The Woody...
The Woody, mostly for lack of a better name. In the past month since i've been thinking about this mod its gone through several theme changes until i got to work with almost no theme, just several ideas i want to incorporate/try.
Due to my serious lack of cash, this is done as cheap as i could manage, i also recently moved so i've lost access to my old man's full aluminium machine shop and i'm now making do with the messy shed i have at my new place, hence out doors and stalls while i figure out how to so something i previously would have knocked up in a mill or lathe.
Ok, the Mod. It started out as a mod, i came across an old full tower case on the side of the road, seemed like a good starting point. I got it home, killed the spiders and tore it open. Then i realised something was different, i quickly checked the back plate, not ATX, hmm. Then i spotted the sticker, circa 1993. Lovely. I turfed the insides, including the slot processor (i'm too young to know they existed, but the CPU was on a board PCI style!?!?!)
After some messing around i decided it would be easier to scratch build a case. Growing up with a machine shop in the backyard i know my round the tools so i figured why not. Then i assessed the tools at my disposal, and my budget and came to the conclusion, wood! More precisely MDF.
Its got some good qualities, easy to work with, even without tools, good insulator (sound) and above all cheap!!! Bad qualities are its heavy as hell, good insulator (heat) and its flammable.
So i need good airflow to counter act the heat build up, and the case isn't portable so the weight is fine (in fact good, my soon to be born son shouldn't be able to knock this over til he's 10!).
The main theme around the aesthetics of this mod will be extreme airflow as i can't afford water cooling. The practical aspect of this is to up the cooling for my over clocked comp (the P4 3.0GHz in here has been clocked stable at over 4.1GHz til my MoBo fried itself, all air cooled of course), i'm going to duct as much air flow as possible to direct the coolest air to the most heat problematic parts.
Ok, so thats the plan, i've started roughing out the bare bones case:
Front
Back
For scale. This case is ENORMOUS!
This is one of the reasons the case is so big, those are 120mm fans in the front, i plan on running them pretty slow most of the time, with the DIY fan controller allowing me to run them up to full speed. They're coolermaster twin bearing fans.
The plan for these fans to to funnel cool (external) air to important parts of the system, like onto the graphics card, over the HDD to the CPU. The PSU will be mounted and have a closed pipe to funnel the exhaust out of the case, and a second exhaust for the case in general. Pipe work will become a feature when this is all done.
I also have an idea for the window, more about that later, need to find some money for plexi before i go that far though.
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