Samsonite Focus Briefcase Mod

[kennethnakasone]

Hello.

 

Due to...reasons, I may end up being out of the country from late May to late August of this year. Traveling with only my laptop and iPad is definitely an option, but I told my mother I would CAD the house she grew up in before it gets torn down.

 

A bit of information: uninhabited houses in rural areas are becoming an issue in Japan; while I was there in the summer, there were 2 reports about fires that occurred due to houses collapsing. As such we don't know when our relatives may decide to tear the house down out of safety concerns.

 

Anyway, my laptop isn't up to the task (a Celeron T1600, using IGPU) and I can't make a room without screwing up the floor on my iPad. I decided it would just be faster to jam my current desktop inside a briefcase and take it with me.

 

 

 

Yoshiwars' briefcase mod (found here: http://imgur.com/a/gokFu) caught my attention, and I decided that I would mimic him and use a Samsonite Focus as well. I ended up purchasing a grey one found on ebay. 

 

The briefcase:

 

It's in good condition. However, the right latch was cracked, and would not stay attached to the locking mechanism. As such, I decided to use a wire to connect the two back together.

 

Poor man's clamps:

 

After leaving the Gorilla-glued result there for a full day:

 

Onto the next part. Paranoia. Did I measure the case right? Wait, isn't my PSU longer than this temporary one? Where does the optical drive go? What about the monitor? Oh yeah I'm not putting a monitor in.

 

Making sure that there's enough space:

 

At this point (and by "this point", I specifically mean "the moment I unscrewed the flap/compartment-thingy from the rest of the briefcase") I realized that the briefcase is made of an exterior shell, a plastic frame, and then cloth-covered cardboard layer. I decided to rip out the cloth+cardboard layer. There was a copyright thing on the bottom that said 1989.

 

I'm sorry to whoever put the time into assembling this 25 years ago:

 

Now, the big question.

Does an AIO cooler work when placed flat? I want to place the motherboard, PSU, and cooler in the layout below. Honestly, I don't understand how they actually work (which is why I bought one in the first place, but...yeah).

[XTankSlayerX]

I had this idea last night....

 

Thank you for making this a reality

[eBiz]

Awesome! Really looking forward to how this turns out!

[kennethnakasone]

I had this idea last night....

 

Thank you for making this a reality

 

Thanks! But Yoshiwars did do it first, so...yeah.

 

Awesome! Really looking forward to how this turns out!

 

lol I hope I don't let you down.

 

 

 

-----Second Update-----

 

This might be a let down, but all this update consists of is me cutting holes in the briefcase.

 

I had a spare I/O shield so I used that for measurements.

 

Drilled the outline of the hole out, punched the plastic out, then used a metal file to file down the rough parts. Turns out my guess on how the briefcase was designed was wrong; there's only one layer of plastic visible in the cutout. The second layer that seems to get cut off halfway down the I/O hole is the plastic that reinforces the rim of each side.

 

Tried putting in the I/O shield; it's a tight fit. I'll probably glue it in place anyway.

 

Next is the opening for the PCIe bracket. I took an old case that was laying around, and cut a piece of cardboard to match the opening.

 

Looks good, but I forgot to take the hinge into account (the one that holds both sides of the briefcase together). Ended up lowering the opening for the slot a little bit. Also, I ran out of white tape so I started using blue painter's tape.

 

This time around, I took more pictures. It was a lot easier to cut out the I/O shield's slot, what with the extra space 'n all.

 

End result for the PCIe slot.

 

Next thing to do is to cut out a hole for the PSU and ventilation for the radiator, but I'll probably get to that next weekend.

[kennethnakasone]

-----Third Update-----

 

Happy New Years!

Yeah...kinda late, but I intend to be in the New Years-attitude for at least the rest of the month, so again, Happy New Years!

 

Anyway, progress regarding the mod. I have pictures, but when i use the "Preview Post" option, both images that are right side up and images that are upside down appear to be upside down in the post. At this point, I'm giving up and just uploading them this way. Who knows, maybe they'll magically turn themselves rightside up.

 

Since I've heard some negative feedback regarding system stability when using flexible PCIe riser cables, I opted to purchase a Riser Card instead. Also, the graphics card that I'm using (QK2K) only operates at PCIe Gen 2 so I didn't have to worry about finding "PCIe Gen 3 Compatible" risers.

Side Note: The riser card pictured here didn't actually function. The seller was verry nice about it though, and offered me a refund very quickly. He also kindly let me keep the defective riser card (so I wouldn't have to pay for shipping back to China). He also told me an interesting trick; if the contacts are dirty, rub them with an eraser (apparently works, so long as dirt is the actual problem).

I ended up buying a riser card from a different seller (which ended up working), but I forgot to take a picture of it. It looks very similar though. They even had the same Quality Assurance sticker.

 

By the way, this is completely unrelated, but I noticed Jake Tapper had a minecraft mug. Apparently he got it for Father's Day from his son. Talk about an awesome dad.

 

Back on topic; here's a quick picture of the riser(the defective one) and graphics card attached. The latch on the riser wasn't very effective, but the slot itself is a tight fit anyway, so I suppose it's okay.

 

Next is a shot of my build in its current home. My cable management isn't the best.

Can I just use the "this is how it looked after I disconnected most of the cables; it usually looks nicer" excuse?

Futher disassembly ensued. Forgot to take pictures though.

 

The resulting Motherboard+PCIe Riser+Graphics Card, and two small Plexiglass panels used for spacing.

You're not going to steal my motherboard part number...are you?

 

The motherboard wouldn't sit flat, mainly because the plastic mounting backplate-thingy for the CPU cooler was bumping into the pins that were sticking out of the bottom of the motherboard. I ended up cutting off said sections (it actually made the process of mounting the cooler a lot easier than before).

Sorry Antec!

 

Now, finally getting around to testing the second riser card, and...nope! Well actually, it does "work", because I can press enter here, go into UEFI, do absolutely nothing, and boot into Windows by just exiting the interface.

For my situation, the solution to the Thunderbolt IO error was...well I'm not exactly sure. I first changed my PCIe slot settings so that rather than detecting which Gen to run at, it would assume that everything ran at Gen 2 (this didn't completely solve the problem). There was another section, where I believe I could choose what speed certain slots ran at, which I also set to Gen 2. After doing both of these, I was able to boot without the Thunderbolt IO error.

 

Therefore, I'm under the assumption that I had to change my motherboard settings so that:

First, the PCIe slots will detect devices as Gen 2.

Second, the PCIe slots will run said devices at Gen 2.

 

Perhaps someone else can correct me.

 

The motherboard (which, for the record, is ATX-sized) just barely fits. There are washers under the motherboard holding it up, so that it doesn't scratch against the inside of the briefcase. I forgot to take a picture of the PSU in there, but it fits. Actually, there's plenty of space for it.

 

Also, I did some last minute adjustments to the PCIe opening.

 

After this, the remaining work I did was between end-of-the-year/new years parties, going to temple, et cetera; taking pictures completely slipped my mind. All I did was add an opening for the PSU, another opening for a 5-1/4 drive, and mounting holes of the hard drives. Little stuff. (I figure an affordable portable 1080p monitor isn't too far off in the future, so I ended up prioritizing the 5-1/4in drive over a monitor).

 

As of today, the briefcase has been painted with its last coat of Plastidip, and has been left outside to dry. If all goes well, I'll have this done by the end of the week.

[ALXAndy]

A snuke ! I like it

[Guest]

I'm worried about how much airflow the GPU will have as the fan is down and you had it against some plexiglass, it doesn't look like you will get a lot of airflow.

Other than that it looks like an awesome build.