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Plexi/Metal Scratch Build - Revision

D

Deam

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 13, 2004
Messages
248
This is a revision to a prior case I had made. It is a scratch build using metal pieces from Home Depot and plexiglass, with the exception of a reused 5 1/2" bay, part of an old motherboard tray, and a Lian-Li HDD cage.

frontangle2.JPG

side2.JPG
rightside.JPG


Below is a picture of my previous case using the same materials. It was 4" longer, was not nearly as clean in terms of cuts and drillhole, and lacked a proper front grills. Only a few pieces from the front side were reused in the new build.

previous.JPG
 
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I stopped keeping tabs early on.

The metal itself was approximately $8-10 for each 8 foot piece from Home Depot. The metal is not aluminum, but metal pieces in the "finishing" section I believe, where they have dowels and crown moldings. The case is made up of approximately 30ft of metal, but there were some pieces that had to purchased for only small portions. The metal probably came out to about $60. The plexiglass was likely another $50-$80 dollars (also from Home Depot). The "grills" were cut from a screen protector purchased at Loes for $20.

Not counting watercooling and computer components, the other pieces to the case that had to be purchased were the Lian-Li hard drive rack (Lian Li Ex-36A2 for $30) and the Lian-Li front USB/Audio panel (PW-IO7VB for $25). The HD rack had a 120mm fan, which I removed. The cage was mounted in front of the upper fan of the rear double radiator, and so the fan guides of the cage were quite useful. The cables of IO port in the the version I received were black, and not white, and so they did not need to be sleeved.

I also purchased a roll of matte black vinyl to cover the floor of the case and the upper left and right portions of the front of the case. That was about $10 for a few yards.

I would say all together, with bits and pieces for sleeving, molex connects, etc., the case probably came out to about $200-$250.
 
This is my kind of case. I like how everything was basically off the shelf from HD or Lowes. Very creative and very nice craftsmanship.
 
This looks really, really nice, and I gotta say, having real grills in the front does a lot to improve the look of the case. I give a thumbs up. It looks like the sides are hinged? Cool idea if so.
 
The doors on each side of the case are hinged. This was also the case in the prior build (and the case before that, not shown in this thread, that was also built in the same manner and look). I will try to put up additional images showing more specific shots of the case.

The box is outdated, but the specs are:

CPU: Core i5-750 @ 4ghz
Motherboard: Asus P7P55D-E Pro
PSU: Corsair HX620
Ram: OCZ Gold 4GDB DDR3
Video Cards: BFG GTX260 OC Maxcore 55; Evga 8600GTS (for third monitor)
Soundcard: Creative X-Fi Titainum (Fatality)
Storage: OCZ Vertex 2 180GB SSD; 2 x 1TB Western Digital Black HDD

Watercooling:

CPU block: Swiftech Apogee XT
GPU blocks: MCW80Rev2; Swiftech MCW60-R (and some Enzotech ramsinks);
Radiators: 2x Swiftech MCR320; 1 x Swiftech MCR220
Fans: Yate Loon D12SL-12 x 9 (2 of which have blue LEDs)
Pump: Swiftech MCP35x with reservoir

The fans are connected to a home-built fan controller using three LM338 voltage regulators and a circuit from a voltage regulator kit.

The watercooling is overkill for the equipment, but the motivation to over-rad the case was to leave room for the fans to run at their slowest speed while still maintaining decent temperatures. The comptuer is very quiet. Given the low fan speeds, temps for the CPU go from 33 idle to 55 load with Prime95 and the GTX260 goes from 36 idle to about 60 load. I have been watercooling CPUs for nearly 10 years. GPUs are a more recent, as I found the fans to be intolerable at high load.
 
This is cool. I like the industrial look.
How did you cut the plexi? You've inspired me to build something, just wondering if I have the tools.
 
I cut the plexiglass using a dremel and a plexiglass cutter, which I used to score the plexiglass and then break by putting the pieces on an edge and applying pressure. This did not work so well for the larger pieces (there were times I cracked a large piece), and so I just used the dremel and sanded the edges. Note that in this case, most of the cuts are not easily visible, this method would not work so well if the edges of the plexiglass were exposed.

Other than the dremel and plexiglass cutter, all I used was a powerdrill and hand saw with a mitter box.
 
Some more pictures:

The frame of the case before anything is really completed:
frame.JPG


The motherboard tray:

tray.JPG



The front fan controls and switches:

controls.JPG


The front IO panel:

frontio.JPG


The rear of the case:

rear.JPG


The drive cage:

cage.JPG


A picture of the fan controller box (with fans) holding the voltage regulator circuit:

wires.JPG
 
That may just be the first "clear" case that I've seen that didn't look like utter shit. In fact, it's very nice. Good job!
 
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