i assume you're going to stain the wood? I'm anxious to see the finished product

Yeah the rest of my furniture is more or less a red oak but I'm starting to get a soft spot for the lighter color

More likely is that nrg would be watching Fueler work and drink all his beer.

This case mod is looking good so far (from the technical part). I can't wait to see all the little things you do to it for asthetics.

It's 1:30am friday and it is finally up and running with both boards. The voltage readings on both boards are identical and did not drop even a tenth of a volt from the readings I got with just a single board running. Now I can go to bed and actually get some sleep

I always love your mods Feuler keep them coming!

Nice job, can't wait to see the finished product

If a good quality 510 can run 2 stripped down E6300's, do you think a 1000 would run 4?

That would be nice cluster to have if you could run it off of 1 PSU and place them in a single case as you have done...

I wish I had an answer for you but I honestly don't know. Four PC's in one case is a lot of heat though.....I'm not sure that would be a good idea.

I've made a little more progress so I'll catch you up with what I have done recently.

I've finished up the main bulk of the wiring. Not only did I have to double up on all the connectors but I also had to convert both ATX connectors from 20pin to 24pin. I used a spare connector from a dead PSU and cut out the sections I needed to make two 4pin additions to the 20pin connectors and then swapped out the wire for the right colors.

You can kind of get an idea from the pic below....I was about a third of the way done here....the 4pin addition is plugged in but the wires still need to be changed to the right colors.



I thought up all kinds of fancy ways to mount the hard drives but sometimes the simplest way is the best way.
Two aluminum bars mounted to the center of the case will hold one drive on each side offset slightly so that the drives line up with where the ribbon cables are.





Here's a quick look from the left, right, front and rear of the case with most of the components installed.










This next part I wasn't really looking forward to doing because I knew it was going to be a pain and time consuming but it needed to be done and I'm glade to have it over with.
Since I bought OEM boards they came barebones including no IO shields so I had to measure where everything was and then cut them out on the mill.....a slow and tedious process because if you try to go too fast the acrylic just explodes into pieces.



But I finally got it finished and installed....just a little cleanup left to do on the edges.



Well not a lot of progress this time but I'm slowly getting there

VERY nice, especially the see-through backplate!

Wow, that looks amazing. I agree, the clear back is cool, and very nicely done. I like the offset hard drives too. It has the added benefit of a little better cooling. I still wonder how great it is still having a third of the harddrives back-to-back, but I guess with just f@h running, there should hopefully not be too much heat generated from them.

When I first looked at it, I didnt even notice it was there. Pretty cool idea. I expected something a little more conventional but I reconsidered once I remembered your other work

you're amazing, dont take that with any hint of modesty. the precision in which you build and design seems pretty immaculate, especially for having such a lack of drawings or prints . im suprised you kept that acrylic unscathed, the stuff scratches pretty easy. very nice work.

Amazing. Very good craftsmanship.

Really like what you did with the power supply. ( kids don't try this at home ) Very neat and professionally done...

great work fueler

Ahhh it's saturday and it's cold and raining outside so I have nothing better to do than to stay holed up in my garage and do some modding.

I started off digging through my boxes of PC junk and after an hour or so (I wasn't in any kind of hurry) finally came across what I was looking for....four accessory LED's with the leads still intact. I want to use these for the "Power and Hard Drive Activity" indicators. Now I just needed to figure out a clever way to incorporate them into the design.

Well after awhile nothing clever had popped into my head so I moved on to something else

I had these PC's up and running on my kitchen counter for a week or so and they run hot with no air movement around them but with just a little air blown on them they cool down quickly. My original thought was to mount a fan onto each side panel so that they blow air directly onto the mobo's but what good is it to have side panels that are easy to remove if you have to fumble around to unplug the fans everytime you pull them off.

The new plan is to mount the fans above the mobo's on a bracket so that they will sit flush with the sidepanels and pull air through a vent in the panel. This way I can pull the panels on and off and the fans stay where they are.

I dug up a piece of aluminum (another left over from the WaveMaster) cut out a couple of rectangular sections and started shaping them into brackets.



After I finished with them I thought they looked a little plain so I figured what the heck and and carved a little plug for my favorite forum into them



I pluged them into the mobo's at first but the led's pulsed like a strobe light and that would just give me a headacke so I hooked them up directly to the PSU and stuck a giant overkill 10w 50ohm ceramic resistor into the circuit to slow them down to nearly dead silence.



And here they are mounted.





I will be out of town for the next week on business so this will probably be my last update until next weekend (I hate leaving things unfinished but I gotta go)

Wow! OCC logo! Friggin awesome!

wow, that OCC logo is awesome!

Gotta show some spirit, folding for OCC, let people know!

That's the sort of thing that has put me off mounting side panel fans as well.
You've come up with a nice solution that gets the OCC name into the design as well.
If you did want to keep the fans attached to the side panels and not have to fiddle every time you removed them,
would it be possible to simply move the power connector to a point of contact between the panel and the case?

For example, incorporate it into a side panel latch so that when it clicked into place the fan would get power.
Understand what I'm trying to say?

Anyway, great work so far as always and we are all looking forward to seeing it finished.

I don't see why it couldn't be done....I had a Mercury Villager that used spring loaded contacts in the sliding door because there was no way to run wire on a door that moves four feet back and forth. It basicaly had two spring loaded copper contacts on the door that stuck out about a 1/4" and a plate on the door post with two contact points....when the door was slammed shut they made contact.

Fueler, you've got some insane talent! I love watching your progress, keep it up!

Amazing detail Fueler.... You've got every man's dream garage there... Very nice

always nice to come back to town to find multiple pages of Fueler's modding updates

i *would* think you were a bit crazy trimming all the pcp&c cables if i hadn't already seen you do stellar jobs on psu rewiring before... lovin all the departures from the norm

Awesome. How did you mount the HDDs?

Read page 4, post #58...

We want more!!! lol...I really can't wait much longer to see more before I start going insane. I always love your work Fueler.

If only the OCC logo contest was still open...

I wish I could give you somemore but at the moment and for the next four days I'm in Atlanta,GA for a series of meetings and seminars.....so it will be the weekend at best before I can post anymore updates

Oh darn...I knew there was something holding you up. At least I have some calc homework to keep me busy.

I did before I posted, I don't understand it...Are there screw holes on the bottom of my HDD that I didn't notice?

Yep

4 of them.

the holes are there for attaching wheels... then your *mouse* can take it for a spin... although, without a steering wheel, it's a bit of a *hard drive*

bada-dum-TSSSH!

OMG.....don't quit your day job

nrg...job? HA!

I finished setting up for the "Atlanta Auto Show " early so I stopped by a Fry's Electronics to see if I could find a couple of green led 80mm fans (I'm burned out on blue) before I headed back to FL. They had blue, red and tricolor but no green.....off I went to the electronic parts section to see if I could find some superbrite LED's that I could use to convert my blue fans to green. I found some mini green LED's that were labled as superbrite but they were unlike any superbrites I'd seen before....these were green in color to begin with.....most of the fans I have ever seen have clear LED's that lite up in color. I didn't really think these were going to work but since it was all they had I bought them.

I got back home around 1am Saturday morning and after a little sleep got back to work on the case. I had thought that this was going to be a good day but it quickly turned into the most aggravating, frustrating, blood pressure raising day that I have had in a long time. It turned out I was right about the LED's.....apparently my idea and Fry's idea of a superbrite LED are vastly different. These were brite only in the sense that they lit up and you could see them and if you power them at their rated voltage (3V) then they burn green then yellow and finally orange right before they failed (this would take anywhere from 5sec to 5min) I pulled all the LED's out of both 80mm fans....If I can't have green then I don't want them colored at all.

For the next hour I fiddled around with different resistors and finally figured out that I could get the LED's to burn green and not fail at a little less than 1.5v (half their rated value) but they were patheticaly weak. If I wanted to lite up anything it would take bunches of them.

OK so if I can't lite up the fans with them then I thought maybe I could lite up the "OCC" logo in the fan bracket. The logo's would have to be lit from behind and whatever I came up with to do this couldn't be much thicker than a 1/4" or it would come too close to the CPU fan.

I'm going to spare you the details except to say that for the next three to four hours I tried every combination of LED's, acrylic and aluminum blocks and various reflective materials before I came up with something that would work.



This is a 7/16" thick section of acrylic....the "OCC" logo has been machined into it and then the entire surface was bead blasted to give it a frosted finish. The back of the block is painted a brite gloss yellow (this helped smooth out the color) and the outside edge has relective aluminum tape attached (this helped to bounce the lite from the LED's around enough to get even lighting on all the letters). Stuffed in the bottom is eight LED's (two banks of four LED's in series connected in parallel with a 50ohm resistor on the hot side)

Now I needed to some how attach the thing to the back of the fan bracket.....I couldn't just glue it on (it has to be serviceable incase LED's start burning out) it had to be clamped on and the bracket had to be very thin.

After another hour or so of tedious machining at the mill (it really wasn't hard...it just took a lot of different cuts to make) I ended up with this.



Here's the whole assembly.



And finally the end result....daylight unlit......daylight lit.......night lit



This pretty much wrapped up one crappy day which was only made worse knowing that I only have one side finished and need to make another one of these.....at least now I know how to make it.

Fueler, buddy, you are amazing!

Wow that's impressive! Great work.

Sunday I just couldn't handle another day like I had Saturday so instead of finishing the fan brackets I moved on to something else.

The top plate still needed to be finished up.

Although I couldn't readily find any green 80mm fans I was able to get a 120mm fan (in green) for the exhaust blow hole.

The first thing I needed to do was cut out the wooden plate for the fan.



Nice fit huh.



Next I cut a recess around the hole for the aluminum fan grill.



I made short work of cutting out the grill....here it is assembled.



Next I'll make the front bezel and then.....maybe.....I'll get back to that other fan bracket.

how is the 120mm fan grill attached, or is it awaiting some sort of attachment from the other side?

i wasn't sure how well the wood and metal was going to work together, but looks like you're off to a fantastic start

It's already attached....there are four screws going through the top

Here are a couple more pic's just to give you an idea where I am at on this.





I'll have more before long ......I hope

Should have used blue and orange led's . Other than that, looks cool!

not to the fan lol... i can see the four fan screws...

i meant, how is the fan grill attached to the wood? or is it just resting on the wood?

Fueler your inset work is utterly amazing - the flush fit of the grill is awesome. Keep those pics coming!

For the rest of you members - make sure you take the opportunity to

Man that is just a sweet looking case

OK....I was wondering how you could have missed that For right now the grill is just resting in the inset.....It's hard to see in the pics but it is actually sitting about 1/32" below where it would be flush with the surface. When I do the final assembly it will sit on doublesided foam tape....this will bring it flush with the top and give it a little noise dampening

sweetness fueler, noise dampening FTW!

This is some serious work, but it looks awesome, especially the lit up OCC logo keep it coming

Absolutely amazing

Keep up the great work!

What exactly do you do for a living? (I'm especially curious what you were setting up at the auto show)

I'm a Maufactures Rep for Automotive Tools, Equipment, and Paint and Body Supplies.

As far as the Atlanta Auto Show goes we set up displays for "SATA Spray Equipment" and a new custom paint line called "Alsa".
(a few months ago there was a thread where somebody was looking for paint for their keyboard and mouse....at the time I was not very familiar with Alsa but I still posted a link to their website....since then I and several of our salesmen flew out to LA and spent three days at the Alsa Plant and had the opportunity to spray all of their products.....very cool stuff....the end result is that we are now the Reps for Alsa in the southeastern US and very excited about this new line)