After a ton of construction work on my studio I got a bit burnt out on it and wanted to just do a project again. Over the holidays I learned that my eldest son (who's 30, so he's no kid) doesn't have a desktop PC. He's been through a lot and lost a lot of his young life to substance abuse, but he's been sober for several years now, has a steady and good job and is even engaged to be married. I am proud of how he's turned his life around and wanted to give him the same gift I was given by my own father in my late 20's: my very first PC. That used IBM 286 clone got me started on a road to building and customizing PCs, becoming staff on a forum and these days coaching other young people through their own builds.
This also means...I have a lot of computer hardware laying around unused in storage. I went through a move and a lot of the projects I'd been working on before were boxed up, new projects replaced them and they were forgotten. One was a PC I built on an Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z board with an i7-2600K and 16GB Corsair Dominator DDR3. This was my main PC until 2016 when I upgraded to an i7-6700K and the Gene-Z sat in my dual PC Phanteks case as a streaming PC...and never got used. Thing is, I've done some homework and although it's old by most standards, the 2600K is still competitive with a modern i5...especially when overclocked. Paired up with a more modern GPU it should be more than capable of playing even recent titles at 1080p...and certainly an improvement over having no computer at all.
The case, a DeepCool Steam Castle, is a project started for my wife. I painted it purple at her request, but before I could build it I was given two computer's worth of parts that had been struck by lightning. I managed to salvage a single working PC out of the lot...but it was full ATX, so the mATX Steam Castle case was put into storage. We've since built her an Asrock Deskmini with a Ryzen 5 2400G (She did the complete build herself including a recent USB port upgrade) so the ATX rig dubbed "Ol' Sparky" was put out to pasture.
My apologies that I didn't start documenting it earlier. As I stated in another post, I didn't feel this was SFF enough, but as it's coming along I realized that it does fit in with the mission statement of, "an online community geared towards small form factor enthusiasts: system builders who prize space efficiency and thoughtful design in what they create, use, and enjoy. " This project has already taken up a great deal of thought, mainly because I'm trying to use what components I already have and somehow mash them all into a workable machine. Nothing too exotic, many of the parts are out of fashion, but since I'll be giving it away that's a good goal.
OK, on to the case:
Stripped of plastic the Steam Castle is a 30 liter cube case. The mITX or mATX board sits horizontal, front intake fan is 200mm, rear exhaust is 120-140mm, top is designed for
2X 120-140mm fans or even a 240-280mm radiator, PSU sits at the bottom and is full ATX drawing air from underneath with a mesh filter.
I stripped out all the stock fans, the HDD rack/motherboard tray extension, optical drive/floppy cages and took a hard look.
...and thought, "Yeah, I could fit those 180mm and 200mm rads in there...but I have some other work to do first."
The first step was to modify the top plastics to actually function as an exhaust at the back of the case, one of many dubious design decisions made by DeepCool.
Pretty easily accomplished by drilling four more holes for the plastic barbs to fit into, one pair already lined up.
I then needed to make room for the dual-bay reservoir, another relic from a project that never happened.
It fit right in there, though with the drive cage gone...with nothing to hold it in place.
I then started fitting the front 180mm radiator in place.
It's ported to the case bottom for both drainage and to give as much height clearance as possible.
The 180mm fan holds it in place, though I've since ordered thinner 17mm x 180mm Silverstone fans to actually fit inside the front bezel.
The thicker 32mm fan may or may not be used as a pull fan on the inside depending upon what GPU card length is.
That done I got to work on the top 200mm radiator.
Looked like enough room so I committed and cut off the 120-140mm bracketry.
There were some holes where the rad needed to mount, but using the 200mm to 180mm adapter bracket gave it enough support to hold it.
I then cut out wider for better airflow through the top radiator.
After removing the HDD rack the motherboard tray was only suited for mITX. Two of the standoffs were missing for mATX, so I started fabricating a shelf.
I'm almost finished with a couple brackets for mounting the bay res too since the drive tray is gone. I felt it left it looking less cluttered.
I'm starting to collect parts for all sorts of other mods, effects and steampunky additions...but I'll save the details for those for a future update.
I know the Steam Castle is one of those love it or hate it aesthetics, so all I can say is wait to see what I'm doing with it. It has some flaws (and definitely some warts) but the more it progresses, the better the ideas are and clearer the vision is for what it can be. Thanks for reading thus far.
This also means...I have a lot of computer hardware laying around unused in storage. I went through a move and a lot of the projects I'd been working on before were boxed up, new projects replaced them and they were forgotten. One was a PC I built on an Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z board with an i7-2600K and 16GB Corsair Dominator DDR3. This was my main PC until 2016 when I upgraded to an i7-6700K and the Gene-Z sat in my dual PC Phanteks case as a streaming PC...and never got used. Thing is, I've done some homework and although it's old by most standards, the 2600K is still competitive with a modern i5...especially when overclocked. Paired up with a more modern GPU it should be more than capable of playing even recent titles at 1080p...and certainly an improvement over having no computer at all.
The case, a DeepCool Steam Castle, is a project started for my wife. I painted it purple at her request, but before I could build it I was given two computer's worth of parts that had been struck by lightning. I managed to salvage a single working PC out of the lot...but it was full ATX, so the mATX Steam Castle case was put into storage. We've since built her an Asrock Deskmini with a Ryzen 5 2400G (She did the complete build herself including a recent USB port upgrade) so the ATX rig dubbed "Ol' Sparky" was put out to pasture.
My apologies that I didn't start documenting it earlier. As I stated in another post, I didn't feel this was SFF enough, but as it's coming along I realized that it does fit in with the mission statement of, "an online community geared towards small form factor enthusiasts: system builders who prize space efficiency and thoughtful design in what they create, use, and enjoy. " This project has already taken up a great deal of thought, mainly because I'm trying to use what components I already have and somehow mash them all into a workable machine. Nothing too exotic, many of the parts are out of fashion, but since I'll be giving it away that's a good goal.
OK, on to the case:
Stripped of plastic the Steam Castle is a 30 liter cube case. The mITX or mATX board sits horizontal, front intake fan is 200mm, rear exhaust is 120-140mm, top is designed for
2X 120-140mm fans or even a 240-280mm radiator, PSU sits at the bottom and is full ATX drawing air from underneath with a mesh filter.
I stripped out all the stock fans, the HDD rack/motherboard tray extension, optical drive/floppy cages and took a hard look.
...and thought, "Yeah, I could fit those 180mm and 200mm rads in there...but I have some other work to do first."
The first step was to modify the top plastics to actually function as an exhaust at the back of the case, one of many dubious design decisions made by DeepCool.
Pretty easily accomplished by drilling four more holes for the plastic barbs to fit into, one pair already lined up.
I then needed to make room for the dual-bay reservoir, another relic from a project that never happened.
It fit right in there, though with the drive cage gone...with nothing to hold it in place.
I then started fitting the front 180mm radiator in place.
It's ported to the case bottom for both drainage and to give as much height clearance as possible.
The 180mm fan holds it in place, though I've since ordered thinner 17mm x 180mm Silverstone fans to actually fit inside the front bezel.
The thicker 32mm fan may or may not be used as a pull fan on the inside depending upon what GPU card length is.
That done I got to work on the top 200mm radiator.
Looked like enough room so I committed and cut off the 120-140mm bracketry.
There were some holes where the rad needed to mount, but using the 200mm to 180mm adapter bracket gave it enough support to hold it.
I then cut out wider for better airflow through the top radiator.
After removing the HDD rack the motherboard tray was only suited for mITX. Two of the standoffs were missing for mATX, so I started fabricating a shelf.
I'm almost finished with a couple brackets for mounting the bay res too since the drive tray is gone. I felt it left it looking less cluttered.
I'm starting to collect parts for all sorts of other mods, effects and steampunky additions...but I'll save the details for those for a future update.
I know the Steam Castle is one of those love it or hate it aesthetics, so all I can say is wait to see what I'm doing with it. It has some flaws (and definitely some warts) but the more it progresses, the better the ideas are and clearer the vision is for what it can be. Thanks for reading thus far.