Posted January 15, 2017 I'm looking at helping a friend build his own case out of square aluminum tube, aluminum solid angle, and some plexiglass. Now my question pertains specifically to the mounting of screws to the aluminum square tube. The tube has a gauge of 16 and I planed on using M3 motherboard stand offs. Would 16 gauge aluminum be able to support an M3 thread pitch? Or should I be looking at doing M3 threaded rivets? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted January 15, 2017 16 gauge aluminum is about 1.29 mm..... It might work as there is not that much load on the motherboard standoffs, but you'd be better off with thicker aluminum or another solution. GUITAR BUILD LOG FROM SCRATCH OUT OF APPLEWOOD - Ryzen Build - R5 3600 | MSI X470 Gaming Plus MAX | 16GB CL16 3200MHz Corsair LPX | Dark Rock 4 MSI 2060 Super Gaming X 1TB Intel 660p | 250GB Kingston A2000 | 1TB Seagate Barracuda | 2TB WD Blue be quiet! Silent Base 601 | be quiet! Straight Power 550W CM 2x Dell UP2516D - First System (Retired) - Intel Xeon 1231v3 | 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport Dual Channel | Gigabyte H97 D3H | Gigabyte GTX 970 Gaming G1 | 525 GB Crucial MX 300 | 1 TB + 2 TB Seagate HDD be quiet! 500W Straight Power E10 CM | be quiet! Silent Base 800 with stock fans | be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced C1 | 2x Dell UP2516D Reviews: be quiet! Silent Base 800 | MSI GTX 950 OC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted January 15, 2017 22 minutes ago, Haughernaut said: I'm looking at helping a friend build his own case out of square aluminum tube, aluminum solid angle, and some plexiglass. Now my question pertains specifically to the mounting of screws to the aluminum square tube. The tube has a gauge of 16 and I planed on using M3 motherboard stand offs. Would 16 gauge aluminum be able to support an M3 thread pitch? Or should I be looking at doing M3 threaded rivets? You can tap a 16 gauge material while it would be a little on the thin side but still doable just be careful not to over torque and potentially strip out the material. Also check the standoffs you get as there are many kinds the most common standard is 6-32 but there are also M3 versions or ones with one end being 6-32 and the other M3. Updated Modding FAQ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted January 15, 2017 I'm not an expert by any means so I might be wrong, but If you have the tools to do it what I would do in this situations is tap the medal so you can just screw the standoffs into the tubing(easier said then done). Since I've never done anything like this before, i don't know what tap or drill bit size you would need to do this. 16 gauge is on the thin side if possible get a little thicker metal. My Rig i7-5930k @ 3.5GHz ~ Gigabyte G1 gaming 980ti ~ 32GB gskillz ripjaws 4 DDR4 ~ NZXT Kraken x61 AIO water cooler ~ Corsair AX1200i PSU (over kill I know) ~ Seagate 2TB + 1TB HDD ~ SanDisk 120GB SSD + Samsung 256 850 evo ~ Asus x99-deluxe MOBO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted January 15, 2017 Sounds like you may want to go for a steel Motherboard tray [and then you could even make it removable] and an aluminum body. Theres a reason why tons of manufacturers do this. All the weight on a mobo may risk ripping standoffs out of an aluminum tray if you shake the system too hard or maybe even just over time Project Hephaestus Intel Core i5 6600K @ 4.2GHz~ASUS Maximus 9 Hero~32GB DDR4 @ 3200MHz~ZOTAC GTX 980 AMP Ed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted January 15, 2017 there are online calculators for this sort of thing that will tell you the right thread required but ill save you some math and tell you Ali would be too soft for thread in 16g. You need a courser thread than you would for steel ☼ ψ ︿_____︿_ψ_ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted January 15, 2017 Author So I've used SketchUp to make a mock of what I think would work. The design uses 2280mm of the 2439mm of 8' aluminum rod. Which leaves me with about 6" of aluminum if I don't mess anything up. I'm looking at it and I'm thinking to myself that it might be best to use rivets and 45* angle braces on the inside of the bends. I plan on cutting the bends by making two 45 degree cuts and then bending the rod in the desired direction. Going to have to precise on these cuts so I don't mess this up for my buddy... Plan on using aluminum solid angle pieces to mount the PSU, HDD, and SSD. As well as having a solid angle piece attached to the rod next to the gpu for support. Flat pieces could be added around the frame using rivets for support as well as providing more structure for plexiglass mounting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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