[Captain Slug]

Well, as it happens on a semi-yearly basis my computing needs have yet again changed from what they were. Last year's "ideal" usage parameters spawned the creation of my FlameCube. This year it's spurring me in the direction of a machine that's slightly larger, and more versatile. But being the extremely picky customer that I am, not just any case would do. Not having the time, budget, or desire to fabricate my own from the materials I have at hand I decided upon a solution.

Edit: plans changed, see following posts

Proposed Specs
Pentium 2.4c
512mb pc2700 (maybe in dual, not sure yet)
80gb 7200RPM SATA HDD
GeForce FX 5900XT 128mb VIVO
ASRock "P4I65GV" i865GV Motherboard
Lite-On Black 52x24x52x16 Combo drive
2 120mm fans on rheobus control
UV Red and Red LED illumination

This project is going to progress rather slowly between now and January since I'm a full time student now. But I have everything planned out and setup in stages which should prevent me from rushing through any part of the process.
This will be my first Project Log ever with enough pictures to demonstrate what it is that I'm doing.

Now I just have to get some homework done while I wait for some orders to show up.

[Bad ConNecTioN]

I wish they had inside pics of that S6.

Do you have a link to that Lian Li case you are using...I have never seen that one before.

*edit*

Google is your friend

[Captain Slug]

Originally Posted by Bad ConNecTioN

I wish they had inside pics of that S6.

altium s6 - http://www.soldam.com/case/altium/s6/detail.html
Lian-Li PC-42 - http://www.onepc.net/index.php?view=docs&doc_id=122

They're very similar in size, but the PC-42 is "left-handed" in that it has the motherboard tray on the opposite side. While I would have loved to work with the Altium S6, there's just no way I can afford to get one. Similar alternative microATX cases are non-existant.

[Captain Slug]

Well, this project has been turned on it's head. After shuffling parts around in CAD and generally not liking any of my results from 3 days of research I basically became frustrated. Then I realized that I STILL have a perfectly good, sturdy all-aluminum case under my bed which I have since been unsuccessful at selling.


So, my trusty old Rackmount case is going to get a serious face lift. The parts I have already ordered will have plenty of room to play around in this thing and it's giving me a million more ideas. Plus I won't have any of the problems I was having with the PC-42 layout.

Planned
- Wire Junction Box (changed)
+ Custom-made plug wire separators
+ Rheobus / Front-Panel monitor
+ All ducted cooling
+ Molex replacements
- Stealthed ATX and P4 Power (changed)

[jcw122]

sounds like fun...good luck man!

[walkitiki]

sounds interesting, look foward to seeing what you can do with it

[Captain Slug]

Arg! Well, after tallying up expenses I decided it would be more cost effective to change some of my plans. However, the change will make the time involved much shorter, and the end result will be more uniform. In other words I'm going to be buying this power supply:


The color scheme is now down to just Black with silver accents. The lighting colors will be UV and red LEDs as before, but with more intensity and front access interchangability between the two.
I may also decide to incoorporate a 5.4" LCD monitor which I have, up until now, not had a specific use for.

this not not go as slowly as I had anticipated. But it will still be finished sometime around Christmas.

[Captain Slug]

And chaos ensues...

the case has two bay modules. The top module will be used for drives and maybe and LCD. The bottom module wil be and intake duct for the video card cooling.
The center support beam for the case will act as a support spine for the custom plug wire seperators that I'll be making. That will allow me to arrainge the cables in an orderly and aesthetically pleasing manner.

This is only the beginning.

[Captain Slug]

I have accomplished theoretical progression and I now have an all-encompassing part list with which I will be ordering supplies. I've decided to go without the 5.4-inch LCD since it would take up too much front panel space, plus I simply don't have any use for it. Here are a few design concepts I'm working with.

I do not want to try and hide wires, this is mainly due to the layout of the case and how it prevents me from routing wires behind the motherboard. So, since it won't be too difficult to keep the look of the cables uniform, I will need a means of organizing them neatly and directly. Enter the Plug Wire Seperators.


But, I can't find any that aren't ridiculously priced or made for mounting in the way I need them to. Since I have a wealth of power tools and scrap plastic at my disposal, I will be making a custom set of my own in whatever colors and thicknesses I want. Having the wires in plain view will be no problem considering they will look so good.

Power Cables

Fan power and Motherboard frontpanel cables

IDE


Cables can be beautiful, if they're not chaotic and tangled.

Also, I will be adding faceplates to cover the motherboard. They will "float" above the motherboard on long bolts and nylon spaces. Not only will it look strange, but it will provide both alot of light reflection, and a useful secondary surface for mounting the custom plug wire seperators that I will be using to route fan and cold cathode power cables. Here's a doodle I made over the board layout from the manual which should give you some idea of what it will look like.

The blue sheet will be UV reactive blue acrylic, and the dark sheet will be smoke-tinted polycarbonate.

That's all I have to contribute at the moment. Some time tomorrow I'll give a preview of the aesthetically weird cooling duct thingy I have planned.

[penquissciguy]

How high are you planning to float those faceplates over the motherboard?

I love the idea of the wire separators. They wlll definitely look sharp once everything is properly routed.

Ken

[RIPSTER]

Hey man lookin good cant wait to see that vid card duct sounds good

[Ramlaen]

I would imagine he'll put them on nylon spaces where the mobo bolts down to the case....hell of an idea

[Captain Slug]

Originally Posted by penquissciguy

How high are you planning to float those faceplates over the motherboard?

Only high enough to clear the capacitors on each side of the board. They will be suspended with nylon spacers and long bolts. Those areas of the board that will be covered by it will be affixed to the motherboard tray with brass stand-offs like so.
__ cover
| nylon spacer
/\ brass stand-off
-- motherboard
/\ brass stand-off

This will allow me to remove the cover plates if I need to, without unmounting the motherboard.

Originally Posted by RIPSTER

Hey man lookin good cant wait to see that vid card duct sounds good

Basically I'm building a gasket to mount the 120mm fan I plan to use into the lower drive bay of the case. This will suck air through the dust filters in the front of the case, and force the air directly onto the video card heatsink.
The duct will be setup as a sandwhich of these parts

80mm clear fan (blades removed)
4" Clear PVC duct hose
(blades removed)
80mm to 120mm UV reactive fan adapter
Delta WFB1212M, 72CFM 34dBa, rheobus adjustable

The framing wire of the duct will be removed and then replaced with a few uv reactive wires to make the whole duct glow. It should end up looking like this

The gutted clear 80mm fan at the end of the duct will mount near the video card on the support rail in the middle of the case. The duct will not only help to channel the air flow into a single point, but it will also help to muffle the sound of the fans inside the case.

[Captain Slug]

Here's the logo for the case

And how I might apply it to the board covers.

[Captain Slug]

Placing all orders now so that (hopefully) I'll have some goodies to play with over this weekend.
While sitting in an extremely boring lecture I managed to plan out all of the cable routes for various parts and I designed the plug wire seperators accordingly.
I'll keep that a secret for now to keep you guessing.

[Captain Slug]

Hooray! The first order arrived from Mcmaster. I got...
My clear PVC duct, which I need to trim a 4 inch peice off of. Will be wrapped in UV reactive wire.

My toggle switches with tip-mounted red LEDs. Each LED will display the activity level of a single hard drive by means of an IDE cable modification. Plus they're shiny.

I still need to go buy the power LED from radioshack

And my blue UV reactive acrylic. Which i can't do anything with until my motherboard arrives.

[Captain Slug]

My motherboard arrived today, and I got som cutting done.

I changed the back plate a bit

using this shelf-board mounted jigsaw of mine


It was fairly easy to accomplish since the back panel can be seperated from the rest of the case by removing a handful of screws. It can then be broken down into smaller pieces with more screws. The long rectangular opening will be the inlet for the CPU heatsink fan and will be covered with thermoplastic mesh.
The process of cutting left me with 2 sprained muscles in my left fore-arm (I've never had it this bad before) so this post is being typed with only my right hand. Hopefully my muscles will feel better tomorrow. And hopefully another order will arrive.

I also came up with another aesthetic light feature that I will be adding to the front panel of the case later.

[-Superman]

nice job cutting out that back grill, like the stop sign looking design .

on the back panel, on the right, you got like a long rhombus looking cut there, whats your plans with that ?

[Captain Slug]

Originally Posted by -Superman

on the back panel, on the right, you got like a long rhombus looking cut there, whats your plans with that ?

That will be the CPU fan duct inlet. I just accomplished a bit more tonight but am too tired to finish, so I'll post my progress in the morning.

[Captain Slug]

Progress!
I figured out a method for printing out mathmatically accurate paper templates for drilling and cutting.
1. I drew onto the layout diagrams in the motherboard manual. The manual provided outside dimensions of the motherboard This meant I could
2. use those measurements to use my cutout drawing as a texture for a 3D model matching the dimensions of the motherboard. From this model I could get the outside dimensions for each cutout.
3. I then inserted the images into Microsoft Word, which allows you to scale images to precise inch dimensions on each page.
4. I then printed out each cutout and use an X-acto knife and scissors to cut them out of the page.

5. I test-fit the paper templates on the moterboard and adjusted them to fit anything not accounted for in the manual (such as PCI card clearances and screw hole placement).
6. I used the paper templates as stencils to mark the cuts onto the protective film on the sheets of plastic I will be cutting the designs into.

And when finished I have this.


My SVCompucycle order won't arrive until Monday and I don't really have anything else I can complete this weekend. Stay tuned for more in a few more days.

[Daewood]

wow that looks really cool

[phantomditto]

That is some seriously sweet in-case work.

Keep it up; I can't wait to see more.

~pd

[Captain Slug]

My orders have FINALLY arrived and I managed to do some stuff last night. I post some pics tomorrow after I finish classes and tidy a few things up.

SVC accidentally sent me a second power supply (which I didn't pay for) so I'll have to take care of that as well...

[Ardneh42]

This is looking very nice, I think you do awesome work Captain and I will be following the project for sure.

[Captain Slug]

Phew! I'm too tired to post pictures right now, but basically I've managed to get this project 70% finished in two nights. I worked from 5pm to 2am on Monday, and from 9pm to 4am Tuesday. Here's where the list stands now

Done

+ Rheobus / Front-Panel monitor
I switched its 5 LEDs from blue to red
+ Double Inverter box
Two inverters powered and controlled from one central dual inverter box. Includes quick-connect front panel switch leads made from mono headphone jacks allowing easy removal of the inverter and lights, or the front panel.
+ Independent IDE Activity Cables
This is what I JUST finished making. The 39-pin cables on each IDE Master connector have been extended with a 2.1mm barrel connectors at one end.This allows them to be plugged into a junction box made specifically to route power to the two seperate activity LEDs. Having quick connects here allows me to not only keep cable more orderly, but it also allows me to rearrange and remove the IDE cables as needed.
+ Cable Sleeving
I have uniformly sleeved and loomed all of the remaining cables in the case including the Power switch lead and Fan power connections.
+ Molex replacements
In-Progress, but all the custom devices I'm making are using Black molex connections.

Left to do

- Custom-made plug wire separators
Since I just finished making the majority of the wires, this could not be completed yet. The extensity of their use will be determined once I know what wires are going where.
- Ducted cooling
I still need to assemble the different parts for the video card intake duct and I need to machine the CPU inlet duct out of plastic.
- Sparkle Power LED
I have planned to add something similar to the "sparkle" lights on R2D2, but I'm still working out the part sourcing on this item. It may get dropped if I can't get what I need. In which case it will be replaced with a reset button.

I have run into one problem in that the "fluorescent" blue acrylic that I got isn't even mildly reacting to the blacklight, and this is really ticking me off.

I'll have to work out a plan-B for the Logo I cut into the lower motherboard plate.

Dual inverter box

RED Meteor Light

UV CCFL

RED Rheobus

[Captain Slug]

Sleeved Fans

Rounded IDE cables with Pin39 extension plugs

Activity PlugBox

[Captain Slug]

This project has become slightly dramatic. My drillpress had a part failure earlier this month and prevented me from getting any further work done. So I gave up for a while and enjoyed the visiting relatives while they were here.
Now that they've left I find that the warranty on my drillpress is expired so I can't get a replacement and will probably just be buying a newer, more accurate laser-guided one instead.

I've also revised some of my plans. I know I know AGAIN.

Left to do

- Custom-made plug wire separators
Since I just finished making the majority of the wires, this could not be completed yet. The extensity of their use will be determined once I know what wires are going where. My drillpress quit right before I wanted to start making these...
- Ducted cooling
The Fan blowing down into the processor heatsink will still be pulling air in through a duct leading to the rear of the case. But, the air blowing down through the heatsink will be ducted out and over the memory slots through a muffler channel made out of (hopefully) plastic, then vented out the front of the case through another fan. This push-pull duct will seperate the Processor cooling system from that of the video card. This does however mean that I won't get to use my stiff PVC duct and I will be reversing the drive bay positions.
Here's an image to demonstrate.

- Sparkle Power LED ==Cancelled==
I couldn't source the electronics I need to make this work and came up with something different.
- All seeing "eye"
The same Point-Of-Sale unit that I pulled the source 20.1" LCD out of to make my DIY LCD Mk.III also included an S-Video output miniature security camera that I had almost forgotten about. I rewired it for a molex connection and hooked it upto the TV in the basement and got a suprisingly clean camcorder-quality image with automatic white-balance. After doing some messing about I managed to fit it into the hole in the front of the case where I had planned to put the Sparkle power LED. Coupled with the Video-In on the video card I plan to use, I can use my computer as a surveillance system or some kind of strange voyeurism project. Either way, my computer will be staring back at me when I use it.

- 5.4" LCD
This may or may not get added, but I am interested in possibly adding this to the front intake part of the case. I'm a little reserved on the idea right now because I had planned on using it as a stand-alone unit. The addition or subtraction of this idea will depend on what kind of hardware output-switching features the video card I get has.

[Captain Slug]

Gah!
I swear, this project is having a serious identity crisis. One step forward, two steps back and all that jazz.
I experiemented with paper templates for a few hours and the pass-through CPU duct won't work effectively without cutting off the intake on the Power Supply or obstructing a future passive cooling option for the Video Card. Most of the problems are due to the immense size of the Thermalright XP-120, which is unavoidable and the reason I bought it to begin with. The RAM would have seriously hindered the airflow inside the duct anyways.



The only thing I've managed to accomplish is deciding how I'm going to make the CPU inlet duct and find a tool that would allow me to affix my video card duct to my fan adapter. Other than that I'm having a bad day.

My only consolation is that I get to go buy a new drillpress and play with my heatgun tomorrow.

[Captain Slug]

A few weeks ago I did finish the fan mount bracket for the front intake. I machined it out of smoked polycarbonate sheet and acrylic square rod. The polycarbonate sheet will filter out the UV light coming from the cathode so that the only glow you see from the front intake will be through the fan itself.

At about the same time I figured out how to alter the rheobus so that it sits correctly in the drive cage. I had to snap off part of the mounting ears because they were preventing it from going into the drive cage all the way, and I used double-sided foam tape to space and adhere the faceplate to the front.

To forced the warm CPU air to exhaust out of the power supply and to generally make the inlet duct more effective I used some "fun foam" with some eyelets to cover up the open space in the backplane.

And then I started test fitting some cables. This is going to be a challenge, but atleast all the cable look nifty. I also used some more "fun foam" to reflect the shape of the motherboard cutouts and make a background for the cables.

[Captain Slug]

And hopefully this is the final look for the front panel. Now with the added security camera eye.

And the rewired S-Video output circuit board for it that I still need to find a home for inside the case.


Among other unsolved problems I can't find a non-awkward place to put the 5.4" LCD. It's annoying me enough that it may just be shelved.