Completed Owliwar - Case Studies

[owliwar]

Hi everyone!


I study Product Design at college and case design is one of my passions. I plan on pursuing this passion on my final project to graduate. I'll use this thread to post my projects, some of which may never be finished, some renderings, sketches and an ongoing main project.


I have, as of now, 2 completed projects.

My first case and current daily driver is Project Sophia (2016), a 29,5L MAtx case made out of laser cut mdf. I'm really proud of it and I learned a lot in the process. It took me a year to finish and to be honest its needs a structural makeover.

Spoiler: project sophia gallery

project sophia is not really a sff kinda of case but i think its important to now where i came from.
I had to make it larger because of a massive cpu cooler that I had that i couldn't afford to loose.
my Initial pc case was bigger to begin with so making it smaller but still dual chamber was my goal in the time.
I also dreamed that it would be accessible but that curved mdf outer panel made it really expensive to cut (I cut mine free of charges)

My second and most recent case I made for my brother. It took me about 3 months or so, and it came out a lot better than my first atempt.

Kairos is a reverse Mini ITX case with 14,3L of core volume (15,3L with feet) that actually supports most cheap Matx boards. My goals were to make room for cheap and commom parts in a small footprint and nice-looking case.

Kairos project is really well documented in comparison with project sophia, so I insist you take a look at it

Spoiler: More info and pictures of Project Kairos

​

Core features:​

• Reverse layout​
• Support for 3x 120mm or 2x 140mm fans;​
• 1x 3.5" drive and 2x 2.5" drives (though I didn't make the 2.5" drive brackets yet)​
• full ATX PSU support​
• MAtx support (with some restrictions to width)​
• up to 56mm~60mm height cpu cooler (77mm from end of i/o cutout) (can someone help me with these measures?)​

Future features/ ideias :
Top mount for hard drives, theoretically expanding to 2x 3.5" drives and 4x 2.5" drive
2.5" drives brackets
​

disclaimer: imgur screwed my photo order in the embed.
I recommend to look in the post.

about the internal layout

i got no really good pictures of my brothers pc because my cellphone run out of battery and he lives in another town so i brought my copy and just build it to take pictures
​

Right now i'm working on a smaller version of sophia, since mine now looks giant, and a 'small sister' to kairos to support TFX PSU.

 

[Ongar]

Wow I love how these turned out, they look super professional.
I am thinking of designing a case to be laser cut and assembled later, but have literally no experience with cad/sketchup. do you have any suggestions or tips?

 

[K888D]

These look amazing, you are very talented!

 

[robbee]

Love the front intake pattern from your project Sophia. Well done!!

 

[owliwar]

These look amazing, you are very talented!

oh thank you

Love the front intake pattern from your project Sophia. Well done!!

Thank you very much
I got it inspired in a character i was developing for a college class. it used a power bank in the back very mass effect .
ok it was more like inspired in mass effect but still

Wow I love how these turned out, they look super professional.
I am thinking of designing a case to be laser cut and assembled later, but have literally no experience with cad/sketchup. do you have any suggestions or tips?

Thanks Ongar!
Learning sketchup will help you a lot, even if a little. This forum has really good templates for starting builds.
even if you only use it to aproximate dimensions.
you can also pick templates for i/o cutouts and pci slots. and write on a paper the exact dimensions you need, and remember to especify standoff height in that measurements. that will save you some time latter.

the most important and easy step do make is : define your joint finger/slot size and spacing and stick with it.
really, that was the most dificult part for me in project sofia as it draged a lot my projet. I use 25mm fingers with 25mm spacing. so its easy to remember and i use it as much as possible.

also, if you like it, try drawing. drawing by hand is where i start all my projects. I'll make a sketch dump here someday

and finaly, get crazy with your venitng holes but leave that for last, as it will not change your layout but may take some time. look for blinders and geometric patterns. With laser cutting almost all is possiblle (oh but crazy patterns may be very expensive so be aware of that)

 

[Ongar]

Thanks for the tips, I really appreciate it! I like the idea of standard slot sizes. Someone posted a case they had cut, and their tab/slot design was really confusing for me to follow.
He'res the link to that thread, you may find it interesting.
https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/custom-laser-cut-walnut-micro-case.939/#post-40747

 

[owliwar]

oh hi.

I decided to update here and use this same post as my worklog, so I'll change from complete to concept again, ok?

last week i moved my system from my old case, sophia, to kairos and this is how it went


My old case actually wasn't falling apart that much, just the PCI bracket was really poor designed and broke. (and the sides panels were not closing )
but now is fine, I liked building in the new case. It Was Wayyy more easy than the old one, at lead in hard drive spacing and I/o cable management.

But I really miss my thermals (well I do have a 84watt cpu)


For the cpu cooler I bought a xigmatek prateon LD963. In Brazil availability and pricing is really weird and here it cost like 1/3 of the price of noctua coolers. So i went with that. I wasn't sure about a 120mm watercooler so it was the safest bet.

Before I moved my system I undervolted as far as I could, to reduce heat. with my havik 140 cooler I could getan offset of -0.115V. with this xigmatek one I get only -0.085V stable. Still i was getting over 90C in just 5min 100ºC cpu load. with the case open i would get around 90ºs but it was stable, So I fliped my psu to use it as exaust and it got better.
To finish it up I set a 50w long term cpu power limit so I can render for hours without BOSD. this way cpu temps gets in the mid 80s on hot days, which its ok for now.

my hard drives were kind of a mixed bag. I could fit the 2 of them fine, not interfering with motherboard and all but they were getting really hot, like 50ºC to 55ºC all times. Since i didn't needed both I kept the side one And tried putting 2x 120mm fan on top. Which got in the way of the I/O. I could keep only one, since it would interfere with usb 2.0 ports and hd audio I/o. both which I don't use.

So i guess this case is kinda small for micro atx and kinda big for itx. But thats fine, its ok for now.

 

[owliwar]

What I'm going to do next:

I currently have 2 cases in mind but its basically the same concept.
A TFX psu based system, for low profile gpus
A pico psu based system for low profile gpus, external brick style.

I'll post soon some of my ideas, but i need to work on them a little more. its just a hook

 

[AleksandarK]

Somehow i missed this.

Now that i saw it, i can say that the pure design is awesome.

Keep going!!!