One Last Time - Black Cherry

[blueonblack]

So here I am again, back where it all started. I stumbled upon TBCS completely by accident in 2008, though it's had to believe it's only been that long. Kind of a lot's happened since then.

I honestly cannot recall what it was that I was looking for that brought me here, but I am really glad it did. I've been tinkering with things as long as I can recall and building my own PCs since the K6-2 450, but the concept of personalizing a PC hadn't even occurred to me until I came here. So for that, thanks TBCS!

I recall I went completely over the top right off the bat, as is my pattern, and made my first mod. It was so bad that no one by me ever saw it. That's what made me decide that modding wasn't my thing. I was a builder. I went from there to make my own case from the ground up in project Onyx.

This is a worklog, not a history lesson I know, but bear with me for a minute, as it is actually relevant. Eventually a couple of years later I made Open Air, a case for a competition at DecryptedTech.com. That case was made specifically to fit on the filing cabinet beside my desk, and their widths are exactly the same. I really liked that case.

The owner of Decrypted Tech asked me to make something for Cooler Master to display their (then) new closed-loop water cooler at CES, which led to Open Air Mk 2. (See a pattern here?)

So finally to this project. Sorry for the heavy lead-in. I've decided it's time to get out of the custom PC world and move on to something else. I love it but it just doesn't give the satisfaction it once did. Having said that, I couldn't move on without building one last nice custom PC, this one for myself. Which brings me, finally, to project: Black Cherry.

(Disclaimer: I had not intended to do a worklog at all on this project, so these first pics are missing quite a bit of the initial construction.)

I mentioned that I loved that first wooden case. This one will be sitting in the exact same spot, so the width is again limited to that of the file cabinet: 15 inches. Since I want a custom water loop in this one, I needed a lot more interior space. I managed to cram it all in there by making this one slightly taller and quite a bit deeper. This is the first image I took of the case assembled during construction:

The body is cherry, the top and side panels are all 1/4" black cast acrylic, and the border inlay is walnut and maple with tigerwood corner strips.

I debated doing the inlay at all as I thought it would make it too busy, but I think this pattern in this location came out pretty well.

At this point in the construction I already had a lot of holes cut in the top panel. In that first case I made, the top was made to fit the motherboard. In this case, with the need for extra space for the radiators, I ended up with a LOT of empty space in front of the motherboard on the top plate that I had to fill up somehow.

I decided to get a little creative with the part that I love looking at: the water.

This last image shows it best. The front center reservoir is the primary, that's where the system will be filled and that's what feeds the pumps directly below it.

Once the water fills up the radiators it will come back up into the smaller reservoir on the right, fill it up, then through the prop-style flow indicator in the center, to the other small reservoir and back inside.

(I've since decided to do away with the chrome elbows here and make rigid acrylic connections here, hopefully a graceful curve rather than the harsh 90.)

From there is comes back up at the fitting beside that small res, goes through the actual cooling loop, ends at the fitting on the right beside the right-hand small res, and comes back up into the center of the primary reservoir. That big chrome lump in the center of the reservoir is a T-fitting. With two DDC pumps I suspect I'll have a pretty good flow rate and don't want the water splashing around as it comes back vertically, so the T both redirects the flow and cuts the pressure by doubling the area of travel.

At least that's the plan.

So the top is looking fairly good so far. All of the side panels are cut, I have a couple more holes to make in the rear panel. Each of these is held on my some strong magnets and will be accessed via suction cup. I should probably buy some extras.

Opening the front panel reveals the amount of work I still have to do inside though:

Ugly.

One last piece in this update. Since this piece is designed to show off the contrast between wood and electronics, I decided to trim it all out in cherry. I found a supplier for good cherry hardwood in thin pieces, which is hard to find, and will be framing out all of the holes in the side panels. I also finished custom backplates for the video cards:

Obviously they need a little touchup work, final sanding and a finish but I think they turned out pretty well.

That's it for the first installment, please forgive my rambling. Further chapters will should be more concise.

Thanks for watching!

[OvRiDe]

I wish these build logs wouldn't start out so slow....

[blueonblack]

I wish these build logs wouldn't start out so slow....

I know, sorry. Next time I'll try to have some work done before I start one.

[blueonblack]

A little more progress tonight. I got the cherry frames cut for the intakes on the radiators. They turned out great, my only concern now is noise. The fans are very quiet on the radiators, but the addition of a grill changes the whole airflow equation. Noise testing later tonight.

Bare intake openings:

With new framing:

As with the backplates there is a little but of final work to be done and of course the finish but progress continues. I think I only have two more wooden pieces to make, and hope to get those done tonight.

Stay tuned!

[TheMainMan]

The contrast between wood and black computer parts should be stunning when you peel off the protective layer. I'm really looking forward to seeing how that turns out! For the walnut and maple inlays, did you inlay those as individual pieces or in strips? Sorry if that's an obvious question, I'm fascinated by woodwork case but have very little knowledge of their creation.

[blueonblack]

Thanks very much! And yes, this is my third wood-and-black-acrylic piece and they do really catch the eye.

On the inlay, no problem at all, I get that question fairly often. These were laid in strips. The strips are made by sandwiching longer thin blocks and sheets of the different woods to make what they call a cake. The top and bottom layers (maple in this case) are usually sheets and they're oversized. Once the glue is cured on the cake, it's run through a sander on each side to get the overall width perfect, then thin slices are cut off of the edge to get the strips you see here.

Of course I always let people think I did it with tweezers and a magnifying glass.

[blueonblack]

CURTIS, if you read this you need to free up some room in your PM folder. You must be popular!

[OvRiDe]

Done!

[blueonblack]

Well, it's done.

I got all the trim pieces done.

I got the finish just the way I wanted it, beautiful hand-rubbed oil sheen to it.

I got all my tubing routing done and the system filled.

Leak checked, one tiny leak easily repaired.

I giddily slid it into place by my desk, got out my OS disc, cracked my knuckles and pushed The Button.

Nothing.

"Oh hell, I forgot to flip the switch on the PSU back on. I do that every time." Flipped the switch and pressed The Button.

Nothing.

"Well, this switch IS kind of old." It's the same power switch I used on my very first mod, documented here on TBCS. Hooked up test switch and pressed The New Button.

Nothing.

Removed the front panel, disconnected the 24-pin and jumped across green and black.

Nothing.

Dead power supply.

Now this would be bad in a normal case, but only cause a short delay. THIS case however was built frm the ground up, STARTING with the PSU. It was the very first thing installed, and everything else was built on top of it. There is no way possible to remove it without completely dismantling the whole thing.

Design flaw? Possibly, but I've never had a PSU fail so my experience told me it was an acceptable risk.

It gets better. Two days prior, the PSU on my main (read: only) PC failed. Two 1000-watt PSU failures in 3 days. So here I am, looking at more computing power than I've ever had and no way to use it.

Since I had to dismantle it all anyway, that's what I did. After buying a new PSU I built my new PC in my old case.

This beautiful inlaid cherry box is now empty other than the trim pieces sitting inside it, sitting on a shelf in my storage room, there to stay for the foreseeable future.

Moral to the story? If you're going to make your own case, make component replacement (ALL component replacement) minimally invasive.

[OvRiDe]

NOOOOO00000000ooooooooo!

That sucks my friend. I was really looking forward to seeing it in action, but alas.. stuff happens. Well maybe one day down the road, you will yet again be inspired to dust it off and give it another shot.