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Battleground Europe Theme Case


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nice. I like it.

 

by the way, I went to your site and saw the pink computer, I was afraid at first, but then I saw that it was for breast cancer awareness, so that's cool.

 

btw, welcome to occ, don't touch the lammas

I was afraid too when my sister first asked me to make her a pink PC. I said no way am I making a pink one! Then she asked to make it Breast Cancer Awarness for my mom, who has since passed away. So I really had no choice but to make it for that reason. It has 1400 pieces of acrylic rhinestones on it and I really liked the challege of making the Gucci watch replica clock.

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Just beautiful. Did you make the frame yourself?

Yes, I got the aluminum from Metal Superstore. Then I drilled out the holes for tapping, then I drilled out holes every cm to lighten the whole frame. Then it was welded together. I had to make a frame because the LCD had to have a 8 degree tilt on the front or it would glare.

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I will just start here sharing my worklog pics: Here is a pic of just the screw holes tapped:

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There are no phillips screws on this case, it is all done with button head allens. to look similar to WWII warcraft rivets.

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The design is based on looking at cases on Newegg and thinking I had seen a case with a LCD in it, but it was just LED lighting.

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Then I thought I wanted my 20.1 inch widescreen in a case, and internally wire or go wireless with everything. I had been thinking about how to avoid ever seeing a pink parallel port on a case again :) so I started making designs:

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I started with a wooden frame to see if this was even going to be possible. Oddly the wood frame cost the same as the aluminum. It seemed as though it would work, but a wood frame PC is not what I wanted, I thought about erector set parts, but that would label the case erector set and may not hold the weight.

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It wasn't long before mother nature and my friend Barry confronted me with the fact that this was going to be a heatbox for sure. And I could not let the PC hardware and LCD "share heat". Without 8 fans I felt challenged to make this work quietly as it sits on the desk. So I spent a few weeks reading about fluid dynamics, air movement and of course wind tunnels, the highest study of fluid movement I could find. Windtunnel Design

I could not find a PC with any "wind tunnel" cooling really, lots of claims to have one with massive fans, but nothing with the simple building blocks of a true pressure tunnel. I liked many of the pictures I had seen from NASA Ames research tunnels, so I made a few replicas for testing.

This is a wide angle diffuser with vanes at NASA in San Jose. I really liked the look of this.

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I made a 120mm replica which works as good as it looks:

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This 15,000HP fan at NASA was definatly inspiring, I looked for a while before deciding on Turbine fans. They had the best resemblence at the 120mm size:

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The next step after the diffuser is the settling chamber. This consist of a open space to build kinetic energy. Then a honeycomb flow straightener. This I could not find at Wal-Mart so I had to make one. 458 drinking straw pieces later I had a very strange looking part.

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This I thought may of been a waste of a few hours. So I blew on my hand and then through this part and was totally awestruck. This thing had aligned my breath to be more powerful. I wish I was smart enough to think of this from just reading, but after holding this thing I though. If this can align 3 MPH breath, and 200-300MPH wind in a tunnel, I am strapping this directly to a 120mm fan. This was more impressive than before. The cells capture and propel the air 2-3 times faster. I will show more pics later on, but there are 4 honeycombs in this case to keep it cool with only the 2 fans.

I also sell these now in aerospace grade aluminum at saxonpc.com to be used directly on the fans.

 

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To make the keyboard work I put it on dual drawer slides. And made these mounting brackets.

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I wanted to make the front panel look like WWII aircraft gauges from the game WWII Online.

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I had build this Gucci watch replica clock in my last build, and I really liked the battery powered clock keeping time when the PC was off. So I chose this digital clock with room temperature.

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This was one of the first parts to begin the panel which includes: hour meter, room temp, fan/temp/volume bus, date, time, compass and many toggle switches for lighting and one for reset switch.

I toyed with the idea of making other aircraft gauges or buying them, but a slip gauge or artificial horizon is too expensive or difficult to replicate. An ammeter or volt meter would of been nice, but I ran out of real estate quickly.

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Edited by saxxon

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The CDdrive probably did not need to be painted, but I like tinkering with CD drives

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I wanted the drive to have an aluminum door and not plexi.

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The clock is a weather station also. I had to disassemble it to drill and tap the plastic frame to mount into the case.

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You can see the CD door being tried on another case. I bought a $10 case to get the on and reset buttons because it was cheaper than buying the buttons themselves. And I could get the hardware running while I worked on other things.

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The most difficult part of this project was the front bezel. This houses the CD, keyboard, an hour meter, clock, fan bus, many switches and a compass. On paper this seemed very easy. I had to cut 54 holes onto this 19 1/2 x 4 inch piece of plexi. This took many hours of measuring and mock up of the parts.

 

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The keyboard door I also wanted aluminum. and overkill of screws for a military look.

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The hinges are for a jewlery box I believe, I got them from Rockler. Also a small pic of my least favorite part of any project, automotive or modding. Grinding screws shorter. I don't really enjoy that much. :sleep:

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The keyboard door took a little work on paper to get the specifics down with little room.

 

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The monitor I had planned to make an acrylic stand for it. But I lost the stock stand screw holes because I removed the back skin. So instead I drilled holes in the silver "bump ring" so it could be screwed right to the front acrylic panel, this worked out better for airflow.

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Then once the paper was off the acrylic, 17 allen screws held it firmly to the acrylic panel. I could not find button head allens 1 inch long so I had to use cap screws.

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The monitor on switch is a rubber nipple. This was the only button of 4 I brought through the acrylic. In a year I never touched the other buttons, and the fan bus has volume control. As the speakers run from the LCD amp. (for now, I may add the 2.0 amp it had with the speakers.)

I figured it was 4 screws and the Viewsonic would fall right apart. Oh boy this thing was snapped together tight. They must have a specialty tool in the factory for seperating these quickly.

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Here is a shot showing the slope of the frame, without this angle the LCD would glare or you would want to tip the case constantly.

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Here is a shot from the top as it starts going together. All the wires pass through a desk button so it would be easier to seal the "PC box" from the ""keyboard/control box". You can also see the Western Digital HDD with window. I really like this product.

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All the outside acrylic is 1/8 inch thick. But this center acryilc that the drives and PSU mount too is 1/4 inch thick.

 

The hard drive was the warmest part on this build when running, so I put a few strips of plastic honeycomb under the drive to draw in air. This cools the drive well without weight or moving parts.

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I never wanted to see another pink serial port or PS2 ports on my projects. And once you get Windows running I never use any of those ports. I looked at MIL connector but the cost is high. I saw these Nanaboshi connector on a wafer prober at Intel and found a vendor that sells them. It was $30 for the parts and shipping, but looks so much better than a C13 AC connector. These were really easy to solder in , and the AC splits in the inside at this port for the PSU and monitor.

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2 weeks ago I was at the NASA Ames research center, on the mock shuttle in the visitors center I was looking at the PC on the shuttle, it uses similar connectors:

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I went to NASA to see the wind tunnel. I was told since 911 no one see's anything. I could not see the cool side like in this pic:

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But I did get to see the far side, this structure may be my next mod theme. Look at that exhaust port, gorgeous. Here is a shot of the fans on the inside, I almost went with a "wall of fans" like this using ivory/brick colored fans. note the people standing under fan#3.

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Here are some super close up's of the front bezel

 

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The USB port is used for the game joystick port, the keyboard and the wireless mouse. This was disassembled, the wires were cut to fit, and then drilled and tapped the case so it could be screwed onto the case acrylic

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I did not want to have to tip the case to pick it up, so after looking at chrome pulls for a while on google I decided on these door pulls from the shipstore.com. they had the best look and mounting for what I needed.

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Each drive had to hang or be mounted on the acrylic so I had to make a few brackets. Here is the speaker grills, HD mounts, fan bus and CD mounts and lifting handle backing plates.

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The PSU was a big challenge, these things take a lot of real estate. And most of that is fans. After some testing airflow patterns I removed both fans from the PSU. The input fan in replaced with a plastic flow straightener, and the output cavity is attached to the lower 120mm case side fan.

Here is a pic of the top of the Hyper PSU with the honeycomb replacing the input fan. And the black wire out is the internally wired AC that runs to the Nanaboshi connectors:

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Here you can see the cavity output of the PSU and the honeycomb over the components. The 120mm fan actually has the dead spot over the mass of the biggest heatsink.

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Here is a picture with smoke showing what this is doing.

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Again on paper having a panel of switches sounded neat, but wiring up a panel of switches is not that fun,

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With every part off the frame it does take a lot of room.

Here is where I internally wired the PSU:

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untitl.bmp

Edited by saxxon

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Seeing your whole process is sweet :)

Thanks, this worklog is starting to look better than my own website worklog, but Geocities is not very cooperative.

And this worklog is in some type of logical order, unlike the actual build process and endless lists of "next priorities" I had to make, or the mountain of parts that actually went into this case which only seemed to make sense as a final product.

I figured I spent about 400 hours making parts, 100 or more hours daydreaming and writing on paper. I have several saws, but the most precision tool I have, which built ~70% of this case is my hand file:

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Here we go with some more pictures:

The MB, I really like the chrome look of the OCZ memory.

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The CPU is a "loaner chip" from Intel. All Intel employees get a free chip every year. Loaner means you give it back if you quit or leave within the year. I get another core 2 Duo in December. :unsure: the chips do not meet the thermal envelope for E6700 but they packaged them anyway for the employees. In the P4 days this was bad news, but Conroe runs cool.

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And after many hours of testing CPU's with a honeycomb, this runs a 1/4 inch slice of the stuff between the fan and heatsink.

Typically on the P805D I tested on with stock heatsink, this honeycomb configuration drops the CPU 5-7 degrees C. And the temp drop from high to low load is 25 seconds VS. 1 minute 45 seconds with stock fan only. In this case the air cannot travel more than 3 inches without hitting a planned event.

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I found some Paint sketches I did to see how the wiring would work out. It seemed like a challege to make it work:

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And this one is a little more reserved looking than the acrylic, I now want an aluminum case like this. With a matching panel for the LCD, then when it is not being used, it won't even look like a PC station.

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Besides what was running in the "start up" case, all this had to go in.

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The protective cover for the LCD is critical, You don't want to get to the LAN party and have a big scratch on your screen , or have it damaged in transport. This cover cost $8 to make and if it get scratched no biggie. I will make a blue one too soon. I have enough blue acrylic left over to remake the whole case. Here are the hinge pieces and the light blue pieces I made to hang the cover. These were cemented on:

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Once the hardware started going in, the wires were a mess, every wire is usually long enough to wrap around the case. Almost every wire got cut and soldered except the DVI and 20 pin.

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Many wires had to pass through the button, the fan bus had alot of wiring. For volume, fans, power, thermal probes. Also you see the Volume PCB for the bus.

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Most the wires I tried to run through these trusses, they are from a toy firetruck, but they served a good purpose here and helped to clean up the wires.

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I am making another diffuser today to run under the one I have. The video card and PSU and still saying "feed me", now that I have it all running I can ascertain this is effective, but a second diffuser would benefit the whole system.

 

Getting the monitor in there is a tight fit, and it's a juggling act to get the monitor panel on the frame, a few screws placed and started by yourself.

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As you can see, it is very tight quarters inside when everything is in place. None of this had been tested with the monitor yet, it was all just figured on paper with my second most precision tool, a ruler.

 

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I did get hardware running on another monitor for testing before I put the LCD in, this did raise my blood pressure a bit just seeing it work for the first time. And I had cut a ton of wires and removed the PSU fans, I was not sure if the PSU would sense that and have problems. Not thermally but with the 3 wire fan connections. Here the PSU fan is running on a 9volt battery.

 

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This is probably my favorite panel, with the dual Turbine fans. I am upgrading the lower fan to a Turbine 2000, since it is on a bus it looses some power, and the 2000 will give me more control.

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This pic you can see inside well, and how the monitor is situated, some pics are diufficult to see the monitor. And the plexi reflects everything. I have alot of pics that are just a mirror of the background. Hard to see the PC at all.

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Here is another pic of items on the front panel. The "ON" button, the CCFL switch, the reset toggle, I put a MIC in there but have not tested it yet. The monitor "ON" switch, The fareinheight/celcius button for the room temp and the thumbscrews for the LCD cover, these have to be replaced if you remove the cover as it can breath air from these holes.

The panel seperation is the spot where the LCD panel and the front bezel panel meet. There is only one frame piece in this spot so they could not share the frame. I had planned all along to have the front bezel screwed on, and cut each to an angle where they could overlap and the lower panel would be holding the LCD panel in place. This did not work out well to seal the panels for air, so I placed a strip of aluminum across the gap. I like how it looks and it was much easier than recutting the LCD panel a few times.

 

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And I found the pic of the Gucci watchs I copied, post-27522-1194747522_thumb.jpg

 

Here is a pic of a WWII Online screenshot, the theme of the case.

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I am still working on making some good screenshots to take photos of, any ideas or suggestions on what to see on the screen.

Edited by saxxon

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I got a few shots of some decent looking screens:

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And this one I made to mess with my friend Barry who said many times last december-janurary "your gonna burn that thing up"

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And I modified a screen to look as though there is critters living in my box.

 

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And ever since I started modding PC's I have wanted a box with this screen on the case, and now I do :rolleyes:

 

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I made another diffuser for the lower portion. This cut my Reynolds number in half per diffuser, but the PSU and video card need their own supply. I forgot how much work I put into this little part until I had to copy it.

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12 triangular pieces ready to go, it uses only standoffs on 4 of the vanes, unlike the force the NASA one contends with, 5MPH will be about the max this intake ever sees.

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Making something can be a challenge, copying it can be much more difficult.

And I had to make another hole in the side panel,

I attempted to cut this plexi without any masking tape on it, it just glued itself right back together without tack paper, so after a few passes I just put masking tape on and it cut like I was used too.

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And my scroll saw cuts anything but straight. So on edges I use the hand file to get straight and smooth. But for circles I have used sandpaper around something round and coned, in this case a drinking glass. For aluminum and plexi circles I have just used this technique and turned it until it's a perfect circle.

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Since I had the side off I took a few more close up's of how the monitor sits and the hardware from this side.

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And a close up of the keyboard area, you can see it is a pretty tight fit for everything that is there. When I first got my Viewsonic 20.1 inch I was putting the keyboard on the LCD stand (kinda) and it seemed pretty tucked out of the way, this is how I really got the idea to stick the keyboard in this thing. Since the drives were going to be facing me anyway.

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I also added a deflector to the outputs of each of the honeycombs. Once the air has been straightened it is very easy to control. One is aimed at the video card fan input and one deflects towards the monitor.

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The new right side:

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Then I run lots of tests with the handheld anemometer to check flowrates and pattens.

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And smoke testing also, I cannot get a good photo of smoke going through the dark plexi yet, but it is impressive. Natural smoke goes in leasurly and kind of mills around to find the fans. Through these 2 diffuser/straighteners it is all business, the trails get in, and get out quickly. And smoke crossing the entire input diffuser you can see it hits the monitor entire back panel

(great to add active cooling where it was passive), and many seperation layers in between so they don't share heat. And what really surprized me was the airflow past the CPU. I bet if I had a straight fin heatsink instead of the spiral one, I could 86 the CPU fan. I am getting 2.1MHP flow past the CPU, not much less than passes through the heatsink with the low RPM stock fan.

That was with the turbine 1000 fans. Today I got the Extreme Turbine2000:

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And they seem much more controllable on a bus, here I connected them to my blue PC bus. The lowest speed is about where the 1000's topped off. Extreme, I liked the sound of that. I just need to remove the manufacturers stickers, which I have done with all the parts. It looks like a stock car if you leave all the stickers on.

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I think my fascination with acrylic cases is being able to test them with smoke. The pink Gucci PC I made I spent hours messing with the fans, only to see they didn't really do much to help cool the P4 that it was running.

This pic you can clearly see how the monitor is mounted, the black and silver ring are still attached.

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Compare with the stock monitor.

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Well that is pretty much it for the worklog. I have tons more pics but plenty were out of focus. And some are not much different than you see, if anyone wants a close up of something let me know.

I want to thank EM3Bilko also, he has been very supportive and commented on my build many times. :thumbs-up:

And thanks to everyone who took the time to read this and took interest in my work.

Edited by saxxon

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