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Had to get more room!

D

daks001

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 24, 2004
Messages
83
My old computer case used to look real good, but with adding SCSI and always fiddling I was tired of always routing wires and digging into the case to get at anything...

Click on thumbs...




At this point I had given up on the wiring, as I was into the case almost every day tweaking something....

 
So I got a old Clariion server case free from work. This thing only had half the boards in it but still weighed over 100lbs!!! Almost blew a nut trying to lift it into the back of the car! At these picture points I'd already removed about 40 Lbs of steel plates dividing the different compartments!

Front;



Back;


Side;
 
I hinged a top cover for it; Notice the fans swing out also. I want this thing to be accessable!




It's hard to tell in this picture but the whole rear of the case holds a removeable "cage" that holds the fans and will hold the removeable M/b tray. Modular is the word.



I've now also started "jacking up the top portion of the case about 12". I want to have this thing sit on the floor (no desk space) but not have to get my butt out of a chair to tweak.
 
More time spent with an angle grinder and cut-off wheel...




Yes my basement is a mess!! But the garage is too cold in the winter....
 
Last edited:
Fit what I have back together again...

Should be good airflow, I'm going to have the rear fans blowing into the case.







 
That baked on enamel paint is a bitch to get off, I know you can sand it but I want it down to bare metal as I'm going for a real smooth look. Paint stripper didn't really cut it so I brought out the "heavy artillery"!!



I used the side panel off an old compaq system as the motherboard tray, that sticker on there was a pain in the butt!

 
Test fit back into the case...






Here I have the M/B tray painted in primer and the removable cage painted with red metal tint. Put the M/B in to test for room...
 
Looking good.

But didn't you notice the warning..."Use only in a well ventalated area"! :eek:

:p
 
Back to primer and sand, I used automotive primer, glazing putty and a whole bunch of elbow grease... To get a good paintjob always spend time on the prep. After each sanding the parts were wiped down thoroughly with a tack cloth to remove all dust and particles.



More primer to go after this.

I started off with 400 for first metal sanding, then 600 grit between each coat.

this old sander got real handy...

 
Tiny said:
Looking good.

But didn't you notice the warning..."Use only in a well ventalated area"! :eek:

:p
Click to expand...
I have an industrial exhaust fan clearing out my "paint-booth" I made with plastic sheeting. Don't want those fume to hit the pilot of the furnace!

;)

Would dry faster though.
 
Base coat done, the paint I'm using is a chamealeon (sp?) paint that goes from navey blue to purple depending what angle you look at it. It's a 3 stage.


 
Now to get a plan to organize the wiring... First I threw everything in there to see what I had to contend with...




Sigh, this will take longer than gutting the case...

In this next picture notice where I used to have the Power supply...


Getting the LCD's in and fitted required some custom brackets to be made...
 
Mounted another LCD in the Upper LH corner and believe it or not there had been about 2 hours spend on routing wiring at this point, it seemed I was adding wires faster than I was hiding them..


 
I moved the power supply to the bottom section because I fugured I'd end up putting hard drives in that upper LH side of the case. Could get another 10-12 in there....



I was also test fitting in a front fan/filter assembly before it goes to paint.
 
Now to keep hiding wiring and start making / modding all the brackets for the bottom section.



Still have to paint the legs and the bottom "cart" and wheels but it is starting to come together. I just started cutting the Acrylic for the bottom side covers and the top side window.
Those red wires are for temp sensors that I've got running all over, total of 7 so far. These are used to adjust the speeds of my fans and display on my LCD screens.

I still have not decided if I should leave it as a rectangular case with a fancey paint job or continue and either make it into a borg ship thingy or the robot bus from I robot.

Or any other ideas / comments / suggestions???




Have to make a grill or something for the top LH side of the front, You can see what I have done so far in one of the earlier pictures test fittings.
 
finally decided to give that 635 some breathing room eh? could use some better quality pictures but once you finish that wiring should be an awsoem looking case...oh try to get the 635 to match the 634 and 631 then it will look even cleaner. good job so far. I personally wont go to such a big and heavy case...but thats because im going to lans once or twice a month.
 
15 working right now, another 6 when I add another power supply.

Toyomatt84 said:
HOLY FRIGGIN HARDDRIVES!!
How many you got in that system? Like 20????
Click to expand...
 
Re-fit the CD-roms on the bottom to above another removeable drive rack. Have to straighten it up, screw it in and add the upright to the left side.



It's a little easier to see in this picture but there is also a double track dividing the top and bottom sections. This holds the Lexan. I also made a custom grill for the side HD fans. Right now the fans are just stuck on with 2 sided tape but I want to figure out a way of attaching them with no screw holes in the grill.





Now to finish the bottom drive mounts, cover for the side LCD and more cable management....
 
Been at it a little bit more over the past couple of days...

Made a small cover for the 631 LCD and to hold the power, reset and light switches, I made this by cutting out a piece of Lexan then painting the back black. This camera of mine really blows so I appologise about the pictures....



Here it is mounted (top lh corner)...



Another peice of Lexan again painted black now covers that big gaping hole on the LH side...


That 635 still sticks out like a sore thumb being the only silver part on the front, so had to fix that..


Now from my second picture on this post and this next one you can see I'm back to wire management and finishing the bottom drive bays.

 
Did a mod on an old 800 meg WD HD. Figured it would look cool with another one sitting on the side of the case.



So far have just powered it up and no grinding / screeching noises. So fingers crossed.
 
Well the HD worked! Had an extra 1800 bad sectors but who cares... Just filled it up and it was neat to watch the head move back and forth.

Now to go to work on the other one...
 
Ok, go a new digital camera so you won't be punished with bad pics any more, here's a sample...


 
crazyman_130 said:
umm how many terabytes you got in it? and why the hell do you need so many?!
Click to expand...
Untill I get the other 6 going I'm just a little over 2 terabytes.

Why do I need so much... I don't! This all started because my old computer was slow converting movie formats (it was a SP700 series Compaq with a PII 450 and a SCSI), so I upgraded to a P4 2.8C with a 160 gig IDE drive, I noticed that CPU and memory access functions were much faster than my SP700 but disk functions seemed a little bit slow. So I picked up a SCSI (U/W160) controller... Compared the IDE to the old SCSI drive and noticed that the IDE was faster for sustained writes 40-60 M/b vs 12 M/b (depending on the benchmark) and the SCSI was much better for small files with random access ( 12-14 m/s on IDE and 4-6 on the SCSI).
I read a lot of the forums for a while and remember my "old computer days" (that's another story, early ninety's fiber optic trunk lines,22 phone lines, 20pc's and a micro-vax 3100 in my dining room) and figure I'll play a little bit by myself.... now I'm here... I have my SATA drives coming hopefully by the end of this week (36 and 74g raptors, grin).
Now that I look back at this, I have now created a system that I can benchmark almost every type of drive (except the new SATA II) while I am playing HL2 or Doom3. And not go through alot of hoopla.
IDE, SCSI and SATA all on one M/b running RAID 5, 0, 1 and 0/1.
SCSI RAID 5 and 1 running on the other M/b that is out right now while I finish some of the bottom racking.
 
dude, that's awesome! i wish i could afford a bunch of scsi drives (fill a controller or two:p) so i wouldn't have to worry about running out of space.

i like that case.
 
Sorry about the thumbprints but I was too lazy. Grin




Have a side panel open to wire in some more switches for the lights..





So now after I get out of my home-made clean room. I take this shot.

 
Get out my knock-off dremmel...




Don't tell my wife I did this at the coffe table! LOL



Some filling to clean up the sharp edges then fitting some lexan to the top...



Applying a thin bead of silicone sealant around the inside... now letting it sit to dry...



The sealant on the top did not come out how I hoped but oh well, I'll fix it up when it's set.


Now clean in my "preclean box" then back into the clean room to put the cover back on..



I was just marking up a bracket so I know where to drill mounting holes but I thought I'd take this shot. The drives will be up higher when they are mounted but I thought I'd give you the idea.


 
I must be getting better at this, no bad sectors in the second drive! Anyone know of a site I can get a movie file hosted? I'll post a movie of the drives working...
 
http://rapidshare.de/

you have to link a page where it will download, but it works. it is free, too.

drives look a tab messy on the edges of the window, but they're cool other than that.
 
rogue_jedi said:
http://rapidshare.de/

you have to link a page where it will download, but it works. it is free, too.

drives look a tab messy on the edges of the window, but they're cool other than that.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I've got to make a decent movie first but will post when complete.

I agree the edges are messy, I plan to smooth them out once they are fully set then paint.
 
So I don't have to futz around when I want to get behind them, I made them pivot...



There was a third purpose for these HD's, First one being a easy way to hide a bunch of wires, Second adds a bling factor, the third...


Their positioning makes them perfect fan shrouds for some extra 120 fans to blow right into the back of one of my SCSI arrays. In the above shot I've cut a peice of alum. right angle and am about to trace the fan opening for the next step... More dremeling...



In the next picture on the right of the main brackets you'll see I've pop riveted on two little brackets to attach these to the clear HD post.




Screw the fans to these brackets, then attach them to the post.



Another couple degrees C off of my HD's temps. :)
 
Assemble the sidecover over the LCD display and put a few temp fixes to keep it looking clean till I can spend some more time with it...




Lets see if I can get enough light to make a movie....
 
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