3D Printed ATX Case - Designed From Scratch

[Ωhmbreon]

I am starting my journey of designing and building a case for myself. I have done so in the past, and also started a lot of projects that I was unable to finish. Now that I have a 3D printer, a Creality CR-10 Max, and have done some test prints to assure functionality and quality of the printer, I can actually easily finish projects. I am unhappy with other cases on the market, and I'm going to design one. This case will replace the one I currently own, and the overall build theme will be black and white, with the case being mostly or entirely black. 

 

This is what I'm thinking of for the first design prototype. The case will have the motherboard with the i/o facing the bottom. The radiator will be at the top at an angle to reduce case thickness. The graphics card will be mounted vertically with enough room to breathe, but a small extension cable will be needed to get the display output to the bottom of the case. There will be some intake fans at the front and rear. The case will be positive pressure.

 

Other modifications will be replacing the motherboard to match the theme and get rid of the stupid X570 chipset fan. B550 is all I need anyways. I'll also be replacing my 360mm radiator with a 420mm. I may print a cover for the motherboard, similar to the old z77 ASUS Sabertooth boards and others from around then. I don't intend to add fans to it like the Sabertooth, but I will keep an eye on temperatures to make sure I'm not suffocating anything. Hopefully I'll be able to snag an RTX 3080 sooner rather than later. (I know RX 6000 series cards are right around the corner but I've had so many issues with Radeon cards, including two 5700XTs dying, that I'm avoiding them for some time).

 

I am designing it in SketchUp if anyone asks in the future. I'm starting today and I'll work on it between classes and homework and life and such, so it may take some time to complete.

[OddOod]

Will be interested in seeing this come to fruition, though if I was doing a custom case, I'd go with Al extrusion and just print some joins.

Best of luck!

[Kilrah]

As an SFF owner "Compact" and "ATX" don't feel like they go together

 

Seems like parts for an ATX case might be too big to print on a standard 20/30cm printer ubless you make tons of them with a lot of assembly/fastening?

[Ωhmbreon]

6 hours ago, Kilrah said:

As an SFF owner "Compact" and "ATX" don't feel like they go together

 

Seems like parts for an ATX case might be too big to print on a standard 20/30cm printer ubless you make tons of them with a lot of assembly/fastening?

The printer has a huge print area of 450x450x470mm so I'm working in the generous confines of that. I guess by "compact" I was trying to say space-efficient. My current case is a Lian LI Alpha 550X and it is large and heavy, and it was taking up too much space in my dorm.

 

I would've gone the actual SFF route but I just can't give up big motherboards and graphics cards and extra expansion.

 

Edit: I changed the title to reflect this because I don't even think this case is going to be very space efficient anymore.

Edited September 13, 2020 by Ωhmbreon
Updating information

[Ωhmbreon]

Unfortunately I've already hit a little bit of a wall where the motherboard and power supply interfere with each other if I was putting them where I wanted, and if I rotated the power supply to make room, it would interfere with the graphics card. I'm not willing to sacrifice graphics card length and I don't want to change my power supply since I got it specifically for longevity (at least 12 years, likely more). Sooo... the case will be much more conventional and less space efficient. I'll still keep it narrow, but it'll be short in length and tall in height instead of short in height and long in length as I initially intended. I'll have front and bottom intake instead of front and rear now. 

[Ωhmbreon]

This is as far as I got last night:

 

 

I am doing a basic model with less detail before going back and finishing things up such as screw hole placement and additional supports for fans and such. The large cutout at the bottom will house two 120mm intake fans. One or two additional intake fans will be at the front, as well as the power supply. The power supply will intake through the front and exhaust through the bottom, which is not perfectly ideal, but the air coming out of it shouldn't be warm enough to cause any issues if the air gets pulled in by the bottom intakes. I will be printing a separate base for the case to rest on to give it proper elevation. I may put an intake fan at the back, but I'm not sure yet. 

 

Part of the unconventional design, the air from the bottom intake fans will be passed partially behind the motherboard tray to provide the radiator with some air that has not been cycled through the gpu. The other intake fans are pretty much dedicated to providing intake for the radiator and to have a positive pressure case to reduce dust buildup. Also since the radiator is 450mm long and I only have 450mm to work with, a little bit of it will be sticking out of the back of the case.

 

Additionally, the case is a whole 4mm shorter than my first design attempt. I want to accommodate long gpus, so I have provided a very generous 335mm of space. (Longest RTX 3080 is 332mm for example, so the space is not really overkill). Having the radiator at the slight angle actually increases case width by 10mm, but I like the look of it much better than flat or a steeper angle. It is tilted at 55 degrees off vertical.

[Ωhmbreon]

I got further and worked on the back a little bit:

 

 

All the little fins on the back of the motherboard tray are to support it more, and they look neat. I'll likely tweak the design language of the case to make it more unified. That means adding more triangles instead of squares since the top will be slanted at a 30 degree angle off horizontal.

 

The largest hole on the bottom is for two 120mm fans, while the smaller two don't go all the way through and are for lighting, although I'll likely change those a bit too. There's a small chance I'll exceed the printing height limit so I may move the fans and lighting to the base, which I'll print separately. The front supports two 92mm fans. I haven't figured out the rear fans but it's likely a single 92mm. 

 

I haven't exactly figured out where to put the hard drives yet. Since I use all SSD storage and have two SATA SSDs, I kinda want to show them off, but space is limited. I may end up putting them into the power supply shroud area at the front so air can pass over them and provide cooling. I'll give it 4-6 2.5" spaces and no 3.5" spaces. I'm not going to be adding mass storage anytime soon, and if I was, I'd probably work it into a completely different build.

[HempBoosh]

This sounds super awesome and interesting! I'm trying to get into 3D printing myself, I'll follow this thread and maybe learn a thing or two. Good luck on your project.

[Ωhmbreon]

I've gotten to the top:

 

 

I did end up running out of space, so I need to move the fans from the bottom of the case to the separate base. I may also have to get rid of the gap to pass the cpu power cable and just put it behind the motherboard. Please note that not being able to remove the cpu power connector without removing the entire motherboard first it horrible design, but I am making this for myself, so it doesn't matter too much to me. If I was designing this for a wider audience, I would definitely keep the gap.

 

I do need to figure out how to support the massive overhang in the back of the case. I'm not remotely done with that area so I'll get to it when I'm working on the rest of the back.

[Jason 57]

I really love the concept of this case! If you are able to make this out of metal, or a long lasting plastic, I can't wait to see.

I don't know anything about 3D printing, so I apologize if I sound like I am talking out of my bottom.

 

Keep up the great design.

 

May I ask what you are going to school for? Since you mentioned doing this in your off time. (Just wondering if this is a off time thing, or you are able to do this kind of thing for a living)

[Ωhmbreon]

15 hours ago, Jason 57 said:

I really love the concept of this case! If you are able to make this out of metal, or a long lasting plastic, I can't wait to see.

I don't know anything about 3D printing, so I apologize if I sound like I am talking out of my bottom.

 

Keep up the great design.

 

May I ask what you are going to school for? Since you mentioned doing this in your off time. (Just wondering if this is a off time thing, or you are able to do this kind of thing for a living)

I'm just making this out of PLA since it is easy to work with and is cheap. I'm studying industrial design. I'm not sure if I could make a living off of this since I haven't really thought about it too much, but it could definitely supplement income. ITX cases would probably be easier and bring in more profit.

[Ωhmbreon]

I managed to put in a lot of time and get pretty much all of the medium details done, as well as reworking the case height to fit the printer height:

 

 

I got rid of all the wasted space on the motherboard and I'm moving the two fans to the base which I'll design and print separately. I'll also increase the bottom intake fan compatibility to 140mm instead of just 120mm. Here is the fan support for the case:

Front: 1x 140mm

Bottom: 2x 140mm

Top 3x 140mm (plus 30mm thick radiators that are 140mm, 280mm, or 420mm)

Rear 2x 70mm

 

I also changed the top of the case so the radiator will be supported by the top and not the bottom. I also made a larger gap in the power supply shroud so the radiator tubing can fit through. It's pretty much all detail work from here on, since I need to find a way to attach fans easily, and find the proper placement for the screws.

[Ωhmbreon]

Bonus round!

 

I needed a test bench case asap so I decided to design my own tonight:

 

 

 

It is built in five parts and is completely tool-less. The motherboard is held in by captive standoffs, and the motherboard tray fits onto the bottom part that stores the power supply with more captive standoffs, and slots on the back of the tray. The pcie bracket is friction fit and very basic to only stabilize the gpu since it doesn't need to hold it sideways in a case. There are two removeable support standoffs in the bottom to make room for longer power supplies.

 

I do need to tweak the pcie bracket once more to clear any smds (surface mounted devices) on the motherboard, and any motherboard i/o since it intrudes into that area at the top.

 

This'll be a kind of a test run for my case, and will be printed with 20% infill and 2.4mm thick walls on a 0.8mm nozzle. Print settings will be: Bed - 45C, Nozzle - 200C, Speed - 60mm/s. I'll print the top, then bottom, then the three extra parts.

[Ωhmbreon]

So I was printing the test bench as practice for the case, and one of the belts decided to mess up, so printer is out of commission for a while until I can get a new belt. I'm going to try and get one through warranty repair but if that is going to take too long I'll just try and find one on Amazon or something that can ship faster.

[Ωhmbreon]

Printer has been working for a bit but I've had three failed prints due to warping so I've been tuning the settings. I think I've got it now so if everything is good, one part for the testbench will be completed about 24 hours from now.

[Ωhmbreon]

School has been quite busy lately so I haven't been working on this too much. First part of the testbench turned out well, just very stringy. Like, very stringy. It was just from a reduced fan speed and a little cutting and sanding will get rid of it. There were also some very misaligned layers, but I'm not sure what happened because it was not consistent throughout the whole structure. Some parts were almost perfect and some were misaligned so much that there was a piece of bridged filament.

 

[GohDesign]

Good luck with the case. I also just happen to be working on a 3D printed on as well. I'm a little further ahead of you, but I have also been working on it for the past 6 months. I have got a lot of experience with 3D printing (about 8 years now) so if you need any help let me know!

 

 

[mao91]

Oh this looks good!!! Following!

[Ωhmbreon]

On 10/16/2020 at 5:19 PM, GohDesign said:

Good luck with the case. I also just happen to be working on a 3D printed on as well. I'm a little further ahead of you, but I have also been working on it for the past 6 months. I have got a lot of experience with 3D printing (about 8 years now) so if you need any help let me know!

 

 

If you have any 3D printing tips and tricks that would be awesome because I'm having a lot of trouble making mine work well. I still have huge stringing and layer consistency issues, along with essentially zero bridging capability. I'm using PLA within its needed temperature and the cooling fan is at 100% which I thought should eliminate stringing. What really stumps me is the bridging and layer consistency issues. The layers could be fine in one spot but horribly misaligned in others. 

[Kilrah]

Typically either wrong temperature (do your own tests, manufacturer numbers are pretty useless) or shit quality filament.

[TVwazhere]

Foillowing

[Ωhmbreon]

I have solved some more issues with my prints. I had the wrong retraction distance for the filament. I was using direct drive retraction settings for my bowden feed extruder. I also slowed it down a bit more which helped get rid of some more quality issues around edges. The layers could still be more consistent and it still has other little quality issues. I'm kinda confused because everything seemed to be ok with my first few prints which included fine details.

 

I paused the big case to print a little case for a pc I'm giving to my sister, and it's a good time to practice more since my test bench case did not print well. This is the overall design:

 

 

I decided it was a better idea to print in many sections and assemble them instead of trying to do one monolithic print.

 

 

From left to right: Front sidepanel, hard drive cage, top, rear, gpu holder, fan holder, bottom, rear sidepanel (non-removable), and front. For case feet, I'll probably just do rubber pads of some kind.

 

More important information: The glass transition temperature for PLA is somewhere around 55-60C, which means it'll lose structural integrity and warp when heated to or beyond this point. This is not good for obvious reasons, especially for something like a motherboard tray. I am using PLA for this case though because it has low powered hardware and (i5 6600T and GTX 1650 Super). I will do tests on how hot the hardware gets, and if it is near or beyond this temperature, I'll get some thermal reflective tape and put that in places that need it such as on the motherboard tray and on the surfaces around the gpu.

 

I'm just including everything that isn't the main ATX case because this is my process from idea to finished product. I'm testing it not through prototypes of the finished case, but other cases. I guess that's a bit odd but whatever.

 

For the main ATX case that I was supposed to be working on and this thread was all about, I am redesigning that one from the ground up. I need to make it more compact and design it with consideration that it will be printed in multiple pieces and assembled after. I'm not sure how "compact" compact will be since I'm likely putting in a 420mm radiator (450mm total length) and a chunky video card (if I can get my hands on one or if Zotac ever releases it).

[suit1337]

Don't know if it has been stated before - but if you 3D print your case, you need to be aware of the material properties and you probably need to switch your material or manufacturing process

if you print in PLA you'll expect a transition temperature for about 50 to 60°C as you mentiend, so there is a risk of your case sagging/deforming/warping over time, especially on hotspots like below the VRMs at the mainboard.

if you use ABS the transition temperature is at 80 to 100°C depending on the blend. Most parts of your design may be better done by lasercutting a duroplastic material (rigid polyurethane foam), airplane plywood (2 mm birch or something like that) or waterjet cutting from aluminium and then mounting them together with 3D printed parts for the looks

i had serious warping issues with my NES HTPC in a test case (no pun intended) that i needed to trash afterwards, my solution was to just redude the thermal output of the build to a temperature well below 80°C to prevent the ABS from warping

[Kilrah]

I've printed my case all in PETG, no issues that way.

[suit1337]

PETG has similar transition temperatures than ABS, so this will give you much more wiggle room, but i won't trust PLA too much