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Minecraft Case mod

C

CrazyLefty

Weaksauce
Joined
May 9, 2013
Messages
75
I've got a 9 year old that is obsessed with Minecraft, so naturally we had to make a case around his favorite game.
This case took more planning than any mod I'd done, with 1200 1/2" wooden blocks that needed to get painted and glued together correctly, it was also the most time consuming.
One thing I don't do well is document my projects, something that I will have to work on!

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Here's the case stripped and painted. It was an old Antec case, this one the sides slides up and off the case, which worked perfectly with this mod.
I stripped the case, painted the two-tone color scheme, and the inside got a nice bright red coat to simulate the 'Nether'

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Just a few wooden blocks...

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Here's the side panel cutout, we then laid out the blocks to match the cutouts, painted the sides that would show, and glued them together, all 1200.
There are three layers of wood blocks, one on the outside of the case, and two on the inside, sandwiched around the side panel.

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Here are two of the layers laid out drying.

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I used dowels to help hold the two pieces that were sandwiched around the side panel.

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I used red acrylic to kind of mute and accent the red cathodes and red paint inside the case, held in place with tiny screws.

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And here is a tease of the finished product.
 
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The next big part of this project was the creeper.

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Here he is, all waiting to be glued up. Each of those blocks were hand painted, mostly by my wife.

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AAH!!! Creeper in the hallway!!!!
"HHHSSSSSSSS"

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I removed the front bezel completely, and replaced it with a 1/2" ply front, edged in those 1/2" blocks as a facade.

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I wanted the eyes to flash with the hard drive light, so i got 1/2" acrylic squares. The 1" squares in the top of the picture are just to hold the LEDs in place so I could solder them and hold them in place. I wanted the wiring to be as thin as possible so i just used the legs of the LEDs as wires, really didn't want a lot of bulk since it was going to be see-through and lit.

WHDsKl.jpg


Here is the circuit mounted on the back of the front facade, the threaded rods and dowels are used to hold it in place and line it up correctly on the front of the case, so it could be removed easily for maintenance later on. The circuit takes teh 5v input from the HDD flash, and using an opto-isolator as a 12v relay so i didn't fry the 5v supply from the mobo.

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And here he is all mounted on the case!
And wow, do I need a better camera!
 
My kid loves to make redstone creations to do all sorts of neat stuff, so I wanted to incorporate that into the mod as well. Since I had to migrate the power button to the rear of the case, I thought it would be neat to run the cabling through wooden blocks to simulate redstone.

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I used a jog to hold the blocks under my drill press and individually drilled holes through them. For the corners, I would just drill halfway from perpendicular sides. Then like making a bracelet, I strung the wooden blocks and glued them together along the wiring.

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I then wired a momentary switch that gets mounted to the backside of the case.

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And here it is all painted up, again thanks to my wife, without her artistic ability these would be rubbish.
This picture really shows how badly cut that 120MM fan hole was. Since the front was going to be solid wood, i needed a way to vent the case so I added the cutout to the bottom. I was debating buying a bi-metal holesaw for this, and looking back maybe I should have. A fan filter and rubber vibration dampener hide any blemishes once the fan was installed.
 
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Here's a pic of everything installed. I individually sleeved the 2x6 PCIe wiring, but CPU, and case fans were all sleeved in a single sleeve.

We added LED feet, so I sleeved and custom fit those wires, painted the cold cathode brick red and mounted it to the front of the case (if you look close you can see it but it blends in nicely).

Since this was taken, the two case fans have been replaced with Corsair SP120 Quiet edition fans, and an AF120 quiet cools the CPU, a lapped 965BE.

mATX Asus motherboard, really nothing fancy, this is a hand-me-down board and does its job nicely.
8GB Kingston HyperX blue memory
GTX 260, but that has been replaced with an eVGA 660ti SC, a wonderful card that runs his three monitor setup nicely :cool: He is such a little nerd

I also replaced the failed Antec Earthwatts 650. Kind of disappointing, it was only 6 months old, and more than adequate for the build. It was replaced with a Seasonic M12II 620. Love those Seasonic PSUs!

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All finished and on display.

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And out in the wild. "Look out buddy! Creeper!!!"

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Love that red glow!
 
very nice job on the case, its a basic mod that just looks simply incredible.
 
This is a great mod. I really like to see stuff like this for kids. I put together a racing sim for my boys a few months ago and they love it. Just need to get them playing Minecraft on it instead of my iPad.
 
old Antec case...I have that exact one here I think

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your mod is certainly a lot better than mine, lol
 
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Yep that's the same case! We had to make sure our "mined" areas would include the space the fan grill hole was.

(I'm Crazylefty's wife btw)
 
faelynn said:
Yep that's the same case! We had to make sure our "mined" areas would include the space the fan grill hole was.

(I'm Crazylefty's wife btw)
Click to expand...

and you're the one who has been here over 3 years, how cool is that
 
Haha yeah i said that this morning as well, i've had a few usernames, and just made this one recently to coincide with my gamertag.
Been a Hard fan for over 12 years though, I'm just not big on forums and such
 
Just realized y'all were the same outfit with the BL2 mod

You, and your son, are very lucky boys.
 
I thought it was pretty funny when I saw how long I've been a user here too!

Jojo, just wait until we post my casemod! Its the most beautiful case ever as far as I'm concerned :) So we all are very lucky.
 
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