Big milestone - 400 x 280mm plates came! Yesterday I finished the final build, took me pretty much the whole day to mark, drill, smooth, mount and connect everything! I'm hoping to not drill another hole at least for some time...
Started with the usual - rounded the corners and blunted the edges of the plates - they are quite sharp, had lost of little cuts from handling the plates earlier. Clamped all plates together, marked 10mm from each corner and drilled 5mm holes through all plates.
Laid the hardware on the plates. Marked, drilled and mounted the GPU as point of reference. Then marked, drilled and mounted the motherboard. Marked where the PSU should go and traced hardware with a pencil to mark where I'll need the vent holes.
Later I attached to the bottom plate only one of the two extra standoffs, in front of SATA connectors (not using them anyway):
I'm using two of the PSU's fan screws to secure it to the bottom aluminium plate:
Unmounted all the hardware, criss-crossed the grids for vents, marked vent holes with a drill bit (sort of pilot holes) then drilled with 6mm bit and smoothed edges with an 8mm bit (LOOOTS of drilling, some wine helped, though):
Actually marked the damn GPU vents wrong
Should have been from the further edge, not the closer... I'll extend GPU vents at some point, but definitely not any time soon
Original GPU fans blow air on the GPU, with so much clearance from bottom plate, vents off-centre don't make a difference.
Put all together, connected, tidied up cables, added the front USB header and Noctua 6mm fan (drawing shows 2, but temps are good so didn't see the point of ordering an extra one). Portable monitor worked great - back can be unscrewed to easily mark VESA holes. Holes in hinges are M3, but drilled hrough one in each hinge with a 4.5mm bit and "counter-sunk" them with a 6.5mm bit to screw directly into the M4 standoff:
Everything connected to the motherboard is on the bottom plate to make disassembly easier. If I pop out the GPU riser and unplug PCIe cable at the GPU, I can unscrew the legs and lift the bottom easily