Build-a-Case

[Overconfidence]

This is a serious long-term project that I'm going to be working on once I finish my watercooling setup (which is turning out to be fairly noisy, but I can live, I guess). I'm looking at completely building a case, from scratch, from the ground up.

Right now, I'm starting at zero. Any case designs, airflow patterns, whatever, would be awesome. What do YOU want in a case? What would YOU like to have? The only restrictions I'm putting on this are:

1.) A single hard drive
2.) A single DVD drive
3.) Full size video card

That's all. Think mATX is the way to go? Tell me why. I'm definately looking at something smaller (as small as possible without major compromise in performance/cooling/silence, of course). Reverse ATX/BTX clone? Standard case? PSU in the front? To the side? Give me your ideas.

This IS a long term project, meaning that specifics for cooling are not needed in the sense of scythe ninja >>> large tower cooler. By the time this project truly comes to fruitation, conroe and AM2 will be out, maybe even the next generation after that, mounting holes will be different, but the same general idea will be there. I will also be looking (unless you guys have a better solution) custom air cooling for the video card (Or, if you think I should watercool it, tell me why) with something large, say 9500/xp120 size (Of course, those two have completely different airflow patterns, which could influence the entire case design, again).

Thank you for any opinions expressed.

[narrasuj]

PSU in the front? To the side? Give me your ideas.

When you said this, I thought of something a bit odd, but interesting. Take a PSU with a bottom intake/fan and mount that sideways. By this, I mean that the PSU is mounted on the side, with the intake fan exposed to the side of the case (and open air for the PSU) and the back to the back of the case, exhausting air. Perhaps you could even build a dedicated tunnel into the case (to dampen wind/fan noise, prevent direct exposure). Something like that. I suppose that is very similar to establishing a dedicated airflow for the PSU with a tunnel, but this seems to be easier. This can be applied to inverting the PSU and mounting it to the top of the case (or even the bottom, if you don't mind elevating the computer somehow). If I'm not making any sense, my apologies, I didn't happen to get much rest last night.

[Overconfidence]

When you said this, I thought of something a bit odd, but interesting. Take a PSU with a bottom intake/fan and mount that sideways. By this, I mean that the PSU is mounted on the side, with the intake fan exposed to the side of the case and the back to the back of the case, exhausting air. Perhaps you could even build a dedicated tunnel into the case (to dampen wind/fan noise, prevent direct exposure). Something like that. If I'm not making any sense, my apologies, I didn't happen to get much rest last night.

I sort of get what you mean. You could either have it intaking air from the case, or have it seperate thermally from the rest of the case (If your intake is from the outside or the inside, depending on which side the fan is on). The only problem with this is that it uses up a lot of space, or it goes right where the CPU usually is. However, if you used a low profile waterblock, you could probably fit it.

Unless I'm totally missing what you're getting at , in which case you should MSPaint up what you mean

[narrasuj]

I sort of get what you mean. You could either have it intaking air from the case, or have it seperate thermally from the rest of the case (If your intake is from the outside or the inside, depending on which side the fan is on). The only problem with this is that it uses up a lot of space, or it goes right where the CPU usually is. However, if you used a low profile waterblock, you could probably fit it.

Unless I'm totally missing what you're getting at , in which case you should MSPaint up what you mean

Heh, sorry (for the confusion and the delay, I was trying to learn Adobe Illustrator quickly). Here is what I meant:

Rough Image

That is my (rough) diagram of the back of the case/PSU. I was just stating that the PSU can be integrated such that it gets fresh air from outside the case (the elliptical shape) and exhaust it out the back (the grid). Then, the PSU will have fresh air, preventing it from ramping up (though escaping fan noise could be a problem). From there, you can have a fan to evacuate heat from the CPU and another from the graphics card and use those two as the primary exhaust (or just have the CPU exhaust). You stated this as a custom case, so I just thought about this randomly.

[McBanjo]

I'm currently building a case of wood. Some mix of psycotic visions, Antec P180 and BTX thingy
I hopefully has it completed this week.

Here is the original thread about it. The basic idea is the same even if the design changed some:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=30161

I'll post pics and temps and so when I'm done. Might be some inspiration?

[BillyBuerger]

Here's my current case idea.

My idea won't be that good for a gaming rig as the PSU would be taking in a lot of warm air from the GPU(s). Although you could take narrasuj's idea and flip the PSU around. But it does leave plenty of room for CPU cooling.

I han't done much with this idea lately. For some reason, I'm caught up on this idea of a custom case for an old Pentium 133Mhz AT PC. Something like a Shuttle or some other SFF. I thought it might be a nice PC to play old DOS games on. Not that I can't just use DOSBox or something.

[IsaacKuo]

Is mATX the way to go? You'll have to decide that for yourself. Think about how likely it may be that you'll someday want to put a larger motherboard in this case. Not going to happen? Then mATX gives you more possible layout options. Maybe so? Then maybe you should build in enough room for a full size motherboard just in case.

One of your biggest decisions will be related to the CPU heatsink. One option is to design your airflow plan around a tower heatsink. This has the advantage that there are many tower heatsinks to choose from and your case will probably work with an upgrade later on. OTOH, designing around a Thermalright XP120 or Thermaltake Big Typhoon offers some interesting possibilities. For example, with a Thermalright XP120 you could acheive a very compact case by mounting a flipped-fan PSU up against it.

Personally, I like flipping the fan on a PSU and using it as an intake. Hmm...I must like it a LOT because I've done it in all but one of my recent builds. The air from a PSU used as an intake is warmed a bit, but it's still plenty cool enough to cool the rest of the computer (with the possible exception of the hard drives, but I tend to use 2.5" drives). I like utilizing this relatively cool air rather than just dumping it.