FEATURED Vertical Benching Station

[Navig]

Hope everyone had a happy and safe Thanksgiving in the US!


Let’s make some hard drive trays.



Cut some stock red plastic:













Heated them up:











Bent them on a self made jig:














Crank out some little soldiers:













Added mounting screws and mounting holes:










I wanted to keep it simple and flexible. Hard drive screws to the plate. Drive plate can mount anywhere on the pegboard.














For 2.5” drives, I could easily add the smaller spaced mounting holes, but I’m going with some of these Akasa bay mounts, allows me 2x 2.5 drives in the same slot.












Again, I could mount these drives any which way, but I think I will bunk them like in a row:






















While I was at it, I cut some larger storage trays. Using the exact same method to bend:











Some nice approx 11.5” x 3” trays.












This is going to store my phone, camera, etc. I plan on mounting a USB hub behind and having all the cables nice and ready to go.

 

[Boulard83]

Awesome idea !

 

[Navig]

Updates have been a little slow as I've been working on a side project, that will be implemented on this station.


I give you:


Building a Custom Radiator Shroud, Navig Style.

--> Link here <--




.

 

[DevinR]

this is amazing cant wait to see more

 

[Navig]

Well, that was a fairly massive side project!

But I think worth it in the end:

One of my big goals was to have a watercooling system in which I really would never have to worry, do I have enough cooling capacity. I think this’ll do:






I have two complete radiator systems, one dedicated to the cpu and one to the gpu.

Each unit has:

1) Alphacool Monsta 360 radiators.

2) Intake is 3 38mm yate loons with custom radiator shroud.

3) Exhaust is 3 25mm yate loons with custom radiator shroud.

 

[Navig]

Time to fabricate the last station unit:



Custom switch panel


Put together some custom cables and cut out a panel.












Folded it with the same techniques I’ve been using:













Plan is to mount it like so:









There are going to be several cable bundles visible, so I think I’ll keep them clean like so:













Finish it up:

 

[trueblack]

this looks like lots of fun!
should be in the next rig of the quarter competition for sure!

(though not sure is that fair for everyone else)

 

[Navig]

For the past few months I’ve been focusing on all the individual units, now its time to start putting it all together, and that’s pretty exciting!



I needed to start all the finish work on the paneling, so I started with the motherboard panel and the 5.25 bay panel.












First I cut all the necessary pass thru holes:






Plus I took the time to sand down and finish all my machined edges.









Looking good:
















Then I set the upright and it was time to remove all the protective paper!









This is the first time I’ve got the panels up and finished. I think it looks pretty unique.









Started adding components.



















At this point I took a day for a little side project.



Given how far off the motherboard sits from the surface of the panel, and also that it is an end panel, I wanted a little more stability in the plane perpendicular to the panels.





So I took some ¼” gray plastic (same as the paneling) and started to put together a side strut.











And here it was assembled, with leveling feet:











It is easily detached, if I don’t need it. But installed, you can see how it stabilizes the panel from forward/backward wobble:

 

[trueblack]

nice. I was about to ask about the stability, and you already answered that in the next photo. this is all very handsome looking. can't wait to see the final.

 

[Boulard83]

looking good !!

 

[doyll]

Impressive work! Wish I was that good.

 

[Navig]

Next I went to work on the radiator panels.



Here were my methods:

I cut the large cutouts with my scrollsaw:




















Holes were cut with a unibit to ⅞”.












The holes were carefully placed to match the barbs on the Swiftech Maelstroms:














And while I was at it, I took the mess of cables that comes stock on the Maelstroms:













And cleaned them up a bit:

 

[wagex]

 

[doyll]

Nicely done!

 

[Boulard83]

Hours and hours of nicely done work !

 

[Navig]

Next I tackled fastening the radiators to the panels (well actually given the size of my radiator units, maybe more like how to attach the panels to the radiator).



Clips:











Attach:











Added a foot for stability:











Now I’ve got a completed radiator panel:

 

[Navig]

Starting to look like something there:

 

[doyll]

On beautiful setup. Thanks for the pics!

 

[bluezero5]

very nice, it is all adding up very beautifully!! well done!!!!

 

[Navig]

Double up the radiator panels!















Assemble all the panels.




Here I’ve got them all laid out like Asian panels. If I kept them all in a single plane like this, then I definitely need the extra edge support strut.










However, this unit is going on a square coffee/end table, so the actual end configuration of the panels will be something like this:

















Photographing this layout is going to be a little goofy tho, because at face level, you can’t really photograph the whole thing in one picture.


Going from left to right of the case:
































And the view from the backside.









I know this project is looking like its almost complete, but these is still a lot of cleaning up to do--working all the cabling (remember 12 fans, 2 pumps, 2 radiators, 4 temp probes, 6 hard drives, 2 optical drives, switch panel devices), plus I’ve got to run all my watercooling lines.