Hoi!
Now this is a story all about how... ...I built my own case.
WHY:
Well firstly because I'm usually stupid when buying a new rig and I like tinkering around.
My previous build was nearing its life's end with bsods, the i7-920 permanently overclocked to 3GHz and the only thing new was the HDD and the GPUS which were two HD 7990ies (that were used for test minings) that were reduced to one after one of them started hiccuping. Well it was aprox. 10 years old and it did its time. Needed a new home office and game machine.
It was set in about the opposite of what this forum is about - a Mozart TX Case - a fridge sized beauty that with the old components sounded like someone turned on a power plant in our living room which slowly but surely and not surprisingly started to bug my female companion. Sound as well as size.
So the goal was something small and shut-uppy.
I first planned to build a CNC carved wood casing on the outside and give it a beautiful full-wood look with acrylic windows, but that would add another ~1cm on each side and I kind of started to like the rough metal look and am currently thinking of leaving it that way - which only means putting the on/off clicker somewhere other than on a dangling cable running down the shelf.
And temps might probably be better that way as well.
CASE SPECS:
L 28.2 x W 24.2 x H 22.5 cm
PARTS SPECS:
MOBO: z370n wifi
PSU: Seasonic Prime Titanium Fanless 600W
CPU: i7 8700k
RAM: F4-3200C14D-32GTZKW
HDD: Samsung 970 Evo M.2 PCIe
GPU: zotac GTX 1080 Ti mini
Watercooling:
2x EKWB SE240 Radiator - one for the GPU, one for the CPU
2x EK-XRES 100 Revo D5 PWM
bunch of fittings and tubings - anyone care?
two random sanitary T-pieced male-female-female for the front-side outlets. otherwise I'd have had to buy about 10 different parts to create an outlet if it was something by a pc watercooling company.
Fans:
currently 4 x 10 year oldscythe slip streams from my old rig. Problem is: two of them have a silent but audible annoying bearing sound. So I ordered a noctua NF-F12 since that's better for radiator cooling and I hope it's silent at low RPMs. Any tips?
Bench:
Idle Temperatures are about 3-4°C above room temp, when playing GTAV on 2k ultra (~85 to 144FPS cap. monitor can do ~155 gsync but I cap at 144) GPU's at about 45°C and CPU about the same. Will test further.
PICS with a little text:
That's the case after welding and sanding. You can see that the middle column bent due to the heat stress. Another little bend is on the backside. But both luckily didn't interfere with screwing everything on later.
Lessonlearned: screw more placeholder wood everywhere to keep everything together.
The steel was laser cut by some random company I sent a CAD file to (which I built in Illustrator because I never really used CAD)
Case from the side - the cable running down is the on/off clicker for the mainboard.
Here you can see the T-pieces for the outlets of the loops. Since those aren't meant to exactly fit into the radiators, I had to fasten and seal them in. Used some silicone glue.
Other side of the case - disregard the sata and power cable running out of the case - that's where my old SSD is currently dangling. So imagine it looking cleaner but I couldn't be bothered to pull out the cables for a picture. It's a bit of a pain to mangle in the SATA cable.
And yes, you spottet that correct - I put both pump PWM cables together - also the sensing wires. But with only one sensing wire, the other pump went to 100% permanent and apparently the PWM signal of two sensing cables together doesn't mess anything up. If you know more there - please share!
And as you now also may ask: Where the fuck is the cable management and all the cables?
Well there is none since I painstakingly de-coupled all the terminals, cut down the wires, re-coupled everything and fit the length of the PSU cables exactly to what they needed to be. You can see the CPU connector going straight to the PSU behind the fan cables and under the PSU. Same for the 28/24 pin MOBO connector, the two 8pin GPU connectors and the pump-wires.
Removing the terminals professionaly because - of course I planned that ahead and bought all the necessary tools for that. obviously. Fingers were dead after that night and that thumb wound is already healed, so no worries.
Professional tool Nr.2 a.k.a swiss army knife.
I reused those terminals for the shortened wires but since I could only clamp them onto the wires with standard pliers, I also soldered them on.
Backside. I mis-measured the screws for the PSU by about 0.7mm but luckily it still fit. The cutout left of the psu was planned to feed power on/off, reset and LED to the wooden finish. Yes I wanted the back to be the front. Above the Graphics Card you may notice a hole - I first only did a slit where the screw thingy of the graphics card would fit through, forgetting that I couldn't simultaneously put it in the PCIe slot, fit it down the two endings below the mainboard AND through the slit. So I cut out a bit after wards to be able to slide it in.
That's pretty much it. wanted to share my work and maybe I learned something useful for someone else - if anyone has any questions, I'm here.
Now this is a story all about how... ...I built my own case.
WHY:
Well firstly because I'm usually stupid when buying a new rig and I like tinkering around.
My previous build was nearing its life's end with bsods, the i7-920 permanently overclocked to 3GHz and the only thing new was the HDD and the GPUS which were two HD 7990ies (that were used for test minings) that were reduced to one after one of them started hiccuping. Well it was aprox. 10 years old and it did its time. Needed a new home office and game machine.
It was set in about the opposite of what this forum is about - a Mozart TX Case - a fridge sized beauty that with the old components sounded like someone turned on a power plant in our living room which slowly but surely and not surprisingly started to bug my female companion. Sound as well as size.
So the goal was something small and shut-uppy.
I first planned to build a CNC carved wood casing on the outside and give it a beautiful full-wood look with acrylic windows, but that would add another ~1cm on each side and I kind of started to like the rough metal look and am currently thinking of leaving it that way - which only means putting the on/off clicker somewhere other than on a dangling cable running down the shelf.
And temps might probably be better that way as well.
CASE SPECS:
L 28.2 x W 24.2 x H 22.5 cm
PARTS SPECS:
MOBO: z370n wifi
PSU: Seasonic Prime Titanium Fanless 600W
CPU: i7 8700k
RAM: F4-3200C14D-32GTZKW
HDD: Samsung 970 Evo M.2 PCIe
GPU: zotac GTX 1080 Ti mini
Watercooling:
2x EKWB SE240 Radiator - one for the GPU, one for the CPU
2x EK-XRES 100 Revo D5 PWM
bunch of fittings and tubings - anyone care?
two random sanitary T-pieced male-female-female for the front-side outlets. otherwise I'd have had to buy about 10 different parts to create an outlet if it was something by a pc watercooling company.
Fans:
currently 4 x 10 year oldscythe slip streams from my old rig. Problem is: two of them have a silent but audible annoying bearing sound. So I ordered a noctua NF-F12 since that's better for radiator cooling and I hope it's silent at low RPMs. Any tips?
Bench:
Idle Temperatures are about 3-4°C above room temp, when playing GTAV on 2k ultra (~85 to 144FPS cap. monitor can do ~155 gsync but I cap at 144) GPU's at about 45°C and CPU about the same. Will test further.
PICS with a little text:
That's the case after welding and sanding. You can see that the middle column bent due to the heat stress. Another little bend is on the backside. But both luckily didn't interfere with screwing everything on later.
Lessonlearned: screw more placeholder wood everywhere to keep everything together.
The steel was laser cut by some random company I sent a CAD file to (which I built in Illustrator because I never really used CAD)
Case from the side - the cable running down is the on/off clicker for the mainboard.
Here you can see the T-pieces for the outlets of the loops. Since those aren't meant to exactly fit into the radiators, I had to fasten and seal them in. Used some silicone glue.
Other side of the case - disregard the sata and power cable running out of the case - that's where my old SSD is currently dangling. So imagine it looking cleaner but I couldn't be bothered to pull out the cables for a picture. It's a bit of a pain to mangle in the SATA cable.
And yes, you spottet that correct - I put both pump PWM cables together - also the sensing wires. But with only one sensing wire, the other pump went to 100% permanent and apparently the PWM signal of two sensing cables together doesn't mess anything up. If you know more there - please share!
And as you now also may ask: Where the fuck is the cable management and all the cables?
Well there is none since I painstakingly de-coupled all the terminals, cut down the wires, re-coupled everything and fit the length of the PSU cables exactly to what they needed to be. You can see the CPU connector going straight to the PSU behind the fan cables and under the PSU. Same for the 28/24 pin MOBO connector, the two 8pin GPU connectors and the pump-wires.
Removing the terminals professionaly because - of course I planned that ahead and bought all the necessary tools for that. obviously. Fingers were dead after that night and that thumb wound is already healed, so no worries.
Professional tool Nr.2 a.k.a swiss army knife.
I reused those terminals for the shortened wires but since I could only clamp them onto the wires with standard pliers, I also soldered them on.
Backside. I mis-measured the screws for the PSU by about 0.7mm but luckily it still fit. The cutout left of the psu was planned to feed power on/off, reset and LED to the wooden finish. Yes I wanted the back to be the front. Above the Graphics Card you may notice a hole - I first only did a slit where the screw thingy of the graphics card would fit through, forgetting that I couldn't simultaneously put it in the PCIe slot, fit it down the two endings below the mainboard AND through the slit. So I cut out a bit after wards to be able to slide it in.
That's pretty much it. wanted to share my work and maybe I learned something useful for someone else - if anyone has any questions, I'm here.
