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[davidbuss]

Looks pretty good! Love the idea! Cant wait to see more updates on this!!

Thanks!

[davidbuss]

subbed, great renders BTW, are you a 3d artist, if not you might consider a side career in the art. That screen will be pretty cool when it's finished, but will you have a slide out keyboard or will it just display info?

I'm 15 so I haven't looked much into the career of 3d art lol, but I do enjoy working in CAD. I have an old wireless keyboard also left over from the old computer these parts came from that I will probably use but the screen will primarily display info. Any editing I have to do to software will be done on my main computer on the other side of the wall of my closet. That's why I have a DVI out in the design, so I can easily run a DVI cable from the computer to my monitor. I have also thought about a low-latency VNC software, but I haven't done any research into it. If the latency is low enough it would be preferable to a cable.

[chromeboy42]

I'm 15 so I haven't looked much into the career of 3d art lol, but I do enjoy working in CAD.

Well you seem to have a knack for it, if you keep working there could be a job future for you, and its never to early to start thinking of a career. You can actually get work as a kid as well. Commissioned works on the internet don't really rely on you being a certain age so if you are serious about modeling or need cash then you might consider freelancing. All you really need is a paypal or some other payment method and a place to showcase your work, a friend of mine suggests deviantART.

[Raboo]

Really nice, I have a idea now

[flibberdipper]

It would probably be a good idea to put an exhaust fan in the back of the cabinet too, because otherwise you're really just blowing a little cool air in and recycling the warm air. Personal experience with one of the infamous oven box cases with pretty much no airflow.

[LibertyBaller]

It would probably be a good idea to put an exhaust fan. If the cabinet is against a wall and it doesn't work out to fit in the back for what ever reason, you could add the exhaust fan on top of the cabinet or the buttom if thats not a problem. I would highly recommend having one. Great stuff so far! Looking forward to the next update.

[jscho]

The little shelf holding the motherboard looks like it's being held up by Meccano. Is it?

[davidbuss]

The little shelf holding the motherboard looks like it's being held up by Meccano. Is it?

Yup! Back from when I was a little kid. I was waiting for someone to notice 

[jscho]

Yup! Back from when I was a little kid. I was waiting for someone to notice 

 

Oh the memories :wub: I had lots of Meccano once upon a time.

[davidbuss]

Edit: I RESTARTED THIS ENTIRE PROJECT. GO TO THE BOTTOM OF PAGE 2 AND START FROM THERE TO SEE THE GOOD PART.

 

Hey guys! I had a half day of school on friday and quite a bit of time today so I have gotten a lot done in the past few days. It doesn't really look like it but most of what I have been doing is test fitting things and trying to get them to fit. Also, like I said before, I don't have the best of tools so this it's a challenge to get this to go smoothly and look nice. I also ran into a few problems along the way but mostly have sorted them out. Alright, heres what I've accomplished in the past few days:

 

Getting the boring stuff out of the way: I fixed up another cable. Here is it broken.

 

Heres the finished product.

 

So I continued my endeavor by cutting out a base, and then making some brackets to hold the motherboard tray. I cut both pieces of wood out with a hand saw so they were fairly off in their similarity. I did quite a bit of sanding to get them to line up. On a side note, if anyone has a jigsaw they want to donate I would gladly accept it 

 

I had an old 80mm usb fan that I put a 3 pin connector on.

 

Here it is on the base.

 

Here it is with a the fan and motherboard tray. For those with OCD like me, ignore the zip tie, it will be gone when I'm done.

 

Here are the hard drives attached 

 

Heres a better view of how I attached the hard drives. Basically what I did was used Meccano pieces to attach the tray and hard drives. For the hard drives I used two short pieces on the bottom and screwed them into the hard drive with normal screws. I also used one short piece on the top for support. I screwed the whole thing in by the bottom two pieces as seen in the picture. It's hard to explain so I might post more detailed pictures tomorrow.

 

Here is a picture of what the basic layout is. The power supply is not attached yet but that is where it will live. I'll figure it out in a later post.

 

I'm writing this at my geeky friends house so heres a little eye candy.   (This is his rig BTW) @KenadyDwag44

 

And heres his dog (just for fun)

 

I plan on painting all of these parts black so it looks a little better. I ran in to a complication with the 24 pin not being long enough. I might try to extend it and if I do that I might just sleeve the cables anyway. That sounds like it would take more time than I have though so probably not.  If not I will most likely just order an extension. I also thought about just replacing the colored wires with black ones. I would like to replace the Meccano pieces with some aluminum L brackets. Hopefully that would look a little better. I'll probably post some updated sketchup drawings soon but like I said before, I'm at my friends house and I'm on my laptop so I can't post them tonight. Tell me what you think guys!

[davidbuss]

Oh the memories :wub: I had lots of Meccano once upon a time.

Ya, those and Legos were pretty much all I did in my childhood. Good times...  :rolleyes:

[Raboo]

Hi Mr Dog, BTW nice rig

[sperkowsky]

should look interesting good job making use of what you have

[manoli13]

Cool idea. As of right now it looks weird but in time i can tell it will look really nice. The 3d pictures of the planned look might be a one of a kind build idea.

[davidbuss]

Alright it's been almost two months since I've posted anything and now that Christmas break is around I get a break from school and hockey and just life in general. Sadly my finals are after break so I don't have as much time as I would like. I just ordered some stuff for this project that's supposed to come tomorrow so I will post some pics of it once it arrives. I'm thinking I'm just gonna create a new topic for this build too so that I can completely start from the beginning. For now here is the re-vamped design for this test bench. This one should look a lot better because I'm planning on making it out of sheet metal. Also if you look at some of my previous sketchup screenshots, there is acrylic covering the cabinet but I think i'm just gonna leave it open now. That should allow for better air flow and all that good stuff because of the fact that it will be sitting in my closet. If you have read to this point I will stop boring you and give you some pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

The blue lines btw will be lights and that is not the motherboard I will be using; It was the only matx one I could find to download from the shared models on sketchup. Tell me what you guys think!

 

[tristan1035]

Looks awesome

[SpamBrie]

Cool

[davidbuss]

Looks awesome

Cool

 

Thanks guys!

[flibberdipper]

Come on man. MOAR PICS. I know I ask a lot, but this is killing me, since it looks cool.

[Raboo]

Sweet

[davidbuss]

Come on man. MOAR PICS. I know I ask a lot, but this is killing me, since it looks cool.

 

I should be able to post some more today. Just waiting on my boxes to get here. 

[DJ46]

 

I'm 100% sure that is a Fractal PCI slot fan controller.

How do I know?

I'm holding one in exactly the same state right now.

 

How thick was the wood you used? I'm making a case for a PC out of notebook components and I want to use wood too.

[davidbuss]

Come on man. MOAR PICS. I know I ask a lot, but this is killing me, since it looks cool.

Just for you man:

 

Just got this in the mail...

 

Its a lot smaller than I expected

 

That's all I have for now; I'm practically glued to the door waiting for my other stuff to get here. That came via USPS, everything else comes from UPS.

 

I'm 100% sure that is a Fractal PCI slot fan controller.

How do I know?

I'm holding one in exactly the same state right now.

 

How thick was the wood you used? I'm making a case for a PC out of notebook components and I want to use wood too.

Good eye.   It is indeed a Fractal fan controller. My friend didn't need it so he gave it to me.

As for the wood I just bought two, 2 ft. by 2 ft. pieces of craft plywood from Michaels (craft store) for like 5 bucks. I think the top piece is 1/16 in. thick and the bottom is about 1/8.

[davidbuss]

Sweet

Thanks!

[DJ46]

As for the wood I just bought two, 2 ft. by 2 ft. pieces of craft plywood from Michaels (craft store) for like 5 bucks. I think the top piece is 1/16 in. thick and the bottom is about 1/8.

Thanks. *converts inches into milimetres*