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FEATURED Project Log: Server and Gaming Case

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Spotswood

Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2010
Location
New Hampshire, USA
This is a project/build log for a custom case to house both a storage server and gaming rig.

This fairly compact case is designed to hold:
  • Two EATX motherboard trays
  • Two ATX PSUs
  • Twenty four 3.5-inch hard drives
  • Six SSDs
  • Two 120x3 water cooling radiators

StorageAndGamingCaseA.jpg

StorageAndGamingCaseB.jpg


The size of the case is to be kept as small as possible, which is mostly driven by the size of the motherboard trays. But until those arrive, I fabricated the PSU mounting plate from some 2.5mm aluminum sheet.

The cutouts were made via a hand held router fitted with a flush pattern bit, guided by a template.

PSUMountingPlateJig.jpg


PSUMountingPlate.jpg


PSUMountingPlateCU.jpg


That's it for now!
 
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Yikes! This is a "FEATURED" project...yeah, um, no pressure!


The backplate of the stock motherboard tray from mountainmods.com was too tall, so I fabricated a shortened duplicate out of .10-inch thick aluminum sheet (once again, via my trusty router fitted with a pattern cutting bit):

MMMBBackPlate.jpg


MBBackPlate.jpg


MBBackPlateCU.jpg
 
This fairly compact case is designed to hold:
  • Two EATX motherboards

This part made me LOL hard... The words compact and Two EATX motherboards definitely seem to contradict each other...

I guess "compact" is a relative term.

Regardless of all that; I am anxiously awaiting your updates on this one my man... If this thing is even remotely close to the quality of work you put into your previous project; and with your track record there is no reason to think otherwise, whoever gets that puppy will have an amazing case for years and years to come.

:thup:
 
This case will be shipped flat-packed so it needs to be easily assembled by the owner. The simple back frame consists of some u-channel with its ends plugged with some blocks press-fitted and pinned with a #4 screw. The blocks have a though-hole into which a #6 1-1/4-inch flat head stainless steel socket cap screw is bolted. Simple, effective, but time consuming to fabricate.


BackFrame.jpg


BackFrameJoint.jpg


BackFrameJointCU.jpg
 
The first step toward routing-out the motherboard cutouts in the back panel was to modify a standard size motherboard router template I had made some time ago.

Existing10slotMBtemplate.jpg

ModifiedMBtemplate.jpg


The modified template was used to create yet another template in 1/2-inch thick particle board.

NewMBRouterTemplateWGuide.jpg


Unfortunately the router wobbled ever so slightly in one spot, but was quickly repaired with some autobody filler:

BondoRepain.jpg


In order to save wear-and-tear on my flush cutting router bit a first pass was done freehand (gulp!) with a standard endmill.

RouterButs.jpg

BackPanelwMBRoughCuts.jpg

BackPanelwMBCutouts.jpg
 
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I had to make a new router template for the PSUs cutout. A router guide template is quickly fashioned from some MDF held together with pocket screws.

PocketHoleGuide.jpg

PSUsTemplate.jpg


A mock-up of the back panel:

BackPanelMockup.jpg
 
The posts for the front frame are made from .125 x .5 x 2-inch tubes. First thing was to stuff the bottoms with the screw blocks/nuts in order to eventually attach them to the bottom sheet.

Following standard operating procedure, the aluminum was cut on my miter saw (fitted with a standard carbide tipped blade). The clamp that came with the saw is used to hold the material against the fence.

MiterSaw.jpg


The blocks were then drilled on the drill press with the assistance of my self-centering vice (I love that thing because I don't have to waste time measuring for center).

SelfCenteringVice.jpg


Threads were tapped via my bench mounted "hand" tapper.

BenchTopThreader.jpg


The blocks were pinned to the tubes with flat head self-tapping screws.

PostWCustomNut.jpg


Always looking to improve my speed and quality, the cross supports offered the opportunity to use PEM cinch nuts. The nuts were pressed into the screw blocks.

PEMNuts.jpg

Which were then pinned inside .5 x 1-inch u-channel.


PEMNutAss2.jpg

PEMNutAss1.jpg

FrontFrame2.jpg

FrontFrame1.jpg
 
I spent the day correcting a big mistake, which was I relied on the incorrect posted dimensions of the Swiftech MCR320-DRIVE 3x120 radiator, and thus the case wasn't wide enough by 16mm. (Swiftech has since corrected the diagram on their website).

CorrectLengthOfMCR320-DRIVE3x120Radiator.jpg


Actually, the case was exactly the width of the rads, but that might have resulted in some pump vibration getting transferred to the side panels. So the case had to be widened by one inch.


To speedup the process of pinning the bolt blocks to the u-channel I switched to using split pins.

SplitPins.jpg


BackFramePartsPinnedWSplitPins.jpg


WiderBackAndFrontFrames.jpg

WiderBackFrame.jpg


I also had to re-cut the back sheet.

WiderBackFramewBottomSheet.jpg


Altogether, it only took me about a third of the original amount of time. Phew!
 
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Exceptional work as usual! Sorry about the delay. :-/ Always a pain to get work done and realize there was a computational error somewhere.
 
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