• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Is this feasible? Star Trek ship as a case

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

JerkasaurusRex

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2003
Location
New York, New York
I am a huge Star Trek fan and i would like to maybe have one of the Enterprises as my case. I finally have gotten a legit job with a real salary after graduating college over a year ago and it is time to build a new rig. I haven't picked out components yet as I will probably be building it in late-August or September, but i have been thinking up ideas for a case. Currently i am still using the laptop i used throughout college since I haven't had a desktop since HS.

Anyway, I'm thinking of using a model kit for a Star Trek ship, most likely either the Enterprise NX-01 (ENT) or the Enterprise NCC-1701D (TNG) as the case because their saucer/nacelle layout looks the best for this type of application in my opinion. The way i was thinking of doing this was buying a model kit and somehow modifying the inside of it to fit the components in it. Turns out, most models are small, like only 18in in length and rather shallow on the inside. I was curious if anybody knew where i could buy a big model, like one big enough to keep a mobo with the cards and stuff on the inside.

The layout i planned was putting the mobo inside the saucer section. I would put a single DVD-drive as the deflector dish and mount the 2 hard drives i would have in the back of the battle section behind the dvd-drive. As for the cooling, i planned on water cooling it and using the warp nacelles as reservoirs with UV blue dye in them. I also think i could put a fan in the top of the saucer as the bridge section to cool the mobo/components since the CPU/GPU will be cooled by water. Again the problem would seem to be space, if i can fit all the components inside the ship, and keep them reasonably cool.

I plan on trying to OC it, but if cooling is a bit of a problem, i wouldn't mind sacrificing it for a super cool case. I was thinking of actually keeping the case above my monitor hanging from my ceiling and hiding the cables in the wall or behind a bookcase near my desk or something.

This seems like a big job and I know I am just kind of rambling but i want some input on how i can make this work, if it even can work.

Thanks.
 
Probably expensive, but Northstar Models sells a 1/260 Enterpise A model, and it looks like they might be able to modify it a bit for what you want to do with it. This site has a 1/350 (35") model, but it looks like it's cheap plastic stuff that you wouldn't be able to put aynthing inside.
 
itx board, 2.5" HD, and a small psu should fit into almost anything. You will need to mod a bit to gain access to the ports (video, usb, etc)

There is a nice site somewhere showing many of the ITX builds including one inside a NES deck and other crazy stuff.
 
4GHZ: I thought about going mITX on a smaller model but i was hoping this could be my main computer that I would do my work and gaming on. I don't think mITX would cut it for that but maybe if this project falls through as my main rig, i could still use a ship with an mITX system for an HTPC or something else.

Ben: I thought about a borg cube as well and i did see some 3" and 8" cube models. So if i bought 4 8" models (close to $100 each) or 32 3" models (about $9 each) i could have a 15-16" cube which could fit almost everything in there. The thing is I am not a big fan of the Borg and wouldn't be as happy with it. Now a Klingon ship, that would be sweet but their layouts are completely unsuitable to putting much inside them.

Doing some more research, I think i am going to e-mail Northstar models and see how much it would cost for the Enterprise-A model and see if it could be modified to fit a computer. The Saucer section really is the make or break for this project. I was thinking that it would be hard to put in a good video card though since those usually have larger profiles. Maybe i could use one of those Asus AG external vid cards since they are upgradable and paint the outside to look like a shuttlepod or something and keep it outside the main ship.

Thanks for the input guys. Keeping throwing suggestions at me. I'm trying to get as much info about this so i can make a real game plan soon.
 
Here is a Startrek case mod for you toget some Ideas from,

Now instead of the PC case area you could make you own Saucer shape housing using fibreglass or acrylic or acrylic resin
 
Here is a Startrek case mod for you toget some Ideas from,

Now instead of the PC case area you could make you own Saucer shape housing using fibreglass or acrylic or acrylic resin

Am I the only one who just burst out laughing when I first saw this case? I was expecting a proper ship :p
 
Am I the only one who just burst out laughing when I first saw this case? I was expecting a proper ship :p

Me too! I was googling for other Star Trek mods and that one seems to be very popular. I don't think sticking two nacelles and deflector dish on a silver case really count as much of a Star Trek mod. The dude that did that whole Borg Cube thing is pretty sick though. I also saw another one that was a smaller Enterprise-A with an mITX board, like what 4GHZ suggested, but I have found nothing on the scale that I have wanted to do.

Jolly: How would i make my own saucer? I have never worked with fiberglass or acyclic. I'm a metal and masonry type but i would be open to learning how. Have any links or suggestions on how i could start to look into this? I always thought the model kits where already fiberglass and acrylic so buying a model kit would be the same thing, just me not having to be the artist that molds everything. I could be wrong.
 
Jolly: How would i make my own saucer? I have never worked with fiberglass or acyclic. I'm a metal and masonry type but i would be open to learning how. Have any links or suggestions on how i could start to look into this? I always thought the model kits where already fiberglass and acrylic so buying a model kit would be the same thing, just me not having to be the artist that molds everything. I could be wrong.

Have a look at some of my fellow modding friends Builds here

Papang - UFO/OVNI ver 2.0 http://www.forum.newmodcity.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=252
jj_sky5000 - Project "Ice" http://www.forum.newmodcity.com/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=895

Might give you some ideas into how this can be accomplished,
Also seeing as you say you're a Metal worker you could fabricate two saucer dishes from aluminium
 
@ random new guy above me, ost PC geeks are fans of sci-fi shows along with me and to be honest its year 2010 computers are a life and make a lot of money if your a computer tech, once i leave the marine the marine corp ill make 150K/year easy

@op i would love too see a very nice look model with comp hardware in it. i suggest water cooling that has in and output lines out the warp drive modules so that your shot can stay cool and you can have an external rad
 
@ random new guy above me, ost PC geeks are fans of sci-fi shows along with me and to be honest its year 2010 computers are a life and make a lot of money if your a computer tech, once i leave the marine the marine corp ill make 150K/year easy

@op i would love too see a very nice look model with comp hardware in it. i suggest water cooling that has in and output lines out the warp drive modules so that your shot can stay cool and you can have an external rad

I was planning on WCing and using the warp nacelles as reservoirs and using blue UV dye in the water to give the plasma affect.

Right now i am looking into fashioning my own saucer section with aluminum since Jolly-Swagman suggested it. I am thinking getting the detail like the bridge and stuff like that is going to be hard to do. What i could do is make an aluminum saucer and just glue the model kit saucer over the aluminum, assuming my saucer is the same dimensions. This way If the saucer on the model can fit an ATX mobo in there, i can raise the clearance inside by an inch to fit a waterblock. The saucer would be thicker and would mess with the scale of the entire ship, but that is a reasonable compromise to make to get this thing to work. I am sure nobody will notice if the saucer section of a ship in about 1" thicker than it should be.

The problem is still fitting a video card in there since external PCIe enclosures are like $500-$1000. I plan on using this as my main computer so I will be gaming on it. Nothing big since i am not a big PC FPS guy. Mostly just looking at Civs 5 and SC2/D3. Still, even mid-range video cards for my purposes have a large profile.
 
Instead of using Al, why not use something easy and cheap to add heat too. Could go with a tin skin and a steel L and box sub-structure. Be so much easier to lap it or spot weld it. Plus sheets - material, would be super cheap. Compared to aluminum.
Welding up steel is cheap. You could even braze it together.


If yer crafty. You could add plastics in the mix. Riveting modules together.

To me, steel would be a great choice. Aluminum is great stuff. When your adding 100 linear feet and attaching... It adds up in gas costs and stuff. Light steel and tin work great. Plus being able to make mounting points for parts works out.


Making a 'tray' should not be hard. If your honestly enginerringly crafty... You could 'pin out' a PCI-e extension.
 
Last edited:
One member has already been set to a 3-day ban. Any more stupid posts and I'll start handing out extended vacations.

Thanks,

S-N, Forum Staff
 
After further brainstorming and looking around at what is and isn't possible, i have created five goals that must be achieved to make this project worth it if i am to carry it out:

1. The motherboard with components installed (CPU, waterblocks, ram, etc) must fit within the saucer section of the ship.
2. An optical drive must fit within the ship.
3. The warp nacelles must be used as reservoirs for the WC system.
4. There must be adequate ventilation in the saucer, or everything (ram, NB/SB, etc) needs to be watercooled.
5. Must be able to be used as my main rig to play games (mostly strategy like Civ5 and SC2), do my other work (office, web surf, etc.), and maybe stream some movies or tv shows from hulu or whatever.

Now additional objectives that I have that are not as mission critical as the above three are as follows:

6. An SSD (OS drive) should fit within the ship.
7. The water pump should fit within the ship.
8. Fitting the power supply within the ship.

Now here are problems I am running into with each goal:

1. The video card is going to be very difficult to position in here. Enablingwolf, you mentioned building my own external PCIe enclosure, but i don't think i have the EE background to do that. I have never worked with a PCB and my soldering skills aren't that great. I was thinking of either using a very low profile graphics card which would severely under power my system, or i get one of those adapters that turns the card 90 degrees. The problem with the 90 degree thing is that from what i can find, they downgrade the slot to PCIe 1.0 so it isn't as fast. Also, it might be difficult to mount a waterblock on the GPU if it is facing downwards towards the motherboard. There might not be enough clearance between the card and the motherboard to install the waterblock. Aside from the video card issue, if the saucer section has a diameter over 12", it should fit the motherboard within it.

2. The optical drive should fit within the aft section of the ship. I am thinking it either pops out of the rear shuttlebay or the front deflector dish. Either way, that entire section would need to be wide enough to fit a disc drive in there. I would definitely buy a very slim laptop drive for this project. Maybe i can use a trayless optical drive, like the macbook style ones.

3. I am finding it difficult to imagine where to position inlets and outlets on the reservoirs unless i run them in series. The problem than arises that I can probably only fit 1 set of tubing through each nacelle strut which means the water could only move one way, either in or out, but not both. Now what i was thinking was since my radiator will have to be external (unless i can miraculously figure out a way to get it inside the ship), i can have the water come into the reservoir from the back of the nacelle and then out through the nacelle struts where both reservoir lines meet at a Y fitting and then proceed to the pump where the loop will continue to the saucer. The problem now is, where does the tube exit to return back to the radiator? Maybe out the rear shuttlebay? Maybe i can open up a porthole where a phaser cannon or torpedo launcher would be located?

4. This is rather self explanitory. I could probably put a fan in the bridge module that would push air downwards on the mobo and then an exhaust fan on the bottom of the saucer. Or I could have fresh air come from the bottom, which would hit the underside of the mobo, unless i mount it upside down inside the saucer and have the exhaust up top. I doubt the saucer will be thick enough to have sidefans. Like I said another option is to forget the airflow inside and just WC everything. This may be risky due to mosfets, capacitors and other components i won't be able to get to with water.

5. My basic limitation with this is the problems that could arise from goal #1.

6.If the SSD is thin enough, i could probably mount it above or below my optical drive.

7. I was thinking a swiftech MCP355 would be best for this situation due to its smaller profile. I could mount it in the part of the ship that the warp nacelles attach to towards the back and have the tubing run up the ship into the saucer section from there. The problem would be getting the tubing past the drives and into the saucer, as well as the problem I mentioned above of where the line would return to the rad from.

8. I am definitely going to use a modular PSU for this, but i don't think there are any small enough to fit in there with the optical drive.


Now aside from my goals, additional problems I may run into:

A. How am i going to route all the cables in and out of the ship. Like the USB cable for my KB/mouse or the cables for my monitor or speakers? It might look like the ship is being attacked by tenacles with all the wires going in and out of it. I thought of having one porthole somewhere and routing all the wires out of one central place, like maybe the bottom rear of the saucer section, near where the impulse drives on the TOS/TNG era enterprises are.

B. Routing cables on the inside, specfically power cables will also be difficult. Again I can have a separate porthole for incoming cables.

C. Placement of the actual case somewhere may be a problem if it is to look pretty. Since this is probably going to be heavy, i doubt I will be able to hang it from the ceiling so I will have to have it sitting on my desk probably, or maybe a smaller table of its own next to my desk. I was thinking since the PSU and radiator will be outside the ship, I can put them under the table the ship is sitting on and route all the cables/tubing out the back of the ship where it won't be as visible to keep it neat looking. Maybe i can build a sort of cabinet that the ship sits on top of, but all the external are hidden inside.

D. I was thinking, maybe instead of hiding the radiator, if I got multiple small radiators, i could maybe build them into shuttles or smaller ships like Jem'Hadar fighters or something and I can position them around the main ship. Again, organizing the tubing through all this as well as the affect on performance and the flow of water can make this unpractical and ugly.

E. And lastly, but most importantly, actually making the ship. Jolly-swagman's idea of using fiberglass can be an option. Also, working as a mechanic for almost a year, I have some experience jerry-rigging things up with scrap steel around the shop like making shims and what not. Maybe buying one of large 3ft model kits and modifying the saucer to increase its height might make this work. Hopefully the North Star model guys get back to me soon.

Thanks everybody so far for your input into this. As you all can see, i am very motivated in getting this project off the ground, but like all big endeavors, i want to make sure it CAN work before i try to make it work. This will probably be on the drawing board for a bit longer until i can work out the kinks. Keep your suggestions coming!

Super Nade: Thanks for clearing out the riff-raff.
 
Last edited:
Depending on the size of the model compared to the size of your SSD, you might make a second model (maybe a shuttle, maybe something else) to put the SSD in, then see if you can find a transparent UV blue SATA cable that could be lit up like a tractor beam.
 
Depending on the size of the model compared to the size of your SSD, you might make a second model (maybe a shuttle, maybe something else) to put the SSD in, then see if you can find a transparent UV blue SATA cable that could be lit up like a tractor beam.

I can picture it now, and I like this idea a lot!

Looking forward to seeing photos of this project Constantinos. :thup: /subscribed
 
You can reduce cables by using a wireless USB hub like this one. That would leave only power and monitor cables.

If you have an HDMI video port, that will allow for a small diameter (and long length) cable that could carry both video and audio.

Also, if you route the power and HDMI cables through the top, they could run parallel to a wire suspending the "ship" from the ceiling. Wrap the suspension wire, power cable and HDMI in a spiral wrap and it should look pretty clean.
 
Pettyg: GREAT IDEA about the tractor beam!!! I love it! It is a good way to maybe hide the water pump and hard drives outside the main ship.

Hafa: Great idea as well. Less wires coming out of the ship will make it looks so much better. I just hope that adapter will be able to fit within the saucer.


I have been looking at models i could use for this. I have found a 1/350 scale model of the NCC-1701A. It is pretty cheap and looks like a good option. The saucer has a diameter of 16" and a height of 1.75". Now 16" is more than enough for a stanard ATX mobo at 12x9.6. The problem here is the height again. I would need it to be at least 3" tall to fit a video card so most cards extend up about 2.5". Like I was saying above with suggestions from Jolly-swagman and Enablingwolf, i could probably fashion my own inner saucer and use the model saucer pieces on the outside. It will throw off the scale of the entire ship, but hey, it isn't going to be completely perfect. I need to give a little if this is going to actually happen. As far as the rest of the ship goes, it definitely is not wide enough to fit even a slim slot loaded 5.25" optical drive in there, and probably isn't even big enough to 2.5" SSD. That could be a problem as it takes away from one of my main 5 goals.

I have also gotten in touch with DeboerHulls, who make the NorthStar model that pettyg suggested. That has a 22" saucer and varied from 1.75" to 3" in height. Again i would probably need to modify the height on this one as well. Also, this one is also not wide enough to fit a 5.25" drive in the ship. Aside from the extra 6" of saucer diameter, it also costs over $1,000 so this is not in the budget. It could have been nice but I am not willing to shell out that much money.

So seeing my options, buying the 1/350 scale model and modifying it as much as I can to fit with this project seems like the best idea. I'll probably order the kit in mid-august as I am busy getting set-up at my new job for the next month and I don't want to get too distracted during my first days. Even if this project falls through, having a Star Trek model is a nice souvenir, haha.

As far as a model for the second ship, it obviously needs to be from the TOS era since i am building the original enterprise. I saw a model of the vulcan scout ship from The Motion picture but it isn't very wide. Really the second ship needs to accommodate my optical drive if i cannot get it into the regular ship. What I was thinking though was somehow mounting it inside the saucer and having the slot be the back near the impulse engines, but that would probably get in the way of my CPU WB and ram. I could have slot on the front, but it would look very odd unless the slit was not noticeable, which may end up damaging discs on their way in or out.

As far as cable routing goes, i doubt I will be hanging this from the ceiling due to the lopsidedness of the weight since there will be water in the back, computer in the front, and basically nothing in between. I am thinking of building a small table for it to keep it next to my desk. The clincher is that the stand hole on the bottom of the ship will actually just be an exit hole for water tubes and wiring. I plan on drilling a hole into the table and having everything run under the table into the hidden cabinet underneath it. This way the PSU, radiator, and other stuff will be out of sight. I guess i could put the HD's in there too. The thing is if i keep taking stuff out of the ship, i might as well just build the computer in a regular case and just keep the model as a model. If it isn't really going to be a computer, i'll just quit fooling myself.

Another problem I see with the model is that the nacelle struts are not hollow. I will have to make my own struts that can fit maybe 1/2"OD tubing through them. Also i still have not figured out how the loop is going to work. I figured if i have the pump inside another ship, i can keep that ship on a table and also have a hole in the bottom of it that goes through the table into the rad, than from the rad up into the ship through the stand hole and to the blocks, then out the bottom of the saucer section where the tractor beam is usually located back in through the top of the other ship to the pump. This doesn't leave me with a way to connect the nacelles unless i go to them from the radiator before i get to the blocks, and even then it would be tricky as I would have to run the reservoirs in series. I think the wiring situation is figured out though.

So again, none of the problems have really been solved concretely except for the wiring. Still no idea if mobo will fit in saucer, where to mount optical and hard drives, how water loop is going to work, and if this project is feasible at all.

I'm going to keep at this though and maybe i can work it out. Keep up the good work you all and continue suggesting things!
 
A mini-ITX board would easy fit in that model.
mini-ITX, 170 mm x 170 mm (6.7” x 6.7”)
Some of them are pricey, but they have CoreDUO-M CPUs in some setups.
Intel® Core™2 Duo Mobile, Intel® Core™ Duo, Intel® Core™ Solo and Celeron® M based high-end Embedded Mini-ITX motherboard.

Even a Pico-ITX would easy fit, since it is even smaller. Those typically are much less power though.

Mini-ITX 17cm x 17cm
Nano-ITX 12cm x 12cm
Pico-ITX 10cm x 7.2cm
 
Last edited:
Back