Project Log: Server and Gaming Case

Spotswood · 04-13-11, 11:31 PM

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

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.

That's it for now!

I.M.O.G. · 04-13-11, 11:52 PM

Subscribed to follow your progress, the results of your past work were great.

Bijiont · 04-14-11, 01:59 AM

Subscribed as well, very interesting case layout!

Can't wait to see it completed.

TheQuadFather · 04-14-11, 04:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by I.M.O.G.

Subscribed to follow your progress, the results of your past work were great.

+1, this man is amazing.

markp1989 · 04-14-11, 05:43 AM

subd.

the plans look awesome, cant wait to see the final result

bigjim21 · 04-15-11, 01:55 AM

Subscribed
Plans look great. Hope it all goes well for ya

psionic98 · 04-15-11, 09:59 AM

Scary heavy monster gonna be built there.. sub'd!

Just a nickname · 04-15-11, 04:00 PM

Yea that's going to be heavy

Spotswood · 04-15-11, 06:50 PM

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):

Seebs · 04-16-11, 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spotswood

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.

Spotswood · 04-20-11, 11:04 PM

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.

Spotswood · 04-24-11, 07:14 PM

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.

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

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

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

Spotswood · 04-27-11, 07:57 PM

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.

A mock-up of the back panel:

pwnmachine · 04-27-11, 08:14 PM

Wow this looks like it's going to be amazing, subscrizzled.

Spotswood · 05-01-11, 09:23 PM

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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

Mjolnir · 05-01-11, 10:52 PM

Care to head over to Aus and make me a custom case? haha. Sub'd! Looks great! Can't wait to see the final =D

Spotswood · 05-02-11, 07:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mjolnir

Care to head over to Aus and make me a custom case? haha. Sub'd! Looks great! Can't wait to see the final =D

Hey, maybe you could drive over to his house and take a look because you both live in Sydney.

Spotswood · 05-05-11, 09:12 PM

I added some "legs" to the motherboard trays so they'll rest nice and level on the workbench.

Spotswood · 05-07-11, 04:15 PM

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).

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.

I also had to re-cut the back sheet.

Altogether, it only took me about a third of the original amount of time. Phew!

ChanceCoats123 · 05-07-11, 11:19 PM

Exceptional work as usual! Sorry about the delay.

Always a pain to get work done and realize there was a computational error somewhere.

04-13-11, 11:31 PM	Thread Starter #1
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	Project Log: Server and Gaming Case 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 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. That's it for now! __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder Last edited by Spotswood; 04-16-11 at 08:26 AM.
	QUOTE Thanks

04-13-11, 11:52 PM	#2
I.M.O.G. Glorious Leader Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Rootstown, OH	Subscribed to follow your progress, the results of your past work were great. __________________ The OC Forums Way We are a team. We are a community. We are a fellowship made strong by mutual respect and shared dedication to the task of enriching all who come here. The OC Forums Thank You Thread Put your computer to work for our OC Forum Teams! Try out our POST TEMPLATES, they save you time answering common questions! I spend half my money on CPUs, GPUs, and Liquid Nitrogen. The other half I waste.
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04-14-11, 01:59 AM	#3
Bijiont Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Michigan	Subscribed as well, very interesting case layout! Can't wait to see it completed. __________________ AMD 1100T BE \| MoutainMod Ascension \| 4.5Ghz [200x22.5] @ 1.48v \| 16GB 1600 DDR3 [7-7-7-24-2T] @ 1.652v ASUS Sabertooth 990FX \| SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 3Gb \| Antec 1200 PSU \| D5 w/ dual GTX420
	QUOTE Thanks

04-14-11, 05:43 AM	#5
markp1989 Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: London	subd. the plans look awesome, cant wait to see the final result __________________ Part Time Member of the Overclockix team DESKTOP: i7 875k \| 4gb ddr3 \| evga P55 LE \| OCZ RevoDrive \| ATI 5850 Black Edition \| True Black \| Linux Mint "Lisa" HTPC: E3300 \| 4GB DDR2\| Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX-I-E \| three 2tb drives (4tb raid5) \| Pico PSU \| Mini Ninja \| XBMCbuntu PORTABLE: Nexus 7 \| Asus EEE transformer \| HP Touchpad \| 13" MacBook Pro (Late 2011 2.8Ghz i7,16GB RAM,240GB SSD) \| Nexus 4
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04-15-11, 01:55 AM	#6
bigjim21 Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: warren ohio	Subscribed Plans look great. Hope it all goes well for ya __________________ Current rig: Mainboard - MSI 785GT-E63 Processor - AMD Phenom II X4 965BE (Stock Speed for now) Memory - Mushkin 6GB ddr2 (dont remember the exact ones) Video- XFX 6950 Cooling - H70 Hard Drives - 120GB ssd OCZ-Agility2 and 2TB of storage from 3 different hdd
	QUOTE Thanks

Project Log: Server and Gaming Case

Internet Services

Website Development

Tech Hardware

04-15-11, 09:59 AM	#7
psionic98 Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: 4th Floor office, East Coast	Scary heavy monster gonna be built there.. sub'd! __________________ EVGA x58 Micro (756) / i7 D0 @ 4.0, 1.278v w/HT (Air) 2x 300GB V-rap raid0, WD Caviar Black 640GB & 1TB HIS 6950 @ 840/1450 Mushkin 6GB @ 6-7-6-18 / Enermax 720 Modular HAF 922 / Noctua D14 Win7 Pro x64 / Mint 10 HEAT i7(x58) OC'ing/Info / AMD Oc'ing/Info / C2D/C2Q OC'ing/Info Recommended Power Supply Listing
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04-15-11, 04:00 PM	#8
Just a nickname Member Join Date: Aug 2010	Yea that's going to be heavy __________________ System: i5-750 @ 4.4GHz (and beyond), 1.368v under LinX & 1.225v VTT EK supreme cooper, MCP655 with 2x360 swiftech EVGA P55 classified 200 2x2Gb ECO G.skill 1600 7-8-7-24 @ 2000MHz 7-8-7-24 1.61v / 2100MHz 8-9-8-24 1.5v XFX 5870 @ 960//1300 stock voltage CM690 II Samsung F3 spinpoint Corsair 750W
	QUOTE Thanks

04-15-11, 06:50 PM	Thread Starter #9
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	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): __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder
	QUOTE Thanks

04-20-11, 11:04 PM	Thread Starter #11
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	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. __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder
	QUOTE Thanks

04-24-11, 07:14 PM	Thread Starter #12
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	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. The modified template was used to create yet another template in 1/2-inch thick particle board. Unfortunately the router wobbled ever so slightly in one spot, but was quickly repaired with some autobody filler: In order to save wear-and-tear on my flush cutting router bit a first pass was done freehand (gulp!) with a standard endmill. __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder Last edited by Spotswood; 04-24-11 at 10:09 PM.
	QUOTE Thanks

04-27-11, 07:57 PM	Thread Starter #13
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	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. A mock-up of the back panel: __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder
	QUOTE Thanks

04-27-11, 08:14 PM	#14
pwnmachine Member Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Alberta, Canada	Wow this looks like it's going to be amazing, subscrizzled. __________________ i5 2500k @ 4.8 gHz. 1.3v..................Q9650 @ 4.0 gHz. Kingston Hyper 1600mHz 4gb..........XMS3 1600mHz 4gb Asus P8P67 Pro B3...........................790i Ultra FTW XFX 5970 BE + XFX 5850..................GTX 260 2xSLI CM Hyper 212/Thermalright HR-03...Scythe Mugen II CM Cosmos S Modified......................NZXT H2 Custom Maple Gaming Case
	QUOTE Thanks

05-01-11, 09:23 PM	Thread Starter #15
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	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. 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). Threads were tapped via my bench mounted "hand" tapper. The blocks were pinned to the tubes with flat head self-tapping screws. 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. Which were then pinned inside .5 x 1-inch u-channel. __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder
	QUOTE Thanks

05-01-11, 10:52 PM	#16
Mjolnir Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Sydney, Australia	Care to head over to Aus and make me a custom case? haha. Sub'd! Looks great! Can't wait to see the final =D __________________ \m/ OverClockers mATX L33T Club \m/ Motherboard - Asus Maximus Gene V Z77 CPU - i5 2500K @ 4.5ghz 1.3v /w Corsair H60 SE + GT AP-13 /w Scythe Kaze Master Fan Controller (GT AP-13/AP 181) RAM - 8GB G Skill Ripjaws 1600mhz. GPU - Asus GTX 670 DCUII Storage - Samsung 840 Pro 256GB + 2TB Seagate Cuda. Case - Silverstone TJ08-E PSU - Corsair HX650 OS - Windows 7 Ult 64 Peripherals - Leopold FC700R Graphite Brown MX + G500 Mouse Screen(s) - Dell U2711 Audio - Audioengine 5+ + Audioengine D1 + Wharfdale SW150 /w Shure SRH 840 Headphones
	QUOTE Thanks

05-05-11, 09:12 PM	Thread Starter #18
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	I added some "legs" to the motherboard trays so they'll rest nice and level on the workbench. __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder
	QUOTE Thanks

05-07-11, 04:15 PM	Thread Starter #19
Spotswood Member Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: New Hampshire, USA	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). 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. I also had to re-cut the back sheet. Altogether, it only took me about a third of the original amount of time. Phew! __________________ Rich Custom Case Builder Last edited by Spotswood; 05-07-11 at 06:02 PM.
	QUOTE Thanks

05-07-11, 11:19 PM	#20
ChanceCoats123 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Illinois	Exceptional work as usual! Sorry about the delay. Always a pain to get work done and realize there was a computational error somewhere. __________________ Ed - "Aight it's pulling down... Thing is really tuned for LN2 though." This is the team you are looking for... 1EeNkR3VPihwHCGt2VKSjJHetiKHZt9U1e
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