Next I constructed a little half box to serve as a cabinet to house my power switches, front usb/firewire/audio slot and power/hdd lighting effects.
And this mounts here:
And, as suggested, I cut up some panels.
For this work I like using my scrollsaw. First I drill holes at the corners. Then I drill a larger hole within the cutout. This allows me to thread my scroll saw blade—no need for a starter cut of plunge cutting.
To square the corners, I actually carefully work the scrollsaw in a sideways fashion, then come back with my dremel oscillating multitool to sand the edges to a nice square.
I also did the back panel for 5.25 drives as you can see here:
For the front piece, I came back and added the button holes:
The button holes were made with a unibit on my drill press. The slot for the usb/firewire/audio ports was made with 2 holes made by the unibit on the ends, connected with my scrollsaw.
And mounted it up:
Next I engaged in a little side project. I received PCI slot fascia piece by dangerden via performance-pcs.
In the past I've usually left the i/o area and pci slots just open--with a bracket to mount individual PCI slot. However, this piece does give it a more finished look.
But there is one problem: if you look closely the front edge hanging above the i/o area of the motherboard hangs over the recess for the 120mm exhaust fan. See the area circled here in this photo:
So I needed to trim a little bit of the edge off this piece.
There are a number of methods for accomplishing this--I went with the way I felt was easiest and cleanest (not wanting to mess up the nice paint job already done on the piece.
I decided to route the edge off.
First I put together a jig to guide the edge of my router:
Then I sandwiched a second jig on top to keep everything stable. You can see now that only the edge I wanted to shave off is left exposed:
Then I ran the router with a flush trim 1/2" bit:
And mounted it back up, clearance problem no more.
At this point really, all the structural components are done. So I stepped back and took a pair of pics to take a look at how far this thing has come:
This is stuff I enjoy--basic wiring, soldering, and crimping. One of these days I'll write a guide on what I know.
My first overall concept for lighting was to continue the sort of space lab look. So a lot of cool white cathodes and LEDs. I went with a theme I often use, that being a dark plastic surface. Hit a switch, and I want the internal components to be lit up and show thru the dark plastic. By the nature of my design, the motherboard is really front and center.
So I sat down and contemplated some general placements of lights to get a hold of how many lights I needed. Pretty soon I decided I wanted some lights to always be on, and some switched. After thinking about how to wire that I decided to go with an external 12V power source. To have always-available power, you either need to tap into the +5v USB always-on power from your powersupply, or you can pull an external line from an independent line--I went with the latter.
Having decided my power source, I then had to wrap my head around how to wire this thing up. I was looking at at least half a dozen LEDs, several LED light bars, cold cathode, and switches, all with varying voltage requirements.
I know its a little geeky, but I just had to diagram it out:
I have a +12v power source. The first division is between items that will be always on and those that will be switched.
Always on: As you may have noticed above I went with vandal switched from performance-pcs; 22mm circle for power on, 16mm circle for reset, and 16mm dot for lights on-off. The LED lights for these I decided to be always-on. All 3 LEDs can handle 3v to 12v of power, however, I would have to wire in resistors to balance their intensities.
Switched: I planned on have the front motherboard box lit up by 1 12" LED light bar and 1 4" cold cathode. I would have gone with a 4" LED light bar (and thus not need to hide the cold cathode inverter box), but I don't think they make them. The back hard drive compartment will be lit up with 12" LED light bar. Then I decided I wanted to light the compartment that houses the boxes, so throw in several more LEDs, requiring resistors.
Yup...pretty complicated.
Next I decided to map out my physical wiring a little. In the diagram above, I numbered all my wired in items, which correspond to the numbers in the diagrams below.
Given all the components that needed power, I needed a good way to split my 12v power source. So I went with an old trick: the 3 pin 6 fold pci pass thru:
I won't actually be mounting this in the PCI rack, but I am using its circuit board to generate 6 connections from one power source.
And here was my 12v power source, plus the custom cable I made to connect to my pci pass thru:
Next I tested all my connections to make sure everything would jibe, that the powersupply could provide enough power (its rated to 800mA), and to figure out all my necessary resistors.
That's 3 LED lit switches (different resistors), 4 LED light bars, and 1 cold cathode.
Then I went back to work on the PCI pass thru. Remember that a number of items were to be always-on and a number were to be switched. In this pic, you can see that I broke the trace to 3 of the ports:
Next I soldered in wires, with a connector:
Now all I have to do is to run a pair of lines from my switch, and terminate them with a female housing. When I connect the plug, the switch will now control these 3 ports on my PCI power pass-thru.
To mount my PCI pass-thru, I created some mounting blocks, again from the square bar 1/2" delrin.
This then was mounted to the spot I chose within the case:
Now that my wiring control unit is ready, let’s wire some stuff up!
The 3 switches (power-on, reset, and lights-on) all have LED lights that are meant to be continuously on.
I wired them up to a 3 pin fan controller:
Some of the switches required resistors, which I just soldered into place.
And here are the switches all lit up:
Next I wanted to create a set of bar lights. They are going to light up the little compartment that holds my switches. Building bar lights is a pretty simple and standard modding procedure.
First I started with some clear acrylic plastic rectangles:
These specific lights are going to be L channeled. I used some IPS weld-on #3 and glued the pieces together:
To glue plastic in this fashion, just clamp the pieces together, and apply glue along the seem. It will suck into the joint via capillary action, and with good prep, for a generally completely clear molecular bond between the edges.
Next using 220 and 400 grit sandpaper, I roughed up the surfaces of the bars to give it a matte finish:
I also drilled some 5-32 holes to receive the end of LEDs.
Next I glued in the LEDs. This time I used plain ol’ Krazy glue, so that it would set faster:
Wired up the LEDs with appropriate resistors (remember my power source is +12v).
Then I installed them into their proper location in the compartment unit:
However, I decided I wasn't satisfied--I wanted more lighting in this compartment.
So, using the same basic guidelines, I built this little unit:
Tested here:
And now it looks like this:
(I know its a little off square--after the mounting block gets painted, the bar lights will get glued into place--right now there are just being held by double stick tape).
My apologies on the slowness of this project. I do several projects simultaneously, and a lot of the other projects are for payin' customers so they get priority.
Here is a video of the lighting effect within the switching chamber:
Now to move on to lighting within the motherboard compartment.
For wiring purposes, I started with a 12” LED light bar.
However, these light bars are actually somewhat directional, as opposed to a CCFL which throws light in a 360 degree cylinder. So to get the light pointed in the direction I wanted, I needed to glue on some corners to the ends:
Then it sits in a bracket at a 45 degree angle:
And here it is lit up:
Pet peeve alert: A lot of folks just stick a light bar inside their case to “light things up”. I find that a light bar haphazardly mounted in a case mostly just blinds the viewer and/or induces a migraine, because a good portion of the light is shining right into the viewers eyes.
I want to light up my components/motherboard, not blind the viewer. So I will place my lights or mount my lights in a bracket to light up what I want visible, but shield the viewer from direct light.
Here the case sits unlit, dark and mysterious:
Hit the internal lights, and Pow! There’s your motherboard!
Omg I love this case. I am gonna have to borrow your LED acrylic bar idea and I like how that light bar lights up the interior like that, totally unexpected.
Hmmm... maybe I can do something like that with an AMD logo on my case. Where did you get that tooless HDD rack in that picture? I am gonna need something like that.
Hmmm... maybe I can do something like that with an AMD logo on my case. Where did you get that tooless HDD rack in that picture? I am gonna need something like that.
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