Building my own PC Case

[Stonerboy779]

Been away from here for a while but am in the mood to change up my PC Case from my old Coolermaster Elite 430

 

So in the planning stages at the moment for a new case. Looking to see if anyone has any suggestions or experience building with aluminium t bar.

 

Housing my z68 mobo, i5 2500k, 2x GTX 690s and a Silverstone 750watt psu.

 

Current objectives:

- lots of airflow, unobstructed

- minimal noise

- looks good

- no lights

- built strong

 

Ways I plan to tackle all that.

Aluminium t bar is very strong to begin with am looking to use black anodised 20x20mm t bar with 6mm slots. Haven't found any black hardware for joining so I'll need to paint that. This will make up all the frame work outer edges as well as some internal work.

Buy/cut a mobo tray out of another case to mount mobo. Use HDD/SSD cages to mount drives.

Make the walls out of 6mm marine ply, fits in the t slot and comes up nice when sealed.

Mount fans and filters to the frame drawing in the front and out the back. Aiming to go triple 180/200mm fans front and back and mount everything in-between, so lots of crossflow.

The PSU will be mounted so it draws and vents its own air separately to the rest of the case.

 

Now 180mm fans can run rather quiet with plenty of airflow but GPU fans cannot. Next bit that I am tossing up still is using CPU air coolers and copper heatsyncs to cool the GTX 690s

 

Now I really need input here from anyone that has tried this. The plan is to strip the stock cooler off stick copper heatsyncs with thermal pads to all the vrm etc and put serious CPU air coolers on the dies.

Naturally the GPU width will drastically increase and this will be tackled by vertically mounting the two GPUs and using ribbon cable to connect them to the mobo.

 

If I go this path one of the sidewalls will become Plexi because ain't no way I am making massive aircooled bohemoths and not showing them off.

 

Anyway any input welcome SketchUp plans and other diagrams to come tomorrow

[Stonerboy779]

Basic plans so far

 

[wildman2]

Good start on the case.Only problem I see so far is power supply rear access and peripherals rear access.Used that t-bar at work, it sure was strong. 

[Stonerboy779]

I am looking to go out the bottom or the other thought is go slightly wider so that io slot fits beside the fans.

Wider might be the go as it'll give me the extra clearance if I modify the GPU cooling and will give me space on the front of the case too for power/reset and USB ports.

Also still deciding if I put DVD/Blu ray drives in this PC because it's been about 5 years since I used one on my main rig. The HTPC and laptop use DVDs still but not this.

[Stonerboy779]

Were I am at currently, dimensions are ~300*590*580mm (w*d*h) 180mm fans front and rear.

 

 

 

Edited December 30, 2017 by Stonerboy779

[wildman2]

Starting to look real good there.I like how you made it a little wider.

 Have you ever considered a horizontal motherboard? May make it a bit wider than you wanted but you could a boat load of fans in it. 

[Stonerboy779]

I did toss that up but as you can see the GPUs take up roughly 190*170*360mm of space each. I might make a quick mock up of them though in a orientation with a horizontal mobo.

Make a more cube like case estimate dimensions of 400mm cubed would have 4*180 fans on the front and 2/3 on the rear depending on how GPU and mobo sit.

[Stonerboy779]

Compact if still large cube 420*440*400 (w*d*h*)

 

 

 

 

[wildman2]

I like them both.So many options.

 That cube one looks like you could make a air tunnel real easy.From front to back with plexiglass.