Home made wooden MiniITX case!

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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andymcca
Posts: 404
Joined: Mon Jan 11, 2010 8:19 am
Location: Boston, MA, USA

Home made wooden MiniITX case!

Post by andymcca » Sat Oct 06, 2012 10:35 am

I finished this a while ago, but realized the other day that I never updated my thread here:
viewtopic.php?t=57358

My original plan was for an MDF case, but I ended up using cherry/mahogany for the experience. Air is drawn in the bottom over hard drives and driven out of the top across the mother board. Pics:
Image
Image

I chiseled spaces for each connector of the d945gsejt, which is mounted upside-down on the lid. There is a single 120mm fan horizontally mounted in the center of the case, blowing up onto the mother board. Below the fan, there is space for two 3.5" hard drives to rest on a layer of foam.
Obviously this is not a silent or near-silent setup. My primary fear was vibration transmission from the fan into the wood, but the fan does not seem to transmit much vibration through the dense tape upon which it is mounted. The disk drives are isolated from the wood by the foam. Oh, and I did not see a ball bearing fan I wanted to use, so I stuck with a sleeve bearing and anticipate a shorter life span :(
The d945gsejt is a bit slow (Atom N270), which seems to be an issue with ubuntu 12.04. I will probably be reverting to 10.04, since that ran fine. Otherwise, the machine runs like a dream. I use it as a headless server & MythTV backend.

This was the first box I've ever made, so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:
Most of the case was fashioned with a dovetail saw and some chisels. I briefly used a router, but it was too loud for apartment life.
The large dove tails on the lid worked out pretty well.
The rabbeted corners are okay, but I did not clean up the glue quite well enough.
Dadoes for sliding shelves were chiseled a bit sloppily, and the one spot I used a router the bit slipped and cut a corner! (see the top corner near the motherboard connectors)
All parts are panels of 2-3 planks.
I did not do a great job of flattening out areas where I chiseled/sawed.
Final dimensions: 6.875"x7.25"x6.625" or 175mm x 185mm x 170mm (Depth x Width x Height)

Higher res pictures:
closed 1
closed 2
closed 3
open 1
open 2
lid 1

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