Anyone ever built their own case?

[alfa147x]

So im building a new computer and was pondering the idea of building my own case with a friend who is good at wood working (makes guitars) and i know my way around robots and stuff of that sort.

the question is their tutorials that you would recommend or tips and tricks would be great

thanks!

~Alfa147x

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: alfa147x
So im building a new computer and was pondering the idea of building my own case with a friend who is good at wood working (makes guitars) and i know my way around robots and stuff of that sort.

the question is their tutorials that you would recommend or tips and tricks would be great

thanks!

~Alfa147x

I've built about a dozen in the last few years and i have to say I don't think there is really any tutorial out there for it. You could check out places like bit-tech where there have been a few guys who built custom cases and did project logs. To be 100% honest, if this is your first I would reccomend buying a motherboard tray as getting everything lined up on the rear is probably the hardest part of the whole thing and just build off of it. There are a few places that sell Lian-Li replacement motherboard trays and i've used them on a few occasions. I mostly do aluminum or plexiglass cases but did do one wood one about a year ago. It was essentially just a Lian-Li PC-7B replica out of wood. I a Thermaltake iCage for the hard drive bays and scavenged a set of 5.25" bays from an old POS case that didn't need them anymore. I also cut the rear power supply area off the back of the case and screwed it to the case so that I could mount the PSU to that piece of steel then slide it in and screw the painted steel to the wood case. I used piano hinges for the front and side doors and a regula set of cabinet door keepers to hold them shut. Built the whole exterior of the case out of a gorgeous mohogany and stained it cherry to match his desk. Probably one of the prettiest cases I've built.

 

[dkvamme]

Dont know about tutorials but I love what this guy has done.
I wish there was a commercial case similar to this.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=971

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: dkvamme
Dont know about tutorials but I love what this guy has done.
I wish there was a commercial case similar to this.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=971

That actually looks very simple to build. Obviously the size of your monitor would have a huge impact on components but, a small power supply, a micro atx board and a laptop hard drive could fit that behind just about any 19" or bigger monitor.

 

[alfa147x]

Originally posted by: DerwenArtos12

Originally posted by: alfa147x
So im building a new computer and was pondering the idea of building my own case with a friend who is good at wood working (makes guitars) and i know my way around robots and stuff of that sort.

the question is their tutorials that you would recommend or tips and tricks would be great

thanks!

~Alfa147x

I've built about a dozen in the last few years and i have to say I don't think there is really any tutorial out there for it. You could check out places like bit-tech where there have been a few guys who built custom cases and did project logs. To be 100% honest, if this is your first I would reccomend buying a motherboard tray as getting everything lined up on the rear is probably the hardest part of the whole thing and just build off of it. There are a few places that sell Lian-Li replacement motherboard trays and i've used them on a few occasions. I mostly do aluminum or plexiglass cases but did do one wood one about a year ago. It was essentially just a Lian-Li PC-7B replica out of wood. I a Thermaltake iCage for the hard drive bays and scavenged a set of 5.25" bays from an old POS case that didn't need them anymore. I also cut the rear power supply area off the back of the case and screwed it to the case so that I could mount the PSU to that piece of steel then slide it in and screw the painted steel to the wood case. I used piano hinges for the front and side doors and a regula set of cabinet door keepers to hold them shut. Built the whole exterior of the case out of a gorgeous mohogany and stained it cherry to match his desk. Probably one of the prettiest cases I've built.

wow thanks!
do you know by any chance were i could find a motherboard tray? also any recomended tray?

!

 

[DerwenArtos12]

I would reccomend either the tray for the A10 or the V600 depending on if you want to mount the rear fan to the tray or the case. If you're going to use something like the tuniq tower or TRUE I would reccomend the A10 if you want to still be able to remove the tray with the HSF attached. That site also has the hard drive bays and power supply plates in stock usually. I've ordered quite a few of these things from them. Quite frankly, if you need all three items, it would probably be cheaper just to order a case like the PC-7B and strip it of it's parts to use in your custom.

 

[Sheninat0r]

http://www.bit-tech.net

They're a modding site based in the UK, and have plenty of tips and information in the forums.

 

[MarcVenice]

Derwen, how about you post a pic of your wooden case ? I'm curious My p182 looks awesome, but in a real nice wooden desk it could and probably will look out of place.

 

[imported_wired247]

:thumbsup:

People like you guys inspire me... and admittedly make me feel like less of an engineer

way to go

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Derwen, how about you post a pic of your wooden case ? I'm curious My p182 looks awesome, but in a real nice wooden desk it could and probably will look out of place.

I don't have any I'm great at building reliable systems for other people but, I'm a tightwad and lazy to boot when working on my own. I lost them all when my raid array failed. I had a 15 drive raid 5 array and an old overworked power supply went out on it. Lost 8 drives in one fell swoop. I've got nothing accept the projects I'm working on now.

 

[MarcVenice]

But your camera didn't break, did it ? Or you don't have the case anymore ? Jeez, who runs a 15 drive raid 5 array anyways, and that on a overworked PSU

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
But your camera didn't break, did it ? Or you don't have the case anymore ? Jeez, who runs a 15 drive raid 5 array anyways, and that on a overworked PSU

Used my camera phone and the case went to a lawyer up in scottsdale who wanted his computer to blend in with his desk. I did a 15 drive raid 5 array cause I had the drives and I wanted redundancy. The power supply wasn't really over worked till I got all 15 drives in, it was a 330 watt antec true power running an under-clocked athlon XP set-up just for a file server. The motherboard, cpu and ram survived but the REALLY expensive raid card didn't. That was a really painful learning experience.

 

[MarcVenice]

Damnit to bad, but that's exactly why I wanted to have a looksy at it. Spending a grand or more on a nice desk, and then throwing in a 100$ 'fancy' looking case isn't really an option. And giving it the same finish as the desk would be even better.

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Damnit to bad, but that's exactly why I wanted to have a looksy at it. Spending a grand or more on a nice desk, and then throwing in a 100$ 'fancy' looking case isn't really an option. And giving it the same finish as the desk would be even better.

First and foremost, talk to the desk company, find out what they're building the desk out of and if you can buy wood from the same batch their using. Same goes for the stain, don't just get a stain brand and name, get stain from the same batch so it'll match perfectly. Keep in mind what the budget for the build i did was too though. The desk was a 100% solid mahogany desk with a deep cherry stain that bordered on three sides and divided a 20"x10" lawyers office in the swankest area in the state. I don't know what the budget for the desk was but, I got $800 for each case and I built three. One for each lawyer and one for the server. All six sides of the cases were solid 1/2" mahogany plus the door was 3/8" mahogany. All the wood was dip stained and clear coated on all 6 sides and the cases were fully mitered not but jointed and router rounded on all the exterior edges. The only thing not made of wood on the exterior of the case was the back of the motherboard tray and the DVD-RW bezel. I used black powder coated piano hinges and the same antique brass hardware as they were using on their cabinets. Each one took me about 2 weeks to build on nights and weekends. The desktops were uATX with a single hard drive and special powersupplies similar to those used in major name brand computers that were only about 3.5" deep so the cases could be super small and the server tower was about the size of a stacker with 4 drive raid 5 and a dual opty board. total for all three builds was about $10K.

 

[error8]

But using a wooden case will let you without any grounding, so putting your system on risk for static discharges.

 

[Sheninat0r]

Not true - the PSU will act as a ground for all of the electrical components if it is plugged into a grounded AC plug, which 99% are.

Wooden cases will not give you EMI shielding like metal ones, but neither do cases with big acrylic windows and full acrylic cases - nobody cares.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Bill Owen at Mnpctech . These guys shop is about 1 mile from were I live. They do great work .

Even tho I found a guy that does = work. But I can't post his location.

Heres is a link. But look around a little on this site . They have some great video's of case modding. Just look around you will find them

https://mnadmin.powweb.com/gallery/

 

[PowerHungry42]

If you want a slideout motherboard tray look here http://www.performance-pcs.com...th=210&sort=20a&page=2

 

[WoodButcher]

Here, here and here are pics of one of mine.

 

[imported_wired247]

15 drive raid-5? yipes!

I appreciate the lesson that you learned so I don't have to...

if I ever slap that many drives together, it will be at least raid 6, if not raid 5+1

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: wired247
15 drive raid-5? yipes!

I appreciate the lesson that you learned so I don't have to...

if I ever slap that many drives together, it will be at least raid 6, if not raid 5+1

Raid 5 is great and has enough redundancy for most cases, just make sure you have an adequate power supply on it that isn't a couple too many years old. I like to say 15 drive raid 5 cause it sounds all expensive and everything but, I got the scsi controller second hand when I was upgrading a bunch of servers for a very large IC company that does a lot of work with companies like intel and scrounged around for the drives. They were all 7200rpm 8mb cache 80GB hard drives. Entire set-up was 3 channels of U320SCSI all the parts for which I bought second hand from people I was upgrading. Nothing was more than a year old when I got it but, it was about 6 when it died. The power supply was a 1st gen antec truepower 380w.

 

[alfa147x]

instead of buying a tray, a friend of mine has a old case can i rip off the plastics and make my adjustments to the metal frame?
Would this be better for static

 

[Zepper]

You can get a compact case for micro ATX like the guy that did his own on the flat panel monitor - no space for any add-on cards in those though. Even lo-pro cards are too tall.

.bh.

 

[alfa147x]

Originally posted by: Zepper
You can get a compact case for micro ATX like the guy that did his own on the flat panel monitor - no space for any add-on cards in those though. Even lo-pro cards are too tall.

.bh.

can't i bought the
GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Originally posted by: alfa147x
instead of buying a tray, a friend of mine has a old case can i rip off the plastics and make my adjustments to the metal frame?
Would this be better for static

Would it be better in terms of static discharge and EMI, yes but, it's going to be a lot more work to re-tweak a steel chassis than it would be to just start from scratch with only mild gains. If you wanted to just cut his motherboard and backplane from the case and throw the rest of the chassis in the dumpster, that would work and save you some money.