alright, my loyal barton rig has been lying on top of my cupboard for sometime now without a PSU and HDD.....

so last week, went for some hardware shopping to find the parts....... (SP-97, HDD and Enermax PSU)



i'm gonna need this rig (2nd) to put at a friend's place since i'm gonna be really busy with my final year project.....maybe we'll hook up and play some games when we got bored.....

so here's my plan,

i'm gonna build a small form factor casing with the necessary hardwares only, in this case, the optical drive is not needed, so i'll include it in the design...

definitely not going to spend so much time on it to build it, and neither do i have to bling it up either, so the casing design should be really simple.....


so finally decided to build a box to hold the hardware, why do i called it a box ? because i simply did not use any mounting mechanism to hold the mobo....
instead the motherboard will be lying on top of a cushion made from foam, and the rest of the hardware will be just above the mobo also...

alright then.....

firstly, i align everything nicely and after some brainstorming, i found that this configuration will have the smallest space and yet easy to implement.....

the complete measurement will be around 120mm in height, 355mm in width and 255mm in length












since this is a enclosed casing, the airflow must be good as well, i cannot just let all the hot air sucked into the psu and exhaust from there as my barton is really really hot, coz i clocked it at 2.2Ghz at 1.92Vcore....

therefore, i've added 2pcs of 60mm NMB at the rear as an exhaust to suck out all the hot air from the CPU area.




the CPU fan on the SP-97 will be taking in cool air directly from the top of the casing....





after i've taken all the measurements, this is what the rear plate of the casing should look like, which it will secure the power supply unit, the rear fans, motherboard I/O as well as the graphics card....

do note that this custom build casing does not have PCI bracket mechanism.....so i need to remove the steel bracket of the graphics card in order to install nicely.....





this will become the base of the casing, which are supported by the black sponge mentioned earlier....





after i've finished cutting the rear plate, this is how it looks like..........just some coping saw and filing will do the trick.....but it's really tiring...

as usual, accidents will happen.....the top corner near the psu got broken because that edge was way too thin....



This post has been edited by AllnGap: Aug 21 2007, 12:04 AM

trying to see whether the fit is perfect or not......




should be ok then.........with the fans and PSU secured firmly




shots from the front....




finally i assemble them up pieces by pieces into 2 main pieces......later i'll perform some spraying to make it look nicer

there is a big hole at the front, which i'll fit it with a vandal Bulgin switch later.....

the whole area will be black but with a shining knob in front.....






this is the top cover (which you see it's with the 92mm fan hole)

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Added on August 21, 2007, 12:05 ami'll continue modding tomorrow, and should be completed by tomorrow night.........nitezsszz

This post has been edited by AllnGap: Aug 21 2007, 12:05 AM

not really sure about that yet.....infact i dint add support for the edges

but nvm will test that out later.......if you hold if from the base it's strong enough......

alright, this is how it looks like when it is covered with paint.........the switch in the middle is just the power ON/OFF button, no flashy lights or reset....just a simple switch in the middle will keep people guessing what's actually inside the box





nice switches, money well spent i'd say





this is the top 92mm blowhole which will be fitted with a 92mm NMB fan with speed control.....the fan will blow directly onto the heatsink and it is the only intake for the whole casing




this is the rear shot, the most difficult part to build is of course the rear plate......



perspective shot......look how shining it is.....





i've covered the internal layer with masking tape to protect the paint from scratching....




shot from the top of the casing





alright, since there is no stand for the mobo, the mobo will be fitted into the casing nicely and definitely it has got to be firm...





small black sponges are used for this purpose......the motherboard will slide into place firmly and very tight fit.......as the mobo will not slide even a tiny bit when pushed.....



This post has been edited by AllnGap: Aug 21 2007, 11:53 PM

trial fit for the hardware.......and the controller for the fan will be hanging out of the casing with a long wire.....just for the performance tuning.....




the fitting should be something like that, but i've got a major problem which is the HDD is hanging in the air....


snipe : as for the question of the rigidity of the casing, i've actually made a very simple mod to secure all the parts intact....

as you can see the power supply unit is secured at the rear plate and that puts a lot of stress on the back plate correct ??

so to offset that, i've secured part of the PSU based onto the southbridge heatsink using a screw, and it's really secured...

when you push the power supply, the rear plate will not even move as the base of the PSU is screwed in together with the mobo.....

so problem solved







time to choose different fan settings for the graphics card......made some measurement and found out that the nearest should be 25mm fan or a small blower.....

so here are the shots for the blower......just slightly bigger than 50cents coin.......but it can push around 3-5cfm which is sufficient for small area and low end graphics card (FX-5200)









after i've assembled everything (without the HDD secured nicely of course)

together with the 92mm fan installed...






shots taken from the rear together with the exhaust fan (2x 60mm NMB and the PSU fan).......very compact design isnt it ?



This post has been edited by AllnGap: Aug 22 2007, 12:03 AM

if you observe carefully, the graphics card is not screwed in.....but it's really tight fitted inside....








hmmm...after careful consideration, i'd rather use other fans for the graphics card cooling as the blower cannot blow the whole section for the heatsink (might be just around 2/7 rows of the heatsink)

so kinda proceed to another concept with is a dual 25mm fan.........dont look down on these tiny fans, they spin at 13,000rpm and if you scale them up, they are as powerful as delta focus flow series !!!











so i've tried installing these twins onto the graphics card, unfortunately, create serious noise problems as the 2 fans are vibrating against the heatsink........so need to seperate them and remove the frame as the frame is not needed for the this purpose


so i glued two 25mm mini fans onto the heatsink.......






This post has been edited by AllnGap: Aug 22 2007, 12:10 AM

this is how the internal will look like

the airflow is sufficient enough because the rear 80mm fan for the PSU will be sucking hot air from the HDD area...





direct exhaust for the heat from the CPU heatsink....




this is the magic part

the HDD is secured from the inside of the PSU......kinda lazy to build a cradle for the HDD already.......




the HDD hanging from the side of the PSU......dont worry, it wont short circuit coz the SATA cable is kinda supporting the bottom of the HDD as well





shots from the other side





shots from the top





bottom part of the casing, with 4 sponge supports




ok, here are the final shots, waiting to be transported to my friend's place.....just a low cost, easy to build black box with a shining button infront and lotsa fans inside (around 6)

small form factor casing ROXXX !!!





This post has been edited by AllnGap: Aug 22 2007, 12:19 AM

thanks

hmm.....if not mistaken, near to 30 bux each


thanks....but i'm not going to use it with that LCD anyway......gonna use it with 21" CRT

nah not going to use it that way......gonna transport it to a friend's place and link up to his PC.......maybe play starcraft and other oldies games

for something which took 2 days to build, it definitely has to be simple.....or else i'm gonna kill myself

anyway, i just wanna make it shining at the front......

a lot of ppl liked something which doesnt look like a PC in their room, gals especially..


torpedo ?? havent thought of that before

actually not strong, but it's just good enough for normal usage ler...........if put CRT on top, definitely gone



that's 22" LCD there.......acrylic i bought a few sheets.......i use quite a lot