Despite its obvious budget, the case with honor and dignity endured the change of three platforms, the transition to LSS, as well as the installation of a GTX285-class video card with minor surgical interventions. In the course of these events, requirements for the hull immediately began to emerge:

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• Form factor - ATX Midi-Tower;
• 3 x 5.25” + 1 x 3.5” without front doors
• Multi-purpose orientation - both for fans of LSS, and for supporters of air cooling systems;
• Lower section for power supply unit (PSU) and additional equipment;
• Top section for main computer components and baskets;
• At least one inner cage for four 3.5” drives;
• Transverse arrangement of the internal basket of HDD drives with vibration isolation of the latter from the case;
• Quick release mounting plate motherboard;
• The ability to install "top" video cards 270-290 mm long;
• Possibility of placement of coolant radiators and/or other equipment.

Before any “invention of the bicycle”, a review was made of “affordable” (in the Russian outback) cases for “enthusiasts”, with the requirements listed above. During the review, two interesting cases were singled out from the bulk: Antec Performance One P190 and 3Q T-001.

Antec Performance One P190 (General description, Assembly and testing). This case was interesting primarily for its quality of workmanship and exterior finish, as well as the ability to install two (!) Power supplies. But they said their word and its negative sides for me - the presence of a door, both declared power supplies were included in the package, and the total cost did not inspire enthusiasm - about $ 700 and excluding delivery.

3Q T-001 (Review). This body seemed interesting to me from the point of view of complete assembly and disassembly, apparently affected by a difficult childhood and a lack of iron toys. I didn’t play enough with the designer then, so I was drawn, but the real absence of this unit in retail trade put an end to this path of solving the problem.

per century computer technology it is impossible to imagine life without a computer or any other multimedia gadget. Those who understand computer "hardware" assemble their own computers, giving them certain characteristics that they need to perform their tasks. Some modify their computers, so to speak, in their own shirt, and some go further and make system units in various variations. So the author decided to independently upgrade his system unit, giving it an exclusive, attractive and creative look.

For the basis of the system unit, the author used a wooden rounded square. This can be found in subwoofers. They are, of course, longer, but if you have a hacksaw for wood or a grinder attachment, it will not be difficult to reduce its size to the one you need.

the next step is to make a groove around the entire perimeter of the workpiece, into which the wall of the system unit will lie. To do this, you will need a chisel and a hammer. If the farm has a cutter, then things will go even faster, and the result will be much better.

Next, in the upper part of the workpiece, we begin to cut an opening for two fans using an electric jigsaw. If you have more and space, you can install more. Won't hurt. The place of the future drank is marked and either electrical tape or masking tape is glued along the border of the saw cut. This is to ensure that there are no chips and burrs on the surface. A hole is drilled for the jigsaw blade and sawed out. We insert the fans and see how they are located. If everything suits you, then good. If not, we bring to mind - we grind and so on. For further work, it is necessary to remove them and put them aside for a while, because. when carrying out other work, they will interfere with you.

Next, we determine where and in what order you will have the rest of the connectors - USB, a place for hard drive etc. Everything is cut in the same way as described above.

One of the walls of the system unit is installed.

Next, install all the components. Fasten everything to small wood screws.

The metal wall is attached to the base and fixed. From the inside, they are also attached to the corners.

Now a hole is drilled in the wall for the power button.

We assemble and fasten the strips on which all the connectors are located.

Next, we make the legs. They are cut from the same material that you use to build the hull. We glue them to the bottom and wait for drying. For a stronger connection, you can drill through holes in the legs and non-through holes in the body. And put it all on self-tapping screws.

connect the power button and install the wall in place.

The author made the second wall from dark transparent plastic. Placed around the perimeter led strip. When you turn on the computer, it lights up and all the insides are visible. Quite beautiful and unusual. When turned off, the system unit has a strict appearance.

A student with no experience in woodworking or computers made a computer case with his own hands. Of the tools he needed: a hammer and a chisel for wood, a jigsaw and a drill, and computer components. What came of it, see step by step instructions in photographs.

You can make the same computer case yourself, here's what it looks like:

To start making the case, you will need a wooden frame measuring 420mm x 420mm.

Then you need to remove the edge for the side panels with a chisel and a hammer. The recess should be 5 mm by 15 mm.

Installing fans in the case. To prevent the fans from having friction that will create sound during operation, you need to cut down a fraction of the tree over and over again until the coolers fit snugly. The same method was used for the coolers on the bottom of the case.

Installation of controllers. The compartments were cut with a jigsaw and the slots were sanded with sandpaper. RGB LED controllers were installed in the case.

For the inner and outer walls of the case, aluminum sheets will be needed.

The next step is to install the power supply into the case. To do this, you need to cut a hole to attach the power supply to the back of the case.

Now you will need a 390x390x5mm black plexiglass, in which you need to cut the edges to fit the oval depressions on the wooden case.

Then the inner wall inside the case is attached. For this, metal corners, screws and washers were used.

Installing the ON / OFF button in the housing. A hole is drilled in the aluminum wall, and the edges are rubbed with a file, adjusting it to the correct size.

Installing an I/O panel that is held in the chassis opening only by a snug fit.

This is how wooden legs for the case are made, on such legs the computer will stand steadily.

The case is almost ready, all that remains is to try to install computer components correctly with your own hands so that your creative wooden computer not only pleases you with its beauty, but also works :)

All cables are hidden in the space between the walls of the case.

For a more spectacular look of a wooden case, you can install LEDs under glass.

Here is the end result - this is what a wooden case for a computer made by yourself at home looks like.

Good afternoon, Khabrovites. Thank you very much for the invite! And although it’s not a good idea to start by translating other people’s posts, perhaps this homemade project will seem mega-cool to someone else.

This is a translation of a post from the Overclock.net forum. Show4Pro user decided to take out all the insides of his super computer and hang everything on the wall. Great idea beautifully implemented. Who cares how it was going and how it works - wellcome under cat.

The last time I upgraded my home machine was 1.5 years ago. Well, I thought about upgrading the car to i7 (before that there was Bloomfield), although in fact, I didn’t need a more powerful processor. I wanted to buy a new case - Corsair 900D, to change the 8 year old Super Armor. But I wanted something special, unique. In Battlestations on Reddit, I came across a very simple yet elegant solution - a wall mount computer. And that's where the whole project started.

Accessories:

Processor: Intel Core i7 950
Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Extreme
Video cards: 2 x AMD HD7970
RAM: 6 x 2GB Corsair Dominator
SSD drives: 4 x 120GB Corsair Force GT SSD
HDD drives: 2 x 1TB WD Caviar Black
2TB WD Caviar Green
1.5TB WD Caviar Green
Power supply: Corsair AX1200i
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Zx

Cooling:

Cooling for CPU:
Water Cooled CPU Heatsink EK Supreme HF Full Copper
Pump Swiftech MCP655 /w Speed ​​Control
Cooler FrozenQ Liquid Fusion V Series 400 ml Reservoir - Blood Red
XSPC RX360 Performance Triple 120mm Radiator

GPU cooling
Heatsink for video card EK FC7970 - Acetal+EN
The pump and cooler are the same as for the processor.
Swiftech MCP655 /w Speed ​​Control
FrozenQ Liquid Fusion V Series 400 ml Reservoir - Blood Red
Watercool MO-RA3 9x120 LT Radiator

Other:

Branch pipes for the cooling system
Koolance QD4 Quick Discounnec No Spill Coupling
Bitspower G1/4 Silver Triple Rotary 90deg Compression Fittings
Monsoon Free Center Compression Fittings
Phobya Angled Clip 90° Tubing Guide
Phobya Terminal Strip Tubing Clip/Holder
Cooling tubes themselves (red) PrimoChill Advanced LRT Tubing Bloodshed Red
Refrigerant phosphorescent, blue EK UV Blue Non-Conductive Fluid

Cables:
Bitfenix Alchemy Premium Sleeved Extensions
Corsair Individually Sleeved Modular Cables

Creation.

First, I took photos of all the components in their real size and put it all together in Photoshop. This way I was able to move them around the work surface and decide what it would look like. Well, this is necessary for wiring the cooling pipes. Here are a couple of layouts:

I refused this, because of the empty space in the lower right corner. And the motherboard turned out to be on the left, although it should be in the very center and draw attention to the entire panel.

There is also a lot of space on the right, although the power supply and motherboard are already closer to the center. In the final version, the cooling pipes stretch along the entire right edge, plus two thermometers appeared there.

I transfer the motherboard drawing to an acrylic sheet.

Since the video adapters will be far away from the motherboard, I ordered PCIe slot extensions for each of the cards on eBay. This is me testing how they work. True, then I had huge problems with the crossover of cards due to cheap unshielded wires. They were on top of each other and created serious interference. The system hung on loading BIOS. It was possible to launch it with only one card. In the end, I had to fork out for very expensive cables with good protection. But more on that later.

The product has arrived!

Most of the water cooling comes from Performance-PC. They even gave me a T-shirt and two whole mouse pads!

Acrylic substrate for the motherboard.

All acrylic panels are cut at 45° to achieve a glowing edge effect.

The holes are drilled, the fasteners are installed.
TA-dah!!! It turns out that the mother of Rampage III Extreme is eATX format. And this is for the ATX form factor.
I made the correct eATX substrate later.

Time to gut my dusty old hull.

In the old computer, the disks are inserted into Vantec HDCS boxes, which make 3 HDD boxes out of 2 5.25" boxes.

Video cards.

Substrates for all components.

Custom acrylic pump mounts.

Close-up of a rough finish made with a table saw. Later they will need to be sanded.

There is a triangular cut in the center of each plate. It will reflect light that is projected perpendicularly inside the plate at the edges. Without a cut, the edges barely glow.

Test with the light on on the sound panel.

All panels are sanded with 120 grit sandpaper.

Close-up of grinding.

All back panels are pre-drilled.

Under the table - acrylic snow.

Preparing to paint red.
Surprisingly, Corsair did put thermal pads on the petals, even though they don't get hot at all.

Marking all the components on the main board to mark the various slots and holes. Board - 1/4 "48 x 30 fiberboard.

All slots and holes are marked in their places.

I'm getting ready to cut the slots with a jigsaw.

I glue the frame.

I paint the inner edges black - the color of the carbon film.

Soldering LED strips.

Workplace.

LED strips. Temporary fastening.

Gluing a giant vinyl film. This was the most brutal part. I almost got a heart attack. How to stick a film on a phone screen, only x1000 more.

No bubbles!

I use aluminum tape to hide the LED on the front of the panel for hard drives, between them.

My assistant is Tommy.

All substrates are installed in their places on the common board with screws No. 10. They were screwed into pre-prepared holes.

Light check.

The coolant and cables have arrived. I used Bitfenix for the components and Corsair for the power supply.

On the left is Bitfenix, on the right is Сorsair. Bitfenix doesn't have black heat shrink on the ends, so the Corsair looks cooler.

Red ties to tighten hanging wires.

Backside. All cables are connected.

We test for leaks while the entire system is on the floor - it's easier to fix problems.

First start.

Not loaded. I connected via iROG USB to my laptop to see the download log. It turned out that the system was stuck on the VGA BIOS. Disconnected one of the video cards - everything worked. Tried to connect another - also works. Both cards are not. Did a little research and found that unshielded PCIe extenders with ribbon cables are very susceptible to EMI. I tried to shield them by wrapping them in several layers of aluminum foil.

After 4 layers of foil, I was able to run both cards. But the car immediately hung as soon as it launched any game or some 3D editor. Not only that, my Soundblaster is also cascaded to a 3 x1 PCIe slot, and this also greatly interfered with the operation of the video cards and hung up the system.
As a result, with pain in my heart, I had to order expensive protected extenders for PCIe slots from 3M (about $100 each)

Shielded 3M extensions in place. They turned out to be longer than the previous ones and now both video cards have reached PCIe x16.

Changed the previous sound to SoundBlaster Zx. This one looks amazing!

And finally

At the moment everything is working smoothly. The unit has only 2 fans. On the PSU, it barely moves, and I put another one on the chipset - very quiet. The pump runs at the lowest power, so the computer came out pretty quiet. The only thing that irritates is that it turned out that the work of some components is heard outside the case. In my case, this is the buzzing of the video and 1TV hard drive.

EK UV refrigerant is very sensitive to ultraviolet light. I know you shouldn't mix coolants to preserve their properties, but gosh, if I used it undiluted, I wouldn't be able to see the coils in the tank. For both circuits, I took about 1/8 of the can, the rest is distilled water.

From the translator

I do not pretend to at least some authorship of this incredible project. It's just that I'm a journalist, with an education in electronics, and doing such things is my dream. And to be honest, I would make a table, not a wall. So I decided, all of a sudden, not all Khabrovites are sitting on

For the computer in the store. They are horizontal or vertical - this is the most common type. However, if you do not take into account some variety of the front panel, they all look the same, differing only in color. A boring metal box with a couple of buttons and a couple of LEDs may not satisfy the sense of beauty, and then you want to make a case for your PC with your own hands. There is another situation - the available one ceases to suit in terms of functionality - there is little space or insufficient ventilation in it, which causes the computer components to overheat. For example, sometimes you need to add a second video card or several hard drives, and the standard case becomes unsuitable for all this. There are other situations when you have to make a computer case yourself. For example, all the money spent on top-end components, but there is not enough budget for the case. Or there is a laptop with a faulty display, and you want to turn it into a desktop. The cases are different, but one thing unites them - you need to pick up tools and make a computer case with your own hands.

Building a PC case yourself.

What must be taken into account

The most important requirement for any computer case, including a homemade one, is sufficient space for ventilation and cooling. It is no accident that there is a lot of empty space in the standard, most common Moddle-Tower Form cases. This allows air to circulate freely, and when installing energy-intensive components, it is possible to add additional fans. Therefore, when developing a home-made design, it is necessary to take into account not only the dimensions of all components, but also provide for free space for air circulation around each of them. You also need to decide how the power supply will be installed. There are two options:

1. Above. This is a classic scheme in which warm air passes through the power supply to the outside. This ensures ventilation and achieves a low noise level. But there is also a minus - the power supply can overheat itself if there are no other coolers. The scheme of the case of the system unit with the top location of the power supply is usually used to create it yourself.
2. Bottom. In this case, the power supply is placed on the bottom of the case, and air enters it from below, through the grill, and is blown out through the other wall. Plus - the power supply is well cooled exclusively by "outboard air". The downside is that it does not participate at all in the cooling system of the system as a whole, so coolers are a must. Another disadvantage is that the air flow to the power supply occurs under the bottom of the case and can be difficult. In addition, the noise level will be increased - it is created by the movement of air below, plus the noise from the fan is transmitted directly to the surface.

If you choose the horizontal option - the Desktop type, then the requirements remain the same, except that there is less room for maneuvers with a power supply. However, ventilation must be ensured for all nodes.

What material to choose

A hand-made computer case should not only be beautiful, but also durable and functional. Although some even make it from boxed cardboard, this is not at all serious. Usually choose the following materials:

• Wood.
• Plexiglas.
• Aluminum.
• Steel.

Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let's consider them in more detail.

Plexiglas - easy to saw and cut, the case, with due care, turns out to be quite professional. This option is usually chosen by modding enthusiasts - the creators of beautiful and original transparent cases with many lights inside. Among the shortcomings - this material still requires the ability to handle it and the skills to process it. An awkward move and a long deep scratch is guaranteed.

Aluminum has a lot of advantages, but the main ones are that it is light and has good heat dissipation. However, this is a relatively expensive material, and besides, due to the flexibility of aluminum, the rigidity of the hull and internal partitions will be rather weak. Yes, and it scratches easily, so surface treatment is required. Steel perfectly dampens vibrations, has good thermal conductivity, and is durable. The steel case will reliably protect internal knots from any influences. But for the processing of steel, different tools are needed, and this work is not easy. But the result is excellent.

Before you make a computer case yourself, the issue with the material must be resolved. If there are no skills in working with metal, but you want to use it, you can do this - design all the patterns and make drawings. In many cities there are workshops and enterprises where, according to custom-made drawings, they will accurately cut out and even deliver all the details, from metal of the required thickness. It remains only to assemble this constructor. You can do the same with wooden blanks.

Case design

It is difficult to give any advice here - everything is strictly individual. You can make a case with a standard design only out of necessity, when there is no money to buy it, although it does not cost that much. Therefore, creative people usually take up this work in order to make something original that no one else has. Or to solve some technical problem - for example, place the contents of a laptop in a separate case and fix it behind the TV. Fans of modding - experiments with the design of a computer case, which only options have not been created. These are wall options, including in the form of a panel under glass. These are numerous transparent cases with spectacular illumination of coolers and other components.

Some have even made it from a table top with a glass top. Shapes can also be different - from classic parallelepipeds to spherical or pyramidal ones. There are also more complex ones - in the form of some characters, for example, the R2-D2 robot from Star Wars. Cases made in retro style look good. For example, a spectacular model, stylized as tube Soviet equipment, with many dials and knobs on the front panel - by the way, they function and show the load of the processor, memory, and other parameters. Futuristic and post-apocalyptic designs are also popular. Many computers are designed in the style of the Fallout game.

A DIY PC case always has a personal design because it exists in a single copy. However, before taking on this creative undertaking, do not forget to calculate and provide all the technical points that were discussed at the beginning of the article. No matter how your computer case looks on the outside, for internal devices comfortable working conditions should be created even at maximum load.