is to sand with regular sandpaper, this ofcourse took a little while to say the least. I started witht the front panel to see how far I'd need to go to get a desired finish and it seems I'd need to sand it a whoooole damn lot, stepping through 6 grit levels for every surface.

 

After complaining a bit about how much work this would be I did start working on it and once I got into the flow it wasn't all too bad. Aside from the occasional irritation from doing the same motions time and time again and the metal dust getting everywhere requiring a lot of cleanup everytime I worked on it, it was actually quite relaxing. I managed to finish the front panel the same evening I started on it (picture 1 below) and the sides of the case took me about 8 hours total. I also mixed the sanding up with a bit of filing to get rid of any leftover sharp edges (pics 2 and 3). Having spent so much time on the finish I was kind of happy with how smooth the exposed metal now feels and looks (aside from the occasinal, barely visible blemish which would've taken about 10 more minutes of sanding each to get rid of them). It's also got the desired faded mirror finish which is demonstrated espesially well on the picture of the front panel (pic 1). A small disadvantage of this finish, it's a fingerprint magnet but I'll live with that, smoothed out steel is luckilly cleanable quite easilly. Having finished all my work on the base sheet this was also the perfect moment to add the feet to the case, 4 furniture feet (pic 4) which work perfectly.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

The 'final' assembly

With only the top panel and its mounting being left on the to do list (as well as a possible front panel displayport) it became time for the 'final' assembly as I'd be able to keep it mostly together when mounting said top panel. First a quick look at the sheer ammount of screws (44), standoffs (10), nuts (5) and brackets that are used to put everything together (pic 1). This isn't even counting the 16 screws for the radiator and its fans as well as a small bracket and a single screw used to help support the 3.5" drive's weight.

 

Starting with the motherboard and the radiator, the case is already half filled (pic 2), but half the work isn't done yet by far as all the complicated stuff still has to come. With the PSU cables being kind of under and inbetween everything, the PSU brackets come next with the PSU right after that (pic 3 and 4). Putting the PSU in the case does reveal one 'big' flaw with the case, the space between the top of the motherboard and the case is so small making it nearly impossible to unclip the CPU power connector (pic 5). The next parts are the expansion cards (GPU, wifi and usb) as well as the front panel. Starting with the expansion cards (pic 6) I do have to note that it's pretty hard to get the GPU in there due to the PSU brackets, but flipping the install order should fix this problem. The front panel was pretty easy as expected (pic 7), but it did pretty much finalize the complete mess that makes up this case's cablemanagement (pic 8) as everything has pretty much no space at all for the cable runs. At last it was time for the harddrive puzzle. First slotting in the 2.5" drives and hooking up the 3.5" drive gives a good picture of how the cables are all run through eachother. After turning the 3.5" drive to it's correct position and properly mounting it finally left me with a complete case (except for the top).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talking about the top panel, I decided on the kind of wood (oak) and I know where I can find some so I'll go pick that up tomorrow or wednesday depending on the weather. Once I have the wooden panel I'll first try to finish the case and I'll then do an even bigger post sharing info like thermals and noise etc. I do sadly have to admit that I forgot to take any pictures of the current state of the fully assembled build before it turned dark so I'll take those tomorrow and add them below. With the build nearing completion, I'm pretty curious about any opinions people have about the case so please do leave them below!

 

UPDATE #6: Getting wood and finishing up

Spoiler

 The top panel

Being 100% sure of the desired dimensions of the top panel, it was time to go to the store and buy a cut to size piece of it. Once there I did notice that birch looked to work nicer with the color of the sanded down steel so I bought that instead of oak. One I got home with the final piece of the puzzle, I just threw the piece on the pc to see if the dimensions were right and they were (pic 1).

 

The next step was to sand the wooden panel to a smoother finish while also removing all the burn marks recieved while cutting the plate and rounding its courners.Me never having worked with harder types of wood before decided I could directly jump to 320 grit sandpaper (not having any coarser stuff in house). This was a mistake. The sides with the burn marks (there were 2 of them) took me about 45 minutes each to sand properly and the other two sides took me about half an hour each to smooth out properly as well. The top and bottom surface luckilly weren't that much of an issue as they didn't need to be that smooth (pic 2 for a closeup of the finish).

 

All that's left at this point is to mount the top panel to the case. As I already had 3 brackets to go in the front and sides of the case, all I had to do was make a bracket to mount it to the PSU as well (which I did by bending a small strip of steel), drill 3 holes into the case, 2 into the PSU bracket and 4 into the top panel and done. Everything went perfectly fine up until the 2nd to last hole when I accidentally slipped and hit one of my fingers. Luckilly I stopped the drill pretty quickly so the damage was only surface level. Kinda sad because this was the first (and only) injury I sustained during the construction of this case. Moving on, some rinsing, a bandaid and a night of sleep helped a lot allowing me to finish the case the next day, do a bit of sanding over the newly scratched surfaces of the case (sadly this doesn't work for my hand) and done.

 

Spoiler

 

 

The 'end' result

At this point the pc is pretty much finished, except for:

• replacing the current 3.5" drive with one that has triple the capacity,
• add some 6-32 nuts to the underside of the motherboad standoffs to tighten it down properly,
• upgrading the RAM capacity back to 20GB after having to downgrade it temporarily back to 16GB due to sudden stability issues,
• overclocking the CPU back to 4.8GHz after having to downclock it to 4.7GHz due to the same stability issues,
• add a front panel displayport passthrough but this is low on the list of priorities, and
• upgrading the GPU to something with 4GB+ of VRAM but this is low on the list of priorities as well.

But as these are all issues decoupled from the case itself, the case can be considered finished. With the case done, this is the perfect moment for the final photoshoot. Below is the photodump of the case from quite a few angles with the last pic showing off how filled the case is with calbes, drives, etc.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My thoughts

Having already built several cases before, this was nothing new, but with the desire to reach a small size using 'large' parts and wanting a clean look took this one to a different level. Working with 0.75mm or thicker steel isn't something I want to do again soon without any proper bending tools (compared to a wooden beam and a rubber hammer). A belt sander also feels like it might be a requirement if a lot of steel needs to be sanded off. I also still kinda miss a bunch of 6-32 nuts to further tighten down the motherboard to the case which I already ordered but won't be visible anyway. I might also want to have more space than just a single student room which also has to function as a living/bed/dining room to work on the case.

 

Aside from that, the project was a great succes. The case takes up a small 32.1*33.7*17.6cm (counting: main base body, screw heads, case feet, PCI-e bracket, front fans, not counting: wooden topplate, wifi antenna's) which comes down to 19.0L, still damn small IMO. With the top plate and the wifi antenna's it's still OK when it comes to size at 37.3*37.7*19.3cm which is 27.1L. As the top plate is made of out reasonably hard wood it can also be used a small plateau to put stuff on without worrying about leaving any marks making its practical footprint a bit smaller. The case itself also looks really clean IMO which helps a lot with fitting it inbetween normal funiture. The steel and extreme desnity of the internals also come with an extra advantage, it's sturdy as hell to the point where I (at 75kg) can stand on the case without any issues. I can also just grab it by that wooden topplate and swing it around without anything moving (ofcourse being slightly careful because of the harddrives). Not counting any tools like used up dremel cutting discs and only counting a fair price for how much I used of each resource (used less than half of the birch plate so I only counted half), this case cost me only about €32 so far. Pretty damn cheap imo.

 

Now noise and thermals. I don't really have anything to compare it to but for a case with exposed fans, the CPU thermals and fan noise is really good as all the air gets sucked in and any produced noise that enters the case gets dispersed by the cable mess inside. CPU VRM temperatures are also doing extremely good due to the case basically being a wind tunnel with the VRM heatsings also being right below the PSU fan. GPU thermals are the other way around, they're straight up bad. What doesn't help is that the GPU thermals already were pretty damn bad while the card was still running on a test bench with as much supply to fresh air as possible (the temps may have jumped from 50 to 54 above ambient or something but nothing more than that (assuming the same fan speed)).

 

EDIT: Forgot to include this, but the measured max GPU dimensions are 27.1 by 14.7cm (can get bigger if the 3.5" drive is removed) or 29.1cm by 13.0cm. Depending on where they end up and the angle with which they exit the card, the power cables are or aren't restricted to fall within those sizes.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed reading along the adventure of building this case anything close to the ammount of enjoyment I got from building it myself. If anyone has any tips for things I can do to maybe improve this case any further, I'd be glad to hear them. Questions and other remarks are ofcourse welcome too. Thank you all for reading and have a nice day!

[tomaatvk]

It's time for the first update

 

The part pics

Nearing the point where parts are required to check the locations of the mounting holes, it is time to quickly show the parts off! In picture 1 in the spoiler you can see a complete overview of all the parts which will be 'featured' in the build (for the part list see the start of the first post). Picture 2 and 3 also contains a quick shots showing off my almost 5 year old 3770k from when it was already installed and when it was just delidded using the old vice & hammer technique.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The test-fit

After sawing the main sheet used to build the case and bending it, which was a pain due to the lack of propper equipment and it being 0.75mm steel, left me with a nice U-shaped base to build upon (picture 1 in the spoiler below). Before drilling holes all over this sheet, it's time to double check the planned mounting holes leaving me with an ideal opportunity to test-fit everything to get a better idea of the final look.

 

Putting the motherboard, AIO and all expansion slot cards (including a wifi card and PCI, not PCI-e, USB hub) into place left me thinking that this build is really going into the right direction (picture 1 and 2 in the spoiler below). Placing most components even gave me a chance to test if I could possibly upgrade my storage config from 2 2.5" drives to 1 2.5" and a 3.5" drive. When using the top bracket of the radiator as a support, a 3.5" drive can easilly added. To give the readers (yes, you) a better idea where the drives and PSU are going to end up, when looking from the front (where the fans are), the PSU will be in the back at the top right, the 3.5" drive in the front top left and the 2.5" drive in the back top left. This should still leave plenty of space for big GPU's.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Tomorrow will probably offer me the time to mount the radiator, 3.5" drive and maybe motherboard as well as start on mounting the PSU (which will of course be followed by another update). Tomorrow should also mark the point where I will also mark the day where I'll recieve the last part of the build (except for the top plate and a possible front panel displayport passthrough): the power button. Hope you're enjoying the build so far and once again, I'd be glad to hear any kind of opinions, feedback or commentary on the build so far!

[tomaatvk]

Update time

 

The construction p.2

Waking up today I knew what was ahead of me, drilling, drilling, a bit of deburring and more drilling. It started off with drilling the already marked holes for the radiator and one of the two PSU bracket and ofcourse testing if it fit, which it did, like a glove (pic 1 below has the radiator only).

 

At this point I had to debate whether to mount the drives or the motherboard first and considering the motherboard is significantly more complex (smaller tollerances, more holes, you know the drill) I started with this. I taped up the whole bottom of the case so it wouldn't short anything while doublechecking, took out the BIOS battery as well and started drawing, drilling and tapping hole after hole. Suprisingly, eventhough I have to put some screws in halfway first, all holes aligned and it was time to mount the motherboard for a quick test fit (pic 2 below has the motherboard and the first PSU bracket).

 

Having filled the case quite a bit already it was time for the drives. As aluded to in my second update, I'll try to mount both a 3.5" and 2.5" drive. To still allow for brackets for the top plate and expansion cards of a decent width, the 3.5" drive had to kind of overhang a little bit of the radiator (allowing me to also make use of the radiator to support the weight of the drive) which made it a little bit more complex. After about 15 minutes of measuring and drawing I was confident I had the hole spacing down and as it turns out I did once again. Measure twice (or ten times) drill once really does come in helpful. I was even able to leave space to add rubber rings for noise dampening later on.

 

While fitting the 3.5" drive I also decided to test whether the AIO was actually mountable on the CPU without changing out the fitting (as the tubes collide with the PSU which will go right above the CPU). As it turns out, my PSU was the max length which still fit the original tubing/fitting configuration. FYI, the original plan was to add some softtubing fittings as described in the original post, but that would leave a big mess. This allowed me to test fit the build with most components in place (see pic 3 below, for clarity I left out the expansion cards).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Eventhough I don't have any more pictures I didn't add yet, I also drilled and testfitted the 2.5" drive and recieved the power switch. Later this afternoon I'll most likely start working on the second PSU bracket which would finally allow me to boot the computer and see if I didn't kill anything. If I've made any progress by this evening, another update can ofcourse be expected.

[akio123008]

2 hours ago, tomaatvk said:

more holes, you know the drill

I see what you did there

[tomaatvk]

3 hours ago, akio123008 said:

I see what you did there

That's just how we roll. Also, it's time for another update!

 

The construction p.3

Being bored I decided it was already time to continue working after only a short break. The next point on the agenda was the PCI-e, PSU and frontpanel steel plates. Remembering the nightmares of trying to saw through the panel from the first update (took me about 45 seconds for 1cm) I turned to my dremel to speed up the process to the dismay of my roommates. Having already previously measured the required dimensions of these plates I was at least able to finish all the cutting in about half an hour. After another about half an hour of filing the sheets to the point where they couldn't be considered lethal weapons anymore and removing all the burnt tape I was left with pretty much what I wanted (pic 1 below).

 

Having finished the cutting, the next steps were bending (pic 2 below), drilling and once again testfitting. Having almost doubled the number of holes drilled previously I'm kinda getting tired of drilling but at least we have picture 3 and 4 to show for it. Small explanation, the motherboard standoffs on the right of picture 4 serve to clamp expansion cards whenever there is a screw added (pic 5).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

The test-fit p.2

Having finished all brackets used to mount parts except for the front panel which will house 2 usb ports and a power button it was time for another test fit to see if everything still works as expected. Having already mounted the motherboard for testing the expansion card brackets, I already have a head start. The next part which doesn't go over top a lot of stuff is the radiator so that'll be the next part to mount leaving me with pic 1 below. At this point the pc is already getting kinds filled but it needs to go further!

 

Everything from here on out is basicly a puzzle but with the PSU cables probably being hell to cablemange in this case (read: get in there at all), I decided to continue with that. Manouvering the 8 pin and 24 pin into their connectors through the AIO tubing was suprisingly easy (only taking a few minutes). The next, and for now last, step is to somehow get cables to my drives which are next to be mounted. Laying down the cables first and then mounting the drives worked in the end eventhough the sata data cables are kind of struggling with eachother.

 

This left me with a small box filled with basicly a whole pc without a top and front panel. A bit of showing off is ofcourse required at this point, see pictures 2, 3 and 4 below for how it currently looks and notice how damn filled box is at this point (except for the space between the PSU and GPU for whatever reason. One thing I'd rather you not notice is how the PCI-e bracket is bent, I kinda didn't take the curvature of the metal into account when sawing this part although this is probably fixable with a bit more bending, maybe some drilling and (who knew) it might even require some more sawing/cutting.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

At this point my body is pretty much worn out for the day so this'll be the last update today. All I'll still do is try to see if the parts still work (if I can manage to reach the onboard power button). I'm genuently really surprised by how much progress I managed to make today. One thing I did realize while typing this post is that I really need to clean my room, having done everything except for using the dremel inside it kinda left the table area covered with metal dust (which is why the pc is on the floor). A second thing I'm realizing while typing this is that the stores are almost closing for the day so I'd better go. Next update will be tomorrow when I'll have fixed the PCI-e bracket and finished the front panel.

[tomaatvk]

Short update, but one nonetheless.

 

The finishing touches on the construction

I had a small list of tasks to do for now, fix the PCI-e bracket which wasn't correctly bent and make the frontpanel. With the PCI-e bracket being easier, that was the thing to start with this morning. After noting how the bracket location needed to change I just started bending bit by bit and checking the new fit. After about 15 minutes I was pretty happy with how it ended up (it's not ideal but it doesn't look crooked anymore and fits properly).

 

At this point it was time for the big task, creating the front panel which is supposed to go above the radiator. The start was already good as I noticed that when I cut the part yesterday I forgot to cut it to the right length, I only cut it to the right width. To the saw we go. After working a little sweat I managed to saw it to size in one go. Now the next problem, the bends in the base plate of the case aren't extremely clean making it so one side of the side panel is supposed to be ~2mm thinner than the other size. With the error being so small I could only fix this by filing, but filing down steel doesn't go that quick. I think it took me a full hour to file down the whole thing to a somewhat good size.

 

Having the front panel down to the correct size, it's time for some holes to mount everything, This time the hole count is only 5 so that went relatively quick. This left a pretty roughed up front panel, but at some point down the line I'll clean it up a bit (pic 1 below). Mounting the USB ports and the power button does make it feel like a propper font panel (ignoring the slightly too large usb cutouts, see pic 2 below). The last thing left to do is to solder the wires to the power button and drill 2 more holes in the case to mount the panel to the case which luckilly went without any issues (pic 3).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

The planning for the finish

Now that all metal sheets are pretty much finished when it comes to bending/drilling/cutting (aside from mounting points for the top panel and holes for a possible second 2.5" drive), it's time to plan the finish I'll apply to the sheets and decide on the wooden top sheet I want. For the metal finish I'll probably just sand it to a mirror finish. For the top panel, I'm currently thinking of going for an oak sheet that'll have an overhang of a few centimeters all around the case but who knows, maybe someone has a better suggestion. I'll probably start sanding somewhere tonight but any further major progress will probably not happen until early next week. I might share a mini update to show how the mirror finish looks on the first part I've finished. For now though, it's time to show off how it currently looks. One thing that kept suprising me everytime I put it together is its weight, looking at the size of the thing you don't really expect it to have the same weight as most normal pc's which are about 2.5 times its volume.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

[tomaatvk]

Who would've seen it coming, I got bored this weekend so another small update is here (or that's what I thought but it turned out to be pretty big).

 

The storage drives

When the case was filled with components I took a look whether it'd be possible to still add another 2.5" drive (as I had one laying around already) on top of the earlier 2.5" and 3.5" drives. Looking around I discovered that right under the 3.5" drive there was some space that wouldn't get used unless I'd be running multi-GPU (which I won't for the forseeable future). Drilling 2 quick holes was all that was required, finishing it off nice and quickly. While the 3 drives fit perfectly, the bigger problem is the cable routing as ofcourse the sata power and sata data cables have to come/go somewhere. With only 2 drives it wasn't all too bad, but with 3 I had to start planning. After a bit of trail and error I discovered a cable routing which seems like a tangled up mess at first glance but actually allows for the drives to be connected without having to put stress on anything. You'll see how I solved it in the pictures later on.

 

The sanding

With the exposed metal panels slowly gathering scratches from all the manipulating performed on it, it was time to sand the visible parts to the point where they'd be smooth to the point of even having a faded mirror finish. Not realizing how big the surface to be sanded was and how slowly steel is to sand with regular sandpaper, this ofcourse took a little while to say the least. I started witht the front panel to see how far I'd need to go to get a desired finish and it seems I'd need to sand it a whoooole damn lot, stepping through 6 grit levels for every surface.

 

After complaining a bit about how much work this would be I did start working on it and once I got into the flow it wasn't all too bad. Aside from the occasional irritation from doing the same motions time and time again and the metal dust getting everywhere requiring a lot of cleanup everytime I worked on it, it was actually quite relaxing. I managed to finish the front panel the same evening I started on it (picture 1 below) and the sides of the case took me about 8 hours total. I also mixed the sanding up with a bit of filing to get rid of any leftover sharp edges (pics 2 and 3). Having spent so much time on the finish I was kind of happy with how smooth the exposed metal now feels and looks (aside from the occasinal, barely visible blemish which would've taken about 10 more minutes of sanding each to get rid of them). It's also got the desired faded mirror finish which is demonstrated espesially well on the picture of the front panel (pic 1). A small disadvantage of this finish, it's a fingerprint magnet but I'll live with that, smoothed out steel is luckilly cleanable quite easilly. Having finished all my work on the base sheet this was also the perfect moment to add the feet to the case, 4 furniture feet (pic 4) which work perfectly.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

The 'final' assembly

With only the top panel and its mounting being left on the to do list (as well as a possible front panel displayport) it became time for the 'final' assembly as I'd be able to keep it mostly together when mounting said top panel. First a quick look at the sheer ammount of screws (44), standoffs (10), nuts (5) and brackets that are used to put everything together (pic 1). This isn't even counting the 16 screws for the radiator and its fans as well as a small bracket and a single screw used to help support the 3.5" drive's weight.

 

Starting with the motherboard and the radiator, the case is already half filled (pic 2), but half the work isn't done yet by far as all the complicated stuff still has to come. With the PSU cables being kind of under and inbetween everything, the PSU brackets come next with the PSU right after that (pic 3 and 4). Putting the PSU in the case does reveal one 'big' flaw with the case, the space between the top of the motherboard and the case is so small making it nearly impossible to unclip the CPU power connector (pic 5). The next parts are the expansion cards (GPU, wifi and usb) as well as the front panel. Starting with the expansion cards (pic 6) I do have to note that it's pretty hard to get the GPU in there due to the PSU brackets, but flipping the install order should fix this problem. The front panel was pretty easy as expected (pic 7), but it did pretty much finalize the complete mess that makes up this case's cablemanagement (pic 8) as everything has pretty much no space at all for the cable runs. At last it was time for the harddrive puzzle. First slotting in the 2.5" drives and hooking up the 3.5" drive gives a good picture of how the cables are all run through eachother. After turning the 3.5" drive to it's correct position and properly mounting it finally left me with a complete case (except for the top).

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talking about the top panel, I decided on the kind of wood (oak) and I know where I can find some so I'll go pick that up tomorrow or wednesday depending on the weather. Once I have the wooden panel I'll first try to finish the case and I'll then do an even bigger post sharing info like thermals and noise etc. I do sadly have to admit that I forgot to take any pictures of the current state of the fully assembled build before it turned dark so I'll take those tomorrow and add them below. With the build nearing completion, I'm pretty curious about any opinions people have about the case so please do leave them below!

[tomaatvk]

While the fabled "tomorrow" as well as "wednesday" came and went, I still finished everything and this is pretty much the final update.

 

The top panel

Being 100% sure of the desired dimensions of the top panel, it was time to go to the store and buy a cut to size piece of it. Once there I did notice that birch looked to work nicer with the color of the sanded down steel so I bought that instead of oak. One I got home with the final piece of the puzzle, I just threw the piece on the pc to see if the dimensions were right and they were (pic 1).

 

The next step was to sand the wooden panel to a smoother finish while also removing all the burn marks recieved while cutting the plate and rounding its courners.Me never having worked with harder types of wood before decided I could directly jump to 320 grit sandpaper (not having any coarser stuff in house). This was a mistake. The sides with the burn marks (there were 2 of them) took me about 45 minutes each to sand properly and the other two sides took me about half an hour each to smooth out properly as well. The top and bottom surface luckilly weren't that much of an issue as they didn't need to be that smooth (pic 2 for a closeup of the finish).

 

All that's left at this point is to mount the top panel to the case. As I already had 3 brackets to go in the front and sides of the case, all I had to do was make a bracket to mount it to the PSU as well (which I did by bending a small strip of steel), drill 3 holes into the case, 2 into the PSU bracket and 4 into the top panel and done. Everything went perfectly fine up until the 2nd to last hole when I accidentally slipped and hit one of my fingers. Luckilly I stopped the drill pretty quickly so the damage was only surface level. Kinda sad because this was the first (and only) injury I sustained during the construction of this case. Moving on, some rinsing, a bandaid and a night of sleep helped a lot allowing me to finish the case the next day, do a bit of sanding over the newly scratched surfaces of the case (sadly this doesn't work for my hand) and done.

 

Spoiler

 

 

The 'end' result

At this point the pc is pretty much finished, except for:

• replacing the current 3.5" drive with one that has triple the capacity,
• add some 6-32 nuts to the underside of the motherboad standoffs to tighten it down properly,
• upgrading the RAM capacity back to 20GB after having to downgrade it temporarily back to 16GB due to sudden stability issues,
• overclocking the CPU back to 4.8GHz after having to downclock it to 4.7GHz due to the same stability issues,
• add a front panel displayport passthrough but this is low on the list of priorities, and
• upgrading the GPU to something with 4GB+ of VRAM but this is low on the list of priorities as well.

But as these are all issues decoupled from the case itself, the case can be considered finished. With the case done, this is the perfect moment for the final photoshoot. Below is the photodump of the case from quite a few angles with the last pic showing off how filled the case is with calbes, drives, etc.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My thoughts

Having already built several cases before, this was nothing new, but with the desire to reach a small size using 'large' parts and wanting a clean look took this one to a different level. Working with 0.75mm or thicker steel isn't something I want to do again soon without any proper bending tools (compared to a wooden beam and a rubber hammer). A belt sander also feels like it might be a requirement if a lot of steel needs to be sanded off. I also still kinda miss a bunch of 6-32 nuts to further tighten down the motherboard to the case which I already ordered but won't be visible anyway. I might also want to have more space than just a single student room which also has to function as a living/bed/dining room to work on the case.

 

Aside from that, the project was a great succes. The case takes up a small 32.1*33.7*17.6cm (counting: main base body, screw heads, case feet, PCI-e bracket, front fans, not counting: wooden topplate, wifi antenna's) which comes down to 19.0L, still damn small IMO. With the top plate and the wifi antenna's it's still OK when it comes to size at 37.3*37.7*19.3cm which is 27.1L. As the top plate is made of out reasonably hard wood it can also be used a small plateau to put stuff on without worrying about leaving any marks making its practical footprint a bit smaller. The case itself also looks really clean IMO which helps a lot with fitting it inbetween normal funiture. The steel and extreme desnity of the internals also come with an extra advantage, it's sturdy as hell to the point where I (at 75kg) can stand on the case without any issues. I can also just grab it by that wooden topplate and swing it around without anything moving (ofcourse being slightly careful because of the harddrives). Not counting any tools like used up dremel cutting discs and only counting a fair price for how much I used of each resource (used less than half of the birch plate so I only counted half), this case cost me only about €32 so far. Pretty damn cheap imo.

 

Now noise and thermals. I don't really have anything to compare it to but for a case with exposed fans, the CPU thermals and fan noise is really good as all the air gets sucked in and any produced noise that enters the case gets dispersed by the cable mess inside. CPU VRM temperatures are also doing extremely good due to the case basically being a wind tunnel with the VRM heatsings also being right below the PSU fan. GPU thermals are the other way around, they're straight up bad. What doesn't help is that the GPU thermals already were pretty damn bad while the card was still running on a test bench with as much supply to fresh air as possible (the temps may have jumped from 50 to 54 above ambient or something but nothing more than that (assuming the same fan speed)).

 

Hopefully you guys enjoyed reading along the adventure of building this case anything close to the ammount of enjoyment I got from building it myself. If anyone has any tips for things I can do to maybe improve this case any further, I'd be glad to hear them. Questions and other remarks are ofcourse welcome too. Thank you all for reading and have a nice day!

 

EDIT: Forgot to include this, but the measured max GPU dimensions are 27.1 by 14.7cm (can get bigger if the 3.5" drive is removed) or 29.1cm by 13.0cm. Depending on where they end up and the angle with which they exit the card, the power cables are or aren't restricted to fall within those sizes.