pc case mod

7/27/2019 pc case mod

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Wooden Computer Case

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First, a word about my setup: I use my computer for everything. It is connected to a largescreen LCD TV and I watch movies, TV programs, surf the internet, email, design new thingsand even write these articles with it. So, being as versatile and central to what I'm doing, it

deserves some attention once in a while. I do regular upgrades, usually every 1-3 years,depending on my requirements. I've also built several cases to hold the hardware over theyears, trying to come up with a better solution each time. My last case was very good - amarriage of metal frame and wood exterior, but is coming up short in a couple of areas now.

Meanwhile, a few years ago, I made a 6 channel amplifier to drive active three-way speakers.Having finished it, I didn't have a place to put it, so I made a "temporary" stand, constructedfrom scraps of particle board and nailed together. I figured this would be ok until I found timeto build something better...Three years later, that rough box is still there.

The stand, in all its glory. The white arrow points to my computer in its 'naked' state - outercase was removed to upgrade and never reinstalled:

So, a recent computer upgrade had me thinking about a new case and I got the idea that the

best place for my computer is inside that stand. It might seem a little out-there, but the more Iconsidered it, the more I liked the idea. There would be several advantages to doing it, withno real down side, that I can see.
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It could be built to fit a standard sized furnace filter to clean the incoming air. Among theusual maintenance routines for my computer is to take it out to my shop and blow the ~1lb ofdust out of it. This could be avoided if all of the incoming air was filtered first.Also, there would be ample space to add components (like hard drives) and everything could

be organized for better cooling and access. I like the dual purpose idea of using one thing fortwo tasks - a computer hiding inside a table!

Some well spent time with SketchUp, to get the basic shape down and work out the details.This is the front view, the square in the front panel is a door that opens to access the powerswitch, DVD drive and a card reader / USB port. Having these things hidden away cleans upthe unit, and since I rarely switch the computer off or use the DVD drive, it isn't aninconvenience (left):
http://www.ibuilditaudio.com/Projects/computer/images/computer-case/cc1.jpg


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The back panel has the regular computer outputs and a 140mm fan (above, right). The fanblows out, pulling air into the case through the filter, which slides in at the bottom.

The top is removable, for easy access. This shows how the DVD drive is installed flat againstthe back of the front panel. I did it this way to reduce the amount of space it takes up insidethe case. The card reader is mounted in the same way, except at the bottom (left):


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There is a hard drive rack mounted on the left side wall (above, right). It has space for sixdrives. I figure this is the maximum I will ever need. The power supply is mounted on a shelfnear the back panel. It will pull clean air from the inside of the case (unlike most, that pull airdirectly from outside the case). This will keep it dust-free as well.

Here's a cut-away, showing some of the details:


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The furnace filter fits in a slot created by cleats that circle the bottom of the case. Cool, fresh

air enters the case at the bottom.

Building The Case

The first thing I did after coming up with the concept was to go shopping for a filter. The sizewould need to be standard, so that it could be easily replaced. I found this one, a 16" x 20" x1" thick. Good quality, about $17, but a small price to pay for keeping the inside of the casefree from dust (left):


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In the name of efficiency and economy, I used an old ATX computer case to salvage themotherboard tray and part of the back panel (above, right).This is much easier than trying to mount the motherboard to homemade parts.

Also in the name of economy, I'm using more scrap material. Here are the four sides of thecase, 1/2" thick particle board, left over from some other project (left):


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The box is built using butt joints and 1-1/4" nails, with polyurethane construction adhesive asglue (above, right). My old steel square (rusty, but still deadly square) says the box is true.Glued butt joints are more than strong enough for this. There's not much sense spending time

on superiorjoinery if itisn't needed.

This case willsit there,unmoving andthere'snothing to begained bymaking it

bomb proof.

To wrap thetop, I cut

rabbets into3/4" thick

plywood:

The corners are mitered. This trim stiffens the top of the side panels, covers the edge of theparticle board and provides a recess for the removable top. They are glued and nailed in place:


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With the case flipped over, I can install the cleats that hold the filter. These are 3/4" x 5/8"spruce, glued and nailed in place:


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With the filter installed.This is a lot of surface areaand I expect this filter willeasily last a year or more

before it should be changed.

The bottom gets a similartreatment as the top. I cut

pieces of solid spruce (welldried - it's a great idea to have

plenty of this veryinexpensive material on hand)to cover and stiffen the bottom edge:


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Again, glued and nailed. The slots cut in the bottom of the front piece are a mistake (I makeone or two, occasionally) and will be filled with auto body filler later.

Here's a close up of how it is applied (left). I cut a shallow reveal on the outside:


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After letting the glue cure over night, I sanded the case smooth and sprayed on three coats ofclear polyurethane (above, right).

I coated the inside as well:


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To prime bare wood for painting or other finishes (other than stain), solvent based urethane is

an excellent choice. It penetrates and hardens the surface and seals the wood against moisturepenetration.

Hard Drive Rack

With so much internal space, there would be no problem to meet my desired minimumcapacity of six hard drives. I gave some thought about where to mount them and decided thatthey would fit nicely on the left side wall of the case, across from the motherboard.

Made mostly from plywood, I glued and pinned wood dividers to separate the drives. Theseare spaced 1" (the thickness of a standard 3.5" drive) apart (left):


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Good to have a couple of dead drives for mock-up work(above, right).The rack as it is holds the drives snugly, but to fasten them in place, I made metal angles thatattach to the front edges of the rack:


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This is thin gauge sheet metal that I bent, using a homemade bender. The two blocks are cutwith slots and bevels. The bevels are cut so that the metal will over-bend, to allow for spring

back:


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To mount the drive rack, I located, drilled and countersunk for four #10-24 bolts that gothough the side (left):


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After these were nutted and tightened, I filled the countersinks with auto body filler(above,right).

The outside of the case will be veneered, so all of these larger holes need to be filled. Auto

body filler sets fast and shrinks very little, making it great for filling holes in wood.


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The rack is installed temporarily:

The angles have holes drilled that line up with the centre mounting hole in the drive, to screwit in place.

Front Panel Access Door

One of the more complex parts of this case is the front panel access door arrangement. I couldhave made my life a lot easier by just mounting the drive and card reader through the front,

but I thought that would ruin the overall look of the case. I wanted an uninterrupted surface -the door should be perfectly flush and the shape of it must blend in with the veneer pattern Ihave in mind.To cut the opening, I set up a guide board for my circular saw to make a plunge cut alongeach edge. I'm doing it this way to make the cuts as straight as possible, plus I can use the left

over scrap as the door(left):


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To get a straight clean cut, I over-cut then filled with auto body filler(above, right). All ofthis will be covered with veneer after, so this won't be visible.

Part of the interior box ismade and the door is hung:

I edge banded the door withmaple veneer and I'm usingfull inset concealed hinges.These are self closing andfully adjustable.
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Not pretty, but wait, it willlook much better when it has

been clad in fine woodveneer.

Salvaged parts

Much of the old ATX case is screwed together, but some of it was put together with rivets. Idrill the heads off with a 1/4" bit (left):


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Then pull the rest of it out with pliers (above, right).

This leaves me with the parts I need, the motherboard tray and back panel. The rest isdiscarded, except for the power switch lead. It has the correct connector on the end to pluginto the motherboard (left):


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Measurements from the back panel are marked out on the case (above, right).

The hole is cut with the jigsaw and the edges cleaned up with a sanding block (left):


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Mounted (above, right).

A good, close fit (left):


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The location for the exhaust fan is marked out twice(!) and cut once (above, right). I'll need afinger guard grill for the

outside, but forgot to orderone with the fan.

With the majority of the casedone, I've started painting theareas that need to be black:

That's anywhere that thereisn't any veneer. Notice I

painted the hard drive rack as
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well. The inside of the case will remain natural. I considered painting it white, but I believethat would actually make it look a bit crappy in there. Time is better spent on other aspects ofthe build, anyway.

A Thousand And One Details

Salvaged another part fromthe old PC case - the plasticfeet:

I drilled 5/16" holes and gluedthese onto the bottom.

I cut a finger grip in the doorwith a cove bit on theroutertable. I then painted it black,to match the rest of the door(left):


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(above, right) I needed two touch latches (push to close, push to open) plus a helper spring toovercome the self closing springs in the hinges. With these, the door opens just enough togrip. It works well enough.

These are at the top of the opening and don't interfere with the DVD drawer as it opens.

The DVD drive and card reader are mounted on the backside of the front panel. I made moresheet metal angles to use as brackets (left):


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The power switch is an ordinary SPST momentary switch (above, right). I soldered on a newlead wire and used heat shrink to insulate the connection and make it more durable and lesseasy to break.

Here's the splice to the board connector(left):


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The power switch is mounted in the back panel of the recess (above, right). I think that is agood place for it. To power on the computer, I would open the front access door and push the

button.

With the power supply inside the case, the power cord needs to be held in place, so that itdoesn't interfere with the filter sliding in and out. At the bottom of the back panel, I cut anotch and added a wood block behind (left):


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This notch is the thickness of a piece of 1/2" plywood that fits in there (above, right).

The power cord goes through,the screws are tightened andthis clamps it in:

A neat solution, I think.


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A piece of 3/4" plywood is used for the top of the case:

Cut to size and rabbeted flush with the top. It will just sit in place, I'm not going to use anyscrews to hold it.

Veneering The Box

This part of the project is here:Veneering The BoxI can go into more detail on that part of the project in a separate article.

Installing The HardwareWith the case finished on the outside, it's time to start moving the hardware in. The first thingI did was to put the motherboard tray and back plate in, to inspect the inside for gaps that needto be covered or filled. I want all of the air that enters the case to come through the filter, andnot through openings.One of the bigger ones is here (left):


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Patched up with aluminum tape (above, right). I also covered all but three of the PCI slots onthe back plate, since I won't be needing those.

I was short a couple of motherboard standoffs. Here's an easy fix: 1/4" plastic tubing cut tolength and a #6-32 machine screw that threads into the motherboard tray (left):


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The motherboard installed on the tray (above, right). Much easier to get this in before puttingit in the case. Red arrow points out that I have removed the fan from the cooler on the videocard in order to install the SATA expansion card in the PCI express X1 slot. I have come upwith another cooling solution for the video card that I'll go into later.

Mounting the power supply:

There is a strip of plywoodthat goes across the case thatsupports it. I made a metalangle (left side of photo) thatscrews to the plywood strip

and into one of the mountingholes in the supply. I thenused 1/4" threaded rods and


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plywood straps to clamp it down.

Here's the video card cooling fan, a plywood bracket with a 50mm fan mounted on springs tocut the noise transfer to the case. It is running full speed, at 12 volts and is virtually silent(left):

Mounted on the back panel of the case (above, right).Testing it, I found it does as well as the stock fan and is less noisy. Having this computer runsilent is very important to me, and I've gone to extremes to make this happen.

A good example of noise reduction is the hard drive rack. When I mounted the originaldesign, loaded it with drives and fired the computer up, I found that there was altogether toomuch noise coming from the drives. They are mechanical and make the stomach growling,hungry sound and the wide side panel was amplifying this. I had to come up with a way toisolate it from the case. Springs were used again, this time in compression. I made a bracketthat has four stiff springs on the bottom. These fit into shallow holes and are glued in place

with clear silicone (left):


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The top part of the bracket has just two springs (above, right). These are fastened withsilicone as well.

The modified rack goesbetween and is completely

cushioned by the springs:

Close up of the bottom of therack:
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It will be interesting to see ifthis holds up over time, orwill the weight of six harddrives compress the springstoo much.

Hard drives get warm and toget some cool air circulatingaround them, I mountedanother 50mm fan on the

bottom of the drive rackbracket. Here I'm soldering avoltage dropping resistor (3 -270 ohm in parallel) in-line

with the fan. This lowers the voltage to the fan to about 8 volts, making it run slower andquieter. These are 1/4 watt resistors for a total of 3/4 watt - about three times the powerdissipated to drop the 4 volts. A good safety margin, the resistors don't even get warm (left):


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More tension springs hold this fan in place (above, right).

The new drive rack installed:

A noise reduction measure

that was completelysuccessful. I have not heard apeep from the drive since, nomore "stomach rumbling" -they must be full!

Hooking It AllUp

With the major partsfabricated and put in, it wastime to finish up. The harddrives installed andconnected:


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The inside of most computercases are a wire managementnightmare - this is no

exception. I'm more interestedin everything working

properly than neat wiring, sothis is as good as it gets.Still, not too bad. SATAcables are quite a bigimprovement over IDE cablesand that alone goes a longway to cleaning up theinterior.

The 140mm exhaust fan is bolted directly to the rear panel of the case, but it is running at areduced voltage as well and is very quiet. It is the only thing I can hear in fact, and just barely.I may do something to isolate this fan in a future update, but for now it is more than sufficient(left):


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I added a USB port internally,just double sided taped to theDVD drive. This is for thereceiver for my wireless

mouse and keyboard. It makesmore sense to put this inside,rather than use up the loneUSB port that is available atthe front panel.

The rear of the case. Seen atthe bottom is the furnace

filter. Easy to slide it out to replace it (left):


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The card reader has one of those high intensity, retina-burning blue LEDs (above, right). Iwas going to open it and disable that LED, but forgot. It's visible when the door is shut, so Ithink I'll cover it with a piece of tape.

Here it is, all finished:

Definitely something differentand I'm extremely pleasedwith the outcome. It looks likemy quest for the ultimatecomputer case has come toand end - I don't believe I can

do much better than this.


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I made a video showing the highlights:

To watch the latest videos of new projects,subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Interestingly enough, I like it a lot better when the amplifier is noton top of it!

This isn't actually the one that will ultimately be there, though. I have another 6-channel ampthat is about half done (above, right). It's not as wide, but taller - the stand was sized with thisone in mind. Of course, it could be a while before this one is finished.

Thanks for reading,John Heisz
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