Project: Pandora's Box

[billygoat333]

JB Weld rocks.

[mofo]

look for industro in your hardware store. Its the name jb weld gives their jumbo sized tubes. Same stuff much cheaper per quantity, like 16$ for 10 oz, which is alot. I may post pics of a secret mod I'm slowly working on that is pretty much identical so far to yours

[RogueOpportunist]

Hmmm... Definitely gonna have to look for that cause I've almost gone through my first packgage of red/black, thanks for the tip. I think I paid like 7 or 8$CDN for the little packages at Walmart.

+Rep for saving me money! lol

[RogueOpportunist]

So I slacked off over the holidays and didn't get much of anything done but today I had the chance to spend the entire day in the workshop... and it still seems like I didn't get anything done. I ran into a few problems with the top and bottom pieces before X-mas and noticed that the J-B Weld just wasn't strong enough to do what I was trying to do without reinforcement, I kept getting cracks and a few places broke completely with just minor bumps or a bit too much flexing.

The base seems to be fine but the top has been giving me some serious "issues" and what little I did get done over the holidays was just sanding down the J-B after I tried to fix a spot only to break it somewhere else and have to start over... So I finally got wise and put in a little reinforcement.

I'm getting real tired of messing around with this one piece at this point, I must have spent a good 6 hours in total just re-sanding... Ahh well, what you gonna do, it's a good learning experience.

A few days ago I found an old side panel from another case and figured I could cut a chunk out of it to redo the front segment of the case and give it a solid surface to which I can add fan holes and what-not, first I cut out a piece roughly the size I needed...

I then cut out the middle of the front segment to get rid of all the "junk" that was of no use to me...

The basic idea here being that it's going to be a whole lot easier to attach fans and make holes/mounts and things on a flat piece of metal than it would be trying to make use of the front face as it was and filling in all the extra holes later.

I've stuck with my original plan and I'm going to have 2 120mm fans on the front for air-flow, I looked at possibly going up to 140mm and while they would fit the benefit is negligible plus the variety of fans available at 120mm seems to be better.

It should work out perfectly with the 2 120mm fans blowing directly across the motherboard...

Finally after a few more hours of sanding I got to fastening the sheet I cut from the side panel to the "frame" I made of the front...

I'm probably going overboard by sanding everything right down to the metal and I'm not even sure of there being any real advantage to doing so but I guess once this is all done with I'll be able to look back on the hours and hours... and hours... of hand sanding and filing and feel some added sense of accomplishment... or at least that's what I'm hoping.

Adding it into the worklog like this it seems like such a small amount of progress but I was at it for quite literally the whole day, didn't even stop for lunch, it was like 6-8 hours worth of sanding, filing and cutting... Guess it's going to be awhile before I'm at the level of some of the pro's around here, it's all good fun though, even if I am just a "remedial" modder.

I guess there's room enough for one more pic, I recently tried to make a Google Sketchup model of my little project so I could move things around and see how it all fits instead of just guessing, I'm still at odds with how I'm going to do the front panel but being able to make "scale" representations of things sure is making it easier to lay things out, should have done this to begin with... anywhoo here's a quick snap of the model...

I've still got a long ways to go on this and I won't lie, it does get frustrating at times when I step back and look at how slowly this is moving but I try not to let that kind of thing take over and keep telling myself that this is a recreational and educational exercise... Completion is not the goal here, the goal is the work that comes before completion... If I rush, this thing won't be as good as it could have been but if I take my time both it and myself will be better at the end.

[x88x]

I forget, what GPU are you putting in this? I didn't think of it till I saw those fans there with the MBB graphic, but if you a long card it'll hang over the MBB and not fit in there.

BTW, is that the MBB you're using? I had one for a while..until the NB crapped out on me.. If you want to watercool the mosfets, let me know; I still have the custom waterblock adapter plate I made for it.

[RogueOpportunist]

That's not the MB I plan on using, was just a graphic I Googled so I could see where in the case everything would be sitting. Motherboard layouts as far as CPU, memory and slot placement all seem pretty standard.

The GPU "was" going to be my old 9800gtx+ but now I'm not so sure, I have to remeasure my card to double check the length but either way the case isn't going to be able to handle the really long cards, the entire case length is only 10.5" with 1" being used for the fan (if I mount them internally) meaning a max card length of roughly 9.5" (which if I remember correctly is what my 9800gtx+ is).

EDIT: Just flipped through the earlier updates hoping I had written down the 9800GTX+'s length and it is apparently 10" so I might have to mount the fans on the other side of the front... or maybe look into mounting them half way into the panel... Hmmm... Guess I'll have to tinker around with that one.

When measuring this all out my intent was to make things as tight as possible while retaining good airflow and enough space for a standard ATX PSU of any length, so far I'm right on target but everything was measured exact so if any of my cuts are "off" a little it's going to cause a problem which I won't really be able to see until everything is back together.

Water cooling is out of the question for me, huge waste of money IMO, with the way technology scales over-time and the price tag associated with custom water rigs not to mention the minimal overclock headroom you get it just doesn't make much sense to me, right now my main Core 2 system is running rock solid stable at 4.2 on air and my GTX 460 at 900mhz, I could push both higher but where they are sitting now keeps my temps low and gives me a performance I'm happy with.

[x88x]

Also keep in mind the IO-plate offset. That cuts about 0.5" off the usable length of the case. Fortunately (IIRC) the 9800GTX+ has its power connectors on the top instead of the back. That would have knocked quite a bit more usable length off.

[RogueOpportunist]

Well, I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off cutting myself down to 1 front intake fan to blow air across the motherboard and then instead of having a lower front intake to blow air at the GPU I instead have 1 or even 2 bottom intakes blowing air up at the GPU... Something like this...

[RogueOpportunist]

My only concern with this is that I'm basically blowing heat from the GPU straight up towards the CPU, which is why I didn't want to do it this way originally... Whoops, hit quote instead of edit.

Hmmm, I guess I could also consider getting rid of the front intake entirely and going for a bottom to top airflow.

[RogueOpportunist]

Seems like I've lucked out, my 9800 GTX+ is actually 9.5 inches, not 10... On top of that the IO plate offset isn't an issue at all, the little "tab" on the IO plate sticks out the back of the case so the back of the IO plate sits flush with the back of the case.

I was almost worried there for a minute but it seems like I measured everything perfectly when I was working out the cuts so I should have no problem mounting that second 120mm fan in the front for the video card.