Computer Worklog - [Darkninja462]

[Darkninja462]

Computer Build-log – “Great Heights”


Background History

Been thinking about getting a new case for a while just never found “The One” that appealed to me with lots of room, correct price, style and management. Well In essence I need more room as my TT Armour is full up and no more room for expansion in any direction. I would need it to house all of my stuff internally with ease and maybe add another loop into it.


Current Rig:

Core 2 Duo E8400 (775s) @ 4.0 GHz
Evga 780i 3way-Sli motherboard
Evga 9800GTX+ SSC edition
Creative X-Fi Platinum Fatality + Front Bay
Zalman ZM850-HP Modular
3x 320GB WD (Raid 0 & Storage)
4 GB Kingston Ram (5-7-7-20)
Hauppauge WinTv 1100-HVR
Thermaltake Armour (Silver)

2 Water cooling loops
Loop 1 (CPU) – Pump -> CPU Block -> 120Rad -> 240Rad -> Res
Loop 2 (GFX) – Pump -> GFX Block -> 240(external)Rad -> Res

Samsung 2433WB Monitor 1920*1200
Phillips 200WB Monitor 1600*1050

Prologue:

With this in mind I thought up some concepts that I like/would like to create. This was to have sections within the main case. My main though is to have 3 sections all lying parallel in the case:

Bottom:
Watercooling Rads/Pumps/Etc.
Middle:
Motherboard/DVD Bays/Etc.
Top:
HDDs/PSU/Control Box



My aim is to stick to this and house all of my Rig + Extra Room for expansion in the future.

This led me to do some concept art (Mainly during lessons at school). I love the look of the Tenjim TJ-07 how the Rad sections is situated and separated from the rest of the Case, this was my main theme and I decided to mirror this by having same design for the top section as bottom.

As I knew there wasn’t a case in production that was like this, I will haft to go it alone and build a case from scratch, this required a lot of thinking and research and skills which I will need to pick up.

Also took me on a trip to my design teacher to actually see if it was physically possible, all good talked him through what I wanted to do and he gave me the all clear and the facilities of whole design block to use (inc. Laser CNC, Milling machine, Pillar Drills, Most tools). This should make my life easier with all these at my disposal.

Construction

This was relatively difficult to come up with as there are lots of options of materials, but after a lot of talking over with my teacher over usability/strength/appearance. This led me to decide upon using aluminium. As it is (Fairly) easy to work with and has a nice appearance and strong, this will be the basis of my main frame for my case and more than likely 100% of the case. There is a downside to aluminium though and that is attaching it together, it is possible in some ways but not always financially (e.g. plasma welding) as I don’t have the facilities to do this or the funds to seek out such a magical place. I will need to bolt the pieces together, this will require solid bars instead of hollow ones as the bolts will need to be tapped to allow the bolts to hold together using M5 Allen Hex Bolts. This also makes the case very heavy from the start.

These are the Frame Plans:

Back:

Front:

Isometric

Left

Right

Top

Dimensions

[Darkninja462]

Prototypes:

As for many things there are certain ways to go about doing them and not all of them work so this is where my prototype’s come in, I had many ideas that I would like to implement into my design some have evolved from my design board to actual life (with the help of my Design Teacher & My Step Dad), these range from very small things to large things, also some of them a secret to surprise you all later on in the build.

Aluminium Joint’s/Cuts/Tapping/Drilling:


But here is the prototype for the aluminium joints. I ordered 500mm bar of 5/8” x 5/8” square bar, to start testing the joint’s/cuts/taping/drilling to see if was actually possible, and it was here are some of the results:

My First Ever Taps (Took a while but was well worth it )






Starting To Tap The Holes (hardest bit)





Mess Made From Tapping

Selection Of Tools Used, The pot of black/brown stuff is metal cutting lube

Horrible "Gunk" that appears while tapping

Closeup of "Gunk" on the tap

"Gunk" on the bar and the nice clean-"ish" threads in the hole

Checking The M5 Bolt fits in the thread

Checking The M5 Bolt fits in the thread

[Darkninja462]

Counter Sinking

Flush Countersunk Joint



Countersink Head test





Flush Countersunk Head

Countersink Hole

Countersink Hole

Countersink Hole

End Countersunk Result


Many Thanks Guys & Girls

Comments Appreciated
More To Come in the following days

Ordered the Aluminium for the frame all 40ft of it should arrive on Wednesday so I can start Cutting it down then

Many Thanks

Ninja

[omaryunus]

great start DarkNinja cant wait to see more

[charles_h]

Very nice presentation and I really look forward to following your progress.

[Darkninja462]

Well Aluminium should arrive at my school sometime today so will more than likely give you updates by lunch (GMT) hopefully with pictures aswell as this will be the mother of all delivery's

Ninja

[clone38]

Nice work buddy keep it up

[ecat]

This looks an exciting project, keep us posted

[Darkninja462]

Aluminium Arrived Bout 10mins ago, I doubt I will have time to upload the pictures in school but will definatly do that when I get home tonight

Ninja

[Brad8988]

Looks good chap. Work is very tidy, could do with a better camera though.

[Maxw]

I'll be doing a build very similar soon, so it will be interesting how it turns out. I'm just starting on my prototypes at the moment.

Good Luck!

[Logos]

that's gonna be a great rig, keep the good work

[Darkninja462]

Looks good chap. Work is very tidy, could do with a better camera though.

Yea the camera is the downside haven't got enough money for a decent one, but when its finished I'm hopefully getting a Pro Photographer to take some pictures (He also has done the Queen )

I'll be doing a build very similar soon, so it will be interesting how it turns out. I'm just starting on my prototypes at the moment.

Good Luck!

What sort of prototypes you doing then atm ? just out of curisoity

that's gonna be a great rig, keep the good work

Thanks M8

Thanks for comments much appreciated

Ninja

[oggie]

Looking forward to this one, DIY

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

Cool stuff Dark, glad to see you jumping in with your own custom case!

[Darkninja462]

Well Some updates from today . Apologies for the poor pictures as my digital camera ran out of battery's before I could even take the first picture (dam sister not charging it ) so had to resort to my 1.3mp phone camera *crap phone*

Aluminium Arrived and had to help the guy get it off the truck lmfao, only just vertically in the room 10ft some pictures below:
Package:

Out of package:

Ends of the bars:

.

As for my new workshop/work area, here are some of the tools that are at my destructive disposal :
Milling machine:

Milling machine being operated:

Big pillar drill:

Mini pillar drill:


Hope you like the update

Should have some pictures of the work done on the milling machine today ***Only with the test piece though*** see if it cuts square.

Ninja

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

cool cool, I have machines at school here but my prject will be done mostly at home so I will be searching for a nice drill press soon because I really need one for sure

[Darkninja462]

Here are some of the pictures from the milling machine and squaring off the bars :



They show the ends being squared off after using the milling machine on them.

Ninja

[exemay]

wow this build looks promising, i cant wait to see it finished....

i wish i had that kinda of equipment at my disposal...the most i have at my disposal is a pillar drill, a MIG ARC TIG and Gas welder and a trusty old dermal haha

best of luck with it bud, cant wait to see more!

[Darkninja462]

The main light colour for the case will be blue, mainly becuase I'm like addicted to the colour :S this lead to my second addiction a well know auction site so I was able to pick up some "Ultra birght 5mm Blue LED's" for bout 9p each. 200 of them to be precise.

These will serve various purposes through the build, I might use all of them I might not will depends on the use of them

Well being a normal human being I like LED's but the full on glare you get from normal LED's can sometimes drive me mad especially directly on the front of case's so I had a think about how I could solve this problem with the materials I would be using, and came up with this idea to give a diffused glow across the front of the case. Like so :


This then led me to work on the prototype bar that I used to practice taps/drilling/etc.

In my opinion came out with some quite astounding results that worked way better than I ever had expected.

Simple setup after drilling the 5mm holes:

The 2 LED's rigged up ready for testing in the dark:

Using one LED on results:



Using two LED's on results:




Don't worry about the fact you can see the base of the LED lighting up as this will be in the case and will be screened out of the final product which should look something like this :



Any comments on this are much appreciated ?

btw the LED's are blue-er than that in real life.

Ninja

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

that looks really nice, similar to a concept I was working on in cad the other day for lighting. great job getting it done

[Darkninja462]

that looks really nice, similar to a concept I was working on in cad the other day for lighting. great job getting it done

Yea I think it has turned out really well and gives a nice glow which is what I wanted and thanks for the comment

Ninja

[Hybridchemistry]

Aluminum and SHCSs, I like...

[Darkninja462]

Bit of an update (well not really :P), been doing loads of cutting over past few days during break and lunch and frees, bout 60% of the way through I think, it takes ages bout 4-5 mins a cut, should be able to go onto milling some of the pieces tomorrow so im gettin there slowly , should have some pictures from cutting later on today.

Thats all folks

Ninja

[sniperbob]

nice work on the LED lighting. Definitely softens the light a lot, which helps to create more of an ambient feel to the lights, as opposed to the super-bright straight LED