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the COLDBANGER project (my pretty custom case)!

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Erik765

Member
Joined
Jul 18, 2010
Location
Spokane, WA
NEW DETAILS AT POST 129!!

Well, I've been working on this for about the last month and finally decided to post my progress. This case is a shelf design with brushed aluminum tubing for the corners where wiring / tubing will go through. I'm having a blast with it so far except for the fact that Purple Heart wood is EXTREMELY hard and not the easiest to work with ;)

Nothing will be sitting on top of either self (besides the motherboard on top and the pump on bottom) The drives will all be inside the wood shelves. The dvd drive will be inside the curved area of the top shelf.

I'm also putting a touch-screen control panel mounted to the front-left pipe for fan control, temp monitoring, etc.

All wiring will be individually sleeved black as it comes off the motherboard / components before going straight down into the shelving.

I'll be adding more pics / diagrams / comments as they come along and as I have the money to make progress (the whole thing including the all new PC components will end up being $2k + in the end).

Enjoy!

rough.jpg
The rough-cut purple heart


planed.jpg
After getting it cut to size and planed


spindle.jpg
Off to work with the spindle sander. (this part took about 8 hours)


drill.jpg
Shaping is all done (finally) time to hollow it out!


routed.jpg
Here they both are finished with the corners routed


bottom.jpg
The bottoms all dremeled and oiled up (the tops of the shelves will be more purple color than red like this as I'll be using water-based poly on top instead of oil like this on the bottom)

sanding.jpg
Stock aluminum looks icky.


mb.jpg
The motherboard (got this first so I knew where to drill more holes)


tubing.jpg
Orange and purple baby... with a little black. Ignore the green shag carpeting... it's an apartment OK? ;)


I'll be adding and updating as I make progress / become more broke.
 
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Whew, that's a long list since I'm building a case from scratch lol. I have the list, but I'll tell ya the basics at least.

EVGA P55 SLI 132-LF-E655-KR LGA1156 motherboard with an i5-750 with a heatkiller 3.0 block on it. Plan to maintain at least 4.2ghz.

120.4 -square- Rad. swiftech 355 with res top.

Haven't decided on the PSU yet as I want to make the system capable of SLI at some point.

Currently have a GTX275, but I may upgrade that on this build depending how much money I have left and water blocks are a pain to find for 275s right now.

Gskill DDR3 1600

Already have 1 3D monitor and plan on getting 2 more after I'm done with the case for 3D surround... but that's overkill ;)

Did I miss something? I have the whole damn list if you want it lol ;)



Downsides to the build so far- have to use a LOT of 90 ells, but am re-thinking that and will prob go with bending my own copper or pvc... just a little hard since I'm using 3/8 tubing...

(EDIT) re-thought it, am using tube sleeving, only going to use two ells in the whole build and these will be nice and swooping (no sudden turns).

The power supply was originally going to sit on the bottom tray, then I was going to mount it to the bottom of the top tray, now it's going underneath the bottom tray and will not really be seen much at all. It will raise the overall height of the case, but not a lot to even notice.

Purple heart is as hard as hell. lol. I think I went through 5 forstner bits to hollow those out.

Not giving up though, love this project and I'm stoked about putting something I visualized into reality ;)

The end product will not show any wiring, once it comes off the motherboard and goes into the boards at least, as it can all travel through the corner pipes as needed. I'll be cutting out the pipe holes soon to allow for stuff to get out of the holes I'll drill in the pipes.

Going to re-do all my LED lighting on my volume knob, mouse pad, etc to be either purple or orange and my monitor stands are orange, so the whole setup should look pretty sick ;)
 
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You say the sanding took 8 hours, did you do all the shaping with a sander or did you use a jigsaw for a rough cut then do the finishing touches with a sander.

I'm just thinking that that's a lot of sanding.
 
That one spot right there where I'm on the spindle sander in the pic took 8 hours. Overall sanding and shaping was probably close to triple that... then there was the hollowing out. The wood is too hard to turn a bandsaw or jigsaw blade as sharp as I wanted to turn, plus it will leave pretty heavy burn. It almost burns from sanding alone. I could have drilled holes along the line and then finished with sanding, but didn't think of that til it was most of the way done! I'll probably do that if I ever make another one.

I'll have new pics up next week of my progress. Have done a bit and got new parts since these were posted!
 
New updates!

Okey dokey,

It's been a little while, but I'm back... God I hate moving! You'll notice I now have wood floors instead of green carpet!

A new concept- One of the more challenging parts as of yet (at least on my brain) has been how to mount/attach the PCI cards on the back of the motherboard. I didn't want something lame looking and that would ruin the rest of the sleek round look, so I came up with an idea to put a vertical pre-cut sheet of aluminum from the bottom shelf to the top. Here is a rough pic showing the basic design concept. I'll have the design sent off to be cut out for me here shortly... just another thing to add to the long list of expenses on this build!

back.png



Here are some pics of some recent changes and parts since I've posted last. I'll have more pics up tomorrow evening including a mock build!!! :clap:

Enjoy!


shelves.jpg
I've made some changes and decided to finish hollowing out the entire top shelf. The PSU will now be mounted underneath the bottom shelf (mostly) out of sight... more pics on this tomorrow. (I'll also finish the sides to make them smooth with my dremel, just haven't done it yet!)


dvd.jpg
Here is the CD/DVD drive I got.


dvdin.jpg
And the drive inside the shelf. I'll finish that wood a little better around the drive yet.


ports.jpg
My port panel (will go inside the front of the bottom shelf in a similar way the dvd drive did on the top)


opening.jpg
Here is a pic showing the holes I bored out to allow cables/tubing to come through.


switches.jpg
My orange switches to continue the purp/orange/black theme.


shroud.jpg
My custom made shrouds for both sides.


rad.jpg
And the long awaited square RAD! I'll be getting another aluminum panel for the other side as well for a push/pull setup. I'm using 8 Akasa Apache fans for this rad.


Anyway, again, I'll have more pics up tomorrow evening after I get more parts and hopefully setup a quick MOCK BUILD for some pics! :clap:
 
Well, of course, the shipper completely screwed up my shipping address and UPS refused to correct it or deliver to the correct address so there went the package back to the shipper... 3000 miles away, even though they had it within one mile of my house... Prob take another two weeks now for them to get the package back and send it back to me at the correct address... :rain:

I'll have updates as I get them... Probably break out the dremel here soon again.
 
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Sorry, should have mentioned, the shroud is made of plastic. Forgot what kind ;( sorry.

Putting the wood finish on the shelves today... it's an all-day process since I'm doing 6-8 coats.

Getting more parts in on Thu and will post mock build pics after then ;)
 
Thank you!

I must be out of the loop (no pun intended) but what does sub'd mean? lol

The wood is turning out really nice since I've been putting finish on it throughout the day. Think I have got about 6 coats on it by now, plan on doing a couple more.
 
MOCK BUILD PICS!!!

Got my new parts today and am posting mock build pics just as promised!

I'll just list them in order!

Notes:
I finished the wood this past week 3 coats of shellac, 8 coats of water-based poly, the PSU will be painted flat black later in the week, no wires will be poking out the bottom and visible, the PSU does not have a bottom fan- only side fans, the stands for the top acrylic fan mount may be moved, I have the motherboard standoff screw holes drilled out did not put them in for the pics, I will have another aluminum faceplate for the back of the RAD as well as the front, the whole top shelf will be lowered closer to the top of the RAD, the nozzles of the RAD will be drilled into the bottom shelf instead of coming out the side (just did this for the pics), there will be many more holes drilled in the top shelf to accomodate the wires coming off the motherboard (I have a grommet of sorts to put in these holes, they will not just be blank holes), the touch-screen panel will not be tipped back that far (just couldn't get it to stay with the rubber bands for the pics). Anything else I can think of I'll be posting, oh yeah... almost forgot, I'll spend about another $1,000 before this is all said and done... might be a while! I plan on getting the rest of the small stuff next so I can finish the build and will be getting the more expensive parts later as I can afford them (water blocks, CPU, GPU, etc)

ENJOY!

mock1.jpg

mock2.jpg

mock3.jpg

mock4.jpg

mock5.jpg

mock6.jpg

mock7.jpg

mock8.jpg

mock9.jpg

PSU.jpg
The power supply (again, will be painting it flat black)

feet.jpg
and, the case feet to go under the tubing!

I'll always be posting more as I get more done and more parts in! Don't forget to subscribe!
 
the finish on the wood came out real nice.

I like the CD mount and the general layout. Perhaps you could use the support tubing as a conduit for some of the wires or tubing. Just an idea, in case you haven't considered it.
 
Yep, that's the plan. In fact all the cabling / tubing will go through the corner pipes. The only wiring / tubing that will be seen is right where it comes off the motherboard and goes straight down into the wood, (and, of course some tubing off the pump too)!

Just got my PSU painted and will be putting it back together today.
 
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