case mode

Some of you know I have decided to make a "case" for a modding competition.

After many hours of contemplation the pic below is a fair representation of what I want to do.

sometimes I think I am crazy, other times I know I am crazy, apart from an extremely tight budget there are many possible hurdles and challenges in order to finish this in the next 35 days.

I have already purchased the mobo that will fit just underneath the scythe (comp rules state you have to use the mobo from the comp organiser. http://www.ecsmodmen.com/ )

I have made the sunderer shell, and I am now at the stage where I have to start planning the final layout and placements of the hardware, wires, cooling, joining laser tubes etc.

I have given most of this many sleepless hours of thought, but I would certainly appreciate any input from everyone, just in case I have missed something.

Basically the plan is to have the PSU at the back of the sundy, the cd rom and hdd at the front of the sundy and the mobo underneath the scythe, all attached together by the tubes that will hold the lot together with the wiring through the tubes.

Some of the challenges I have been contemplating:

keeping the cpu cooling light and small (water/fan/?)
balancing the weight of the high mobo
the strength of the aluminium "laser" tubes and how to attach to both the sundy and the scythe (I have some reasonably good ideas for this :-)
etc etc

Wow dude... That would be something I have never seen before.

I would imagine that water cooling would be best for the CPU to along with the "tube" design you mentioned. Also, remember that noise will be a factor with such an exposed case.

You could enter a plethora of online competitions (there are heaps already) too once you pull that off.

Good luck!

(inb4 j0n0 gramma nartsi on title)

yeah phats, if i could i would have the water cooling going "down" the tubes on the outside in a spiral to almost match the games animation. i would love to know if i could add silver particles so that one could see the direction of the flow (supply tube would be inside the tube)

(and we can blame auto correct on the title :(

photo's Mike photo's and planning information we could make this into a epic article! do it! looks like an amazing project!

who's photo's stu :p

I will definitely post photos as I go along :)


OK - so the planing stage (pun intended):
I saw the link to the case mod comp in the news feed we have below our shout box -
and I started thinking how cool it would be to have an jet plane with a mobo inside it. an idea born out of thinking about modding an old guitar with all the pc hardware inside. my mind went to how the jet would look with a boring stand holding all the hardware with the mobo inside the jet. So i started asking around for a jet mould i could make a fibreglass shell from. not much luck from that department and then one sleepless night the idea took shape, in fact it kinda hit me with a wet mosquito and drop podded my mind for ages. a scythe and a sundy - how difficult could that be?

many hours of googling I found this thread - http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/i...e-tools.54360/

This dude has made an amazing tool that creates 3d models out of the planetside data files from which elogas was able to convert into an import file for my cad program (Sketchup).
From that I was able to get the scale sizes for the sundy - fitting the PSU, CD rom and HDD in.

Putting dimensions on to the cad drawing I then drew the cutout lines onto the 3mm thick off-cut signage board that eco signage kindly donated to me.
With a bit (plenty) routing and 'scribing' I carefully cut out, heated and bent the board to get what you see in the pic below.
The green tube you see is from a printer and I have been given a few of them from Nashua and a printing ink supplier in kya sands (name to follow)

So now what is holding my mind up is - the final orientation of the mobo under the scythe, how to attach with strength the tubes to the sundy and mobo (i think i have solved this), how many tubes i should be using, how to put the mobo main 24 pin through the tube - I will make a tool that will allow me to unclip each wire to the 24 pin and then thread through and reclip, but i don't have a spare 24 pin PSU that i know works 100%. (Gotta test it)

Howzit Fly, thanks for referring me to this post of yours, and with reference to our discussions, this is my views.... have fun with them.

1. Modding a case, doing something with a computer that has never been done before is always cool, it demonstrate your creativity and more importantly it is fun.
2. I think one need to ask the following questions before you embark on such a journey, they are:
2.1 how practical should it be? This is quite important, because in my experience some people go for really over the top builds, but the actual build is not very practical / useful in terms of things like heat, upgrades, noise, dust, etc. The worst design I have ever seen was the Antec Skeleton open case. I have "won" one of those, I came second in a competition, first prize I believe was two of them. Seriously, think about practicallities and "usefullness" of the case. If I take my own Mahogany Design Case then that whole case was build to suit my personal needs in terms of being able to upgrade it, fits in with my decor, and easy to swap components when the need arise. The more "complex" and "integrate" your design, the less practical it becomes. In your example, assume you are going for a water cooler, let's assume H70 (or whatever). You now design your whole case / design around the water cooler. Tomorrow, intel releases a new CPU, different socket, you need new water cooler, suddenly you can no longer use your case. (not that this will happen, but your get my drift.)
2.2. Cost, budget and material? Cost is obviously important, and I am not gonna talk around this alot as I think you are well aware of how quickly such a project can become freaken expensive. Material, take the following into consideration. How does this material react to heat, vibration, humidity, change in ambient temps, what is the different strenght properties of it compression strenght, shearing strenght, etc. Sounds of it, if you go with aluminium, then you should be fine.
2.3. Mod design? First of all, you will be using a motherboard, cpu, psu, gpu all in configurations which it was never designed for. For instance, mounting a motherboard upside down may seem like a great idea, especially considering that things like a PSU's motherboard is also upside down. This may mean that you will not have any dust settling on the motherboard and in the components (thanks to gravity), but given the airflow, you will find that you heat certain components up which had the board by right side up, or mounted vertical would not have been a problem. Just think carefully about things like airflow, dust, when ever you plan to mount it in a different configuraton than it was originally designed to be in.
2.4 Use of the PC. I appreciate that most modders believe to overclock the living daylights out of a pc, however, and I want to challenge you on this, why do you want to build a super powerful rig? It is as challenging if not more, if you built say for instance a slightly underclocked pc but then you can get away with say a passive air cooler... Just because you can install a water cooler does not mean you should. Basically, think about where and how you would like to use the pc.

Ok, enough about the boring stuff. Onto your questions. I assume the tubes you are thinking of using is the same as the printer ones? They are thick, so you can run any number of cables through them. Regarding how to push through a 24 pin ATX plug, here is some suggestions:
You can manually remove each pin (please take careful notes exactly where they came from and first test your rewired psu on another motherboard!), and then reconnect them at the end. However, that is the "easy" approach, here are some other ways as well...
Instead of removing the cable at the plug side, open up the PSU case and cut off all the wires (leaving you just enough space to either solder or crimp new wires on). This will allow you the benefit of ensuring all your cables are exactly the correct colour (black, blue, white, whatever theme you are going with) and it will also ensure that the cable is precisly long enough meaning you do not need to worry about cable management afterwards. This is obviously a lot more work, but it will allow you the benefit to sleeve each cable if you want to.
The other option is to get a ATX extension, which is what I did for my case. This allowed me to make the cables a tad bit longer, but I don't think that will solve your problem.
The last option, is to perhaps consider a full modular PSU, the ATX cable that is plugged in on the PSU is somethings a much thinner solution.

Ok, PSU ticked. You mentioned HDD and H2O. First, think if you really want water cooler or not. You don't NEED to water cool the thing, going with a 1 inch thick passive cooler can be just as cool! (but that means you need to underclock the cpu) The HDD, obviously a SSD, the beauty of a SSD is that it is so small you could potentially mount it INSIDE the PSU for instance... now imagine the looks if somebody is trying to find a HDD and they can not see one... ;-) I actually saw a PC mod once where this guy have build a FULL pc (using an ITX motherboard) into a PSU. Then he mounted the PSU into a normal MIDI PC case, but the rest of the case was empty... so he would go and plug this PC in and switch it on etc, but then he will open the case to show the people it is a "invisible motherboard"... Depending on the size of the tubes, perhaps even consider 1.8" drives or something like that and then mount the drive inside the tube... ;-)

During one of our telecons, you've asked about strenght and the way to connect the motherboard. If you use aluminium, you should be fine as long as you can attach the ATX board to all 9 screws. I assume you have a tap & die set, so that should not be a problem. Just to give you an idea, I once build a 19" rack mount "case" out of roof-flashing (basically, tin that is about 0.6mm thick) and I very succesfully tapped the holes and managed to mount the motherboard on that. Saying that, I would not have swing it around nor mount it upside down... you mention 3mm aluminium, more than enough to mount it in any configuration you want.

How to attach tubes.... now this is the old age question each architech questions. I will need to know the following to help you. What diametre "tubes" will you be using? What "angle" will those tubes be mounted at? Do you want to tubes to be able to swivel as well. I.e. in your pic, you had the ship ni the front with the tubes looking to be at around 25 to 30 degrees. You could in theory have the ship be able to move forward and back by just allowing the tubes to "swivel". Regarding strenght, you need to look at the pressure points, in your current design, assuming the tubes penetrate the vehicle, the pressure points will be at a the entry point right behind it. It is important that you reinforce that part of the metal to some extend. (basically, if you push the front part down, the back is going to "pop up". Reinforce the back. The Easiest way I have found to do things like that is to simply use two sheets of metal, mount them an inch or so away from each other. Then just drill two holes in them at the right angles. Now you just need to spread the pressure points to as wide an area as possible and you should be fine.

Anyevent, let me know if you have any other questions, or if any of the above doesn't make sense. Sorry for any grammer, spelling errors. Not only is it because I am a boertjie, but also because I have just formatted my PC and haven't installed Office yet so have no dictionary. Then again, I don't think I was allowed into the clan for my awesome writing skills....

thanks skoups, lots of food for thought. please dont worry about grammer and spelling :)

the aluminium tubes are 22mm ID, I cant find a thicker one the right colour, so i might be going for 4 of the same. the design isn't for simplicity or function, it is more for wow factor.
I don't intend overclocking at all, the cpu will most likely be the cheapest I can find. like the g465.

I recon I have the mouning of the tubes sorted, many hours of thinking and i am sure you will like what i plan :)

I am sure I will... please share photos / ideas / comments / questions when you are ready to do so. Best of luck!

thanks skoups

I have been spending the day working on the tubes and the ammo boxes.

the tubes are ready to be attached to the back plate. Now it is a question of fitting both the 24 pin atx power supply and the vga THROUGH the 25mm (OD) tubes.
The aluminium angle iron that the tubes attach to inside the sundy have been cut to size and are ready to install inside the body, i just need to find my 25mm drill bit that i bought a million years ago.
I am sure I will have some pics tomorrow