Enlarging my Standard PC Case

[Turismo98]

I'm currently a student, thus I have no weekly/monthly/yearly income except for my allowance given to me by my parents.

I have two standard cases at home, one I'm using for my build, and the other one was laying around.

During last summer I worked in a company specialized in producing and cutting aluminum, and when I talked with the manager (who is a friend of mine) he said that he won't bill me (or significantly reduce the price) for the cutting and bending I'm going to need.

 

TL;DR? : I'm broke to buy myself a new case and a friend offered to pay for the aluminum, cutting and bending it so I decided to mod my current case into a CaseLabs looking case.

 

Okay so my case basically looks like this one, and it barely fits my ATX Gigabyte motherboard and my ATX PSU

Spoiler

 

So I disassembled it all, and started planning for a new design.

What I came up with so far:

• Adding a pedestal just like this one on the bottom, which will represent the basement, there will be space for the power supply, and it will contain all the cables and wires coming out of my power supply and that I don't need. I'll bolt it to the bottom of my current case using rivets. 
  Spoiler

  

   

• Removing the old silly-looking plastic front panel and replacing it with a metal one, which will contain holes to mount 2 120mm fans for the top of the case and a single 120mm for the bottom basement.

• Filling the top PSU slot with an aluminum sheet and bolting it with rivets to close it.

• Removing all the 3'5 inch cages and 5'5 inch cages and placing them in the bottom basement.

• Drilling two holes in the current case's bottom to fit the cables through them. and adding grommets to the holes for a neater look.

• Drilling holes in the current motherboard tray for a better cable management.

• Painting the whole front panel, top plate, case doors, pedestal doors, with a matte black paint, and painting the rest of the pieces with a soft black paint.

• Adding a plexiglass(or acrylic, not sure which one is cheaper) window to the side door.

 

I'll add more details once I finish all the 3d models.

Though the point of creating this topic wasn't to show off, but to ask for advice, since I've never worked with aluminum before, and I have no experience in modding cases.

So can anyone tell me if I'm missing something?

Does anyone have any suggestions, or any advice to evade doing design mistakes or anything?

[NinjaJc01]

I think  the pics are broken.

[Turismo98]

11 minutes ago, NinjaJc01 said:

I think  the pics are broken.

Edited the links

[NinjaJc01]

It's a good plan, don't forget cooling.

[Turismo98]

Okay so I started working on the front panel design.

So this is how it will look without the fan mesh/grill which will be screwed into the case with a rather simple mechanism.

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So I designed this piece, a front plate, so I could bend 3 edges 180 degrees to form lips and slide a large piece of mesh from the the 4th lip and lock it in perfectly.

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So the front panel would look like this

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[Turismo98]

Spoiler

Rendered the side panel for the hell of it, I'll add more renders once I'm done with everything

[TheCamba]

Nice work.  Can't wait to see a finished product.

[Turismo98]

I'm finally done designing, this is a render of the to-be-cut pieces rendered together.

Spoiler

 

[Turismo98]

Okay, so, after checking out the parts I was going to use from my old case, turns out they're made from steel, and not aluminum, so I'll have to use steel to match the thickness and support the weight of the parts I have.

 

Thing is, I have NO IDEA what kind of steel to use and what thickness, as there are a lot of different types, right? I need help.

[W-L]

1 hour ago, Turismo98 said:

Okay, so, after checking out the parts I was going to use from my old case, turns out they're made from steel, and not aluminum, so I'll have to use steel to match the thickness and support the weight of the parts I have.

Thing is, I have NO IDEA what kind of steel to use and what thickness, as there are a lot of different types, right? I need help.

You can use aluminum if you find it easier to work with and not go with steel but in general for the kind you want would is cold rolled and somewhat annealed to allow for easy bending with a metal brake. For thickness wise something like 1/32" is approx the thickness of most metals for cases. 

[Blu]

7 minutes ago, W-L said:

You can use aluminum if you find it easier to work with and not go with steel but in general for the kind you want would is cold rolled and somewhat annealed to allow for easy bending with a metal brake. For thickness wise something like 1/32" is approx the thickness of most metals for cases. 

Usually SECC steel if I'm not mistaken? For the width, try measuring your current case width and try and get as close to it as possible

[W-L]

1 minute ago, Blu said:

Usually SECC steel if I'm not mistaken? For the width, try measuring your current case width and try and get as close to it as possible

SEEC as in the steel galvanized cold rolled, would be the stuff many use.

[Turismo98]

Thanks a lot guys,

I'm pretty darn sure that my case uses steel that is 0.7 mm thick. I've looked up the SECC steel you mentioned and that's exactly what I'm looking for, for the most part.

[Turismo98]

I need help with the dimensions of the following parts:

- USB Type A port.

- Audio Jacks

- 3.5 inch front panel slot

 

Can't find them anywhere!

[Blu]

1 hour ago, Turismo98 said:

I need help with the dimensions of the following parts:

- USB Type A port.

- Audio Jacks

- 3.5 inch front panel slot

 

Can't find them anywhere!

1) USB Type A port = Female: 12.5mm long, 5.12mm width

2) Audio Jacks = roughly 6mm in diameter (the actual jack that the audio cable plugs into), otherwise, the end of the cable is, I presume, 3.5mm

3) 3.5 inch front panel slot = 102mm x 119mm x 25mm

 

Hope this helps  Really looking forward to how this pans out, as I really like the Case Labs SMA8, but don't have the money to afford it, so this MAY be a possible work around to that  

[Turismo98]

 

 

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Hopefully I can now send the parts to be cut.

[Blu]

1 minute ago, Turismo98 said:

 

 

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Hopefully I can now send the parts to be cut.

It would be interesting to see if I can find the blueprints to the SMA8 or a rough version of it  

[Turismo98]

7 minutes ago, Blu said:

It would be interesting to see if I can find the blueprints to the SMA8 or a rough version of it  

What do you mean exactly?

[Blu]

10 minutes ago, Turismo98 said:

What do you mean exactly?

The 2D blueprints for the Case Labs SMA8, so that I can try and make it myself. Somebody did it with the In-Win S-Frame case, and made their own mini version of it  

 

Your build is starting to remind me greatly of them

[Turismo98]

2 hours ago, Blu said:

The 2D blueprints for the Case Labs SMA8, so that I can try and make it myself. Somebody did it with the In-Win S-Frame case, and made their own mini version of it  

 

Your build is starting to remind me greatly of them

You can always do it yourself, it's not that hard, especially if you use Solidworks as it's really easy and simple.

[NuKe]

5 hours ago, Blu said:

It would be interesting to see if I can find the blueprints to the SMA8 or a rough version of it  

I would be inclined to ask. The worst they can do is say no or totally on board for it. Some companies are like that. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

[Turismo98]

Okay so one thing that is bothering me is front panel connectors, the current ones I'm using in my case are broken, and I have nowhere to buy those here in North Africa. Does anyone have any idea?