Dyl's D Series Laptop

[dyl421421]

Hello everyone here on LTT. I have decided to do a scratch build for making my desktop more portable than it is. I go to friends' houses a lot and play a lot of games over LAN, but every time I have to completely dismantle my setup on my desk and cram it all into a backpack of some sort, which is very heavy on my back. It usually takes me about a half hour to disassemble it and then another 20 just to figure out how to fit it all into my backpack. Therefore, I have decided it would be a great idea to put my computer into a suitcase. The "D" in the name stands for desktop, in case you haven't figured that out.

 

*Large Picture Warning!*

 

Day 1

I found a toolbox at Harbor Freight which I thought would work quite nicely, and it only cost me about $24.

Only problem with this is the fact that it had a bunch of foam and stuff on the inside, which would basically make it a heatbox, so I decided to tear all that out with a scraper and a flathead screwdriver. I placed some wax paper into it temporarily to be able to dry fit my parts as the glue from the foam was still on parts of the case.

 

Day 2

Time to make this case look a little nicer! I stopped by Home Depot and found some MetalFX Contact Paper that looked pretty nice in the store. I came home and cut each part of the inside of the case with a T-Square and a utility knife. Sometimes the cut would be off by about a 1/16 of an inch and would either be too big or slightly too small, so I cut small strips to go along the edges to help fill in the gaps. I also slimmed down the graphics card rear I/O shield using a dremel as the bottom part that rests on the side of the motherboard tray was covering the audio ports of my motherboard when I used a right angle adapter I found in my parts bin.

 

Update 3! :http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/96082-dyls-d-series-laptop/?p=1356157

Update 4! :http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/96082-dyls-d-series-laptop/?p=1385572

Update 5! :http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/96082-dyls-d-series-laptop/?p=1393597

More to come each day as I get more done! 

 

This is my first "mod". I've never actually done any case mods before hand as I've never had the time or money to do so. This is going to take some time, but it's going to be really nice when its finished, at least I hope.

 

Imgur Album link: http://imgur.com/a/byVIF

[Imabigmac]

Where did you get that pci-e angle changer? 

[dyl421421]

Where did you get that pci-e angle changer? 

I found it in my parts bin. I bought it from Amazon a while back. Here's a link to it: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/B002M1DHJG

[DanKepke]

Haw do you want to play? Like on a suitcase-notebook or with seperate keyboard?

 

If you do it like this you wont be happy with it, because i played a while with my notebook in front of my 24" and that was terrible..

 

 

Turn the screen and make something like a all-in-one pc. You don't even need to open it for using.

[ANUPLUCIFERGAMER]

Haw do you want to play? Like on a suitcase-notebook or with seperate keyboard?

 

If you do it like this you wont be happy with it, because i played a while with my notebook in front of my 24" and that was terrible..

 

 

Turn the screen and make something like a all-in-one pc. You don't even need to open it for using.

HOW TO DO IT!! Looks amazing

[dyl421421]

Haw do you want to play? Like on a suitcase-notebook or with seperate keyboard?

 

If you do it like this you wont be happy with it, because i played a while with my notebook in front of my 24" and that was terrible..

 

 

Turn the screen and make something like a all-in-one pc. You don't even need to open it for using.

 

I am not completely sure if I'm going to do it like that. I saw this one over at OCN. I am going to be using my mechanical keyboard so I don't care if it doesn't have those internally. I might do something like the guy here did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjlnO6DWdP8

[dyl421421]

HOW TO DO IT!! Looks amazing

http://www.overclock.net/t/1206406/feb-motm-winner-lando-a-suitcase-briefcase-computer-done-right

[dyl421421]

No time to work on it in the past few days, had some things come up that didn't let me work on it. More will be coming soon.

[dyl421421]

Finally found the time to work on it again! I knew I wanted to mount the motherboard today, but I really wasn't sure how I was going to do it. I tried about 8 different layouts, but the last one was the one that worked the best. I started marking the holes I needed to drill through, but every time I looked at it again to make sure the holes were correct, they wouldn't match. Eventually, I marked the holes correctly, and drilled them out with a Dremel and the router-style bit. After a long day of work, I finally got the board mounted. Not only did I have it mounted, it fit perfectly with the graphics card. Beforehand, the graphics card sit too far above the PCI-E connector for it to be able to fit, so I used some nylon spacers to bump up the motherboard about 1/2 an inch. This allowed the graphics card to sit flat to the ground and not bend the connector. It fits in very snug, so it won;t be going anywhere when I carry it around on its side. 

 

[Vendetta]

Finally found the time to work on it again! I knew I wanted to mount the motherboard today, but I really wasn't sure how I was going to do it. I tried about 8 different layouts, but the last one was the one that worked the best. I started marking the holes I needed to drill through, but every time I looked at it again to make sure the holes were correct, they wouldn't match. Eventually, I marked the holes correctly, and drilled them out with a Dremel and the router-style bit. After a long day of work, I finally got the board mounted. Not only did I have it mounted, it fit perfectly with the graphics card. Beforehand, the graphics card sit too far above the PCI-E connector for it to be able to fit, so I used some nylon spacers to bump up the motherboard about 1/2 an inch. This allowed the graphics card to sit flat to the ground and not bend the connector. It fits in very snug, so it won;t be going anywhere when I carry it around on its side. 

 

 

I'm curious to know why you didn't mount the motherboard on the very left side so you could use your rear I/O ports without abunch of trouble. I don't know what your finished ideal is but If you plan to have a cover over the inside then that is a bad spot to mount it.

[dyl421421]

I'm curious to know why you didn't mount the motherboard on the very left side so you could use your rear I/O ports without abunch of trouble. I don't know what your finished ideal is but If you plan to have a cover over the inside then that is a bad spot to mount it.

Basically, I'm going to be putting my PSU on the left mounted to the back. My HD/SSD are going to mounted behind that. I don't need access to my rear I/O as I am going to be putting a SilverStone front panel, that has 4 USB3's and audio, below where the handle is mounted. For the things I do need access to in back, like optical audio, I got right angle adapters for them and am going to be mounting them to the back of the case with keystone jacks or something to that extent.

[nkucz]

oooo followed!

[DanKepke]

I found this awesome machine on overclocker.net:

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/1305676/zero-clearance-work-log

 

Maybe a inspiration for you.

[dyl421421]

Update: Ordered the Monitor I decided to use. It's an AOC E970SWN. It's only 19 inches, but it is the biggest I could fit inside the case. It will only be used when I'm not at home where I have access to my regular 23 inch monitors. I plan to have some sort of pass through for the DVI ports when I'm using my main desktop monitors. I will be picking it up tomorrow but I probably won't have time to work on it.

[dyl421421]

Update 4! : I picked up the monitor today. It's a perfect fit. I didn't have much time to work on it, but I strengthened up the case with a piece of L bracket I had leftover from another project. I drilled out the cheap rivets that came with the case and held the hinges in and replaced them with 8-32 x 1 1/4" machine screws. I will end up cutting off the part of the screw I don't need. I also worked on two pieces of aluminum flat bar to give me a spot to screw in the VESA mount, as the case itself would fall apart if I didn't do this. I went through about 2 and a half drill bits and one drill battery drilling through all the aluminum.

 

Also updated the first post with a link to the album with some extra images on imgur.

[Swegly]

wow thats cool.