What to build my case from scratch

[footfukinmasta]

Ok, I have a Antec Overture with a Intel Rocklake D865Perl motherboard with 2.8 prescott, 1 gig of kingston ram, a 250 gig maxtor Sata HD and a 92mm zelman cpu fan, Hauppauge pvr 150, Ati 9600 xt. I am not happy with how loud this setup is and how warm it runs. What I would like to do is build a case from scratch, but the first thing question, is how you do the back panel of the computer where the card slots are? My other question is where can I find a nice on/off button for the front of my project? I can't find any of the brackets that hold the 5.25 hardware on the internet, do I need to find a case and scrap it?

Thanks

[frankgehry]

f,

You probably don't want a drive cage that you can buy. You should suspend you drives. Go to the forums or articles and read about drive suspensions. You can seach for these things on the site

For a switch go to
www.froogle.com

search for computer switches, starter switches, somethink like that.

That's the best way to find stuff. There is another guy who built a case out of wood. Seach for wooden case or the guys name is Gorsnack or something like that. You can send him a private message and ask him where he got his switch and backpanel. - FG

[footfukinmasta]

so people are even mounting their dvd drive suspended? Thanks for the replies, I'm going to look into suspending my drives

[lucienrau]

One thing that might make your life easier is that Lian-Li makes a wiring harness that contains all the LEDs needed, power, reset and speaker. I know that silverpcs stocks them, but you probably can find it cheaper from somewhere else.

Or you can just tear it out of an old case.

You may want to look at buying a $20 case or something like that and strip it down to the frame for something to start with (if you don't have one yourself diretron sells case parts and you want a tower design).

One easy solution for drive cages is lexan/plexiglass with proper application of a heat gun you can shape it into whatever shape you need (even a cange for suspending optical drives). There are some tutorials on modding sites (Bit-tech is my favorite).

As far as the back panel, some people do fancy things, but L channel with holes in the right locations can mount agp/pci cards. Some people just bend the bracket on the card straight and just screw it into the case.

My favorite solution is get an AT case (I'm sure you can find one free, craigslist.org is a good place to find old bits) and cut out the sections I need with a dremel, strip the wiring and toss the rest.

If you have any questions feel free to pm me.

[shigaloo]

one easy thing you might want to consider is sourcing a removable motherboard tray

http://www.silverpcs.com/product/CA_LIANLI_MD_TRAY

[footfukinmasta]

one easy thing you might want to consider is sourcing a removable motherboard tray

http://www.silverpcs.com/product/CA_LIANLI_MD_TRAY

now that I like, thanks

[Gorsnak]

For my scratch-built case I cannibalized the mobo tray and 5.25" drive cage from my old box. The article should be up any day now, as Mike told me two weeks ago that it should be up in about two weeks.

That said, I certainly thought about leaving my old case intact, and it wouldn't have been that difficult. I was going to just screw the mobo into a backing board (using standoffs), then set a strip of angle aluminum in the right spot to screw the cards down. The tricky bit is getting various rear i/o panels to line up with the back of your case. Given the way I was doing things, I would have needed an extra piece of stock on the back panel to mate up with that little rectangular panel that goes over the i/o jacks, because it's at a different depth than the back edge of the screwdown thing on expansion cards.

Hmm. That's a bit confusing; lemme try again. Imagine I cut out the big hole in the back panel, fat at the bottom for the cards, and narrower at the top for the i/o jacks. Now I set my aluminum strip along the edge on the bottom to screw down the cards, and mount the mobo so everything lines up. At this point, my i/o jack panel wouldn't be flush with the hole in my case, but would be recessed a bit with a gap all the way around. I didn't have a piece of wood the right depth to fill that gap and said screw it and drilled out the rivets on my old case and used its mobo tray. If you were less impatient than I am, or didn't care about the gap, something along these lines would be possible. The one thing you wouldn't get is that little divot for the little tongue on the mobo side of the back strip on the card, but I doubt that would matter.

A drive cage should be easy to improvise - just a couple thin strips of whatever that you can attach to the case and drill out at the right spacing for the drive mounting points. The only reason I used the old drive cage was because I'd already trashed the case, and it was the easiest option.

Both the power and reset switches are normally open momentary contact switches. You can get them at any electronics supplier. Even Radio Shack.

[IsaacKuo]

how you do the back panel of the computer where the card slots are?

I personally do it simply by cutting out holes for the specific ports on the cards.

I find that the metal backplates on expansion cards to be annoying--specifically I don't care for how they poke underneath the plane of the motherboard. Thus, I remove those backplates. They're EASY to remove/replace.

The motherboard port backplane is a little less obvious. It's far too tedious to cut out holes for all of the motherboard ports. Instead, I just cut a rectangular hole for the standard ATX motherboard backplane. Normally, this backplane is attached to the case, but this is annoying to do. Instead, I attach the backplane to the motherboard using the 25pin parallel port. I have a lot of old junked AT hardware--including a bunch of 25 pin parallel and serial port backplates (these are the same size/shape as AGP/PCI/ISA expansion card backplates). All I need to do is trim the backplate down to size--just bigger than the port itself--and I sandwich the ATX backplane between it and the motherboard port:

Code: Select all

           |
 ==--  |   |   #--.
           |   #-.|
           |   #_||__________


  ^    ^   ^        ^
  |    |   |    ATX motherboard
  |    |   |
  |    |  ATX backplane
  |    |
  |  trimmed 25pin port backplane
  |
 mounting bolts

This rigidly mounts the ATX backplane to the ATX motherboard. Due to the thickness of the trimmed 25pin port backplane, it might not be possible to continue using the parallel port...but I don't miss it since I have no parallel port devices.

[mco_chris]

Lubic:
http://www.aerocool.com.tw/aerocool-fil ... ic/kit.htm

Acrylic:
http://www.delviesplastics.com/ACRYLIC%20SHEET.htm

Tslots:
http://www.tslots.com/TOPTEN.html

Online metals:
http://www.onlinemetals.com/