Hey,
Here is my first official draft of my wood finish home theatre PC, there are a few notes that I must make about the design, and I'm really wanting tips, ideas and constructive critisism... Sorry if this post seems like its all over the place, currently its 3:17 am and i've had severe lack of sleep all week (mostly wasting time figuring out how in hell to use sketchup)
HW Specs will be as follows
Asus P5V-VM DH Via P4M890 Motherboard
Intel Pentium D Dual Core 805 Processor, 2 x 1MB L2 Cache, EM64 - XD, 2.66 GHz
XpertVision GF 6500 256MB, Low Profile, 64-Bit DDR2, DVI, VGA, TV out, PCI Express X16 interface
Generic 512MB 667MB DDR2
16 speed dual layer +- DVD burner
WD 250gb 16mb SATAII
Some old crappy software decoder TV tuner (till my parents fork out enough for those perty hauppage cards)
The case will be about 45x45cm, have 2x12cm fans, and the CPU fan, (no psu fan), afaik the northbridge and graphics card are low profile and have only heatsyncs and i'm crossing my fingers that 2x12cm fans will be enough airflow to do the job
The things I have to do before cutting wood is figure out whether the Asus remote will be enough to controll my HTPC, Figure out how I'm going to do the hard drive / CD rom drive framing propperly as well as make a non-ugly CD rom drive at the front, figure out if/where a power button will be placed (the asus remote is capable of turning the PC on)
Other things to note are that the PSU case and fan will be removed and possibly have some kind of cover, and be mounted directly next to a 12cm fan sucking air out of the case, the fans will not be led-lighted like the textures, as I ripped them off images I found on the web and couldnt find any regular ones.
I'm planning to have both the PSU and Motherboard mounted on pieces of thin metal as they would if they were in a propper case, this is to allow for grounding (which shouldnt be needed but hey)
The wood frame will be made of two groups, as shown in the sketchup file. The final design will have triangular blocks glued in to made pieces more sturdy, and will also have some triangular pieces to allow the two pieces to screw in together, these will mount wherever you wont see the screws (so most screws will end up at the back or bottom)
I'd really like to see others opinions on this case, feel free to post any thoughts, but things I'd really like to hear about are
- Is the airflow sufficient, should i have another fan or two?
- Where can I get information on how to make / mount a CDROM Face plate
- Fan grills.... lets just say they look horrible, and i'm not sure what WOULD look good with wood...
- Are the woodworking plans I've drawn up/described sufficient, I passed year 8 woodwork, know how to use a router, drill and sanding paper, but i'm no expert, so any improvements would need to be wood-noob friendly What would be the best woods to use
- Whats your general opinion of the case*? I mean i have always liked the idea of a wood finish, never seen it done, and its just something to brag about, the decore of our loundgeroom couldnt possibly get any worse, but wood is probbably alot better than a blue cold cathode acrylic case :p
*Actual wood coloring only used as an example, I dont know what kind of wood I will be using, nor the finish
Well thats it, i'm out, going to bed, waking at in no less than 12 hours time
Oh wait, the link to the sketchup http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...4eba10ebaec0b3
I've made the model easy to navigate by grouping things into 3 groups, top piece, bottom piece and components, hope its easy to use
I got some of the models from http://scc.jazzle.co.uk/ if anyone wants them
-Fragged
PS Thanks for any help <3