Project: Honeycomb

[Fuganater]

Honeycomb will by a scratch build, double wide server case.

This mod is brought to you by:

Thanks to John and his team at Delvie's for helping with the Plexi!


Thanks to Bill for providing some goodies!

Thanks to Maurizio at Lamptron for providing a fan controller and some UV Cold Cathodes.


Thanks go Gregor at EK for providing a bunch of the watercooling parts.

Hardware
Motherboard: Gigabyte 880GA
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 640 @3.0GHz
GPU: 2x something
HDD: 1x 320 HDD (OS), 2x 2TB HDDs (Case can hold roughly HDDs 20 total)
PSU: Corsair 100W
Optical Drive: Blu-ray Player
RAM: 4GB G.Skill PC 1600


The Case

Here are my original Sketchup designs.

Updates:
Update #1: Received Mobo and Plexi Sizes
Update #2: Received more parts
Update #3: The Saw
Update #4: Drill Press
UPdate #5: New Mobo Side Panel Design
Update #6: Testing
Update #7: Case Fans
Update #8: An Evening Designing
Update #9: MNPCTECH Sponsor
Update #10: Experimenting
Update #11: Fabricating
Update #12: Finishing the Frame
Update #13: Plexi Work
Update #14: Lamptron Sponsor
Update #15: MNPCTECH Goodies
Update #16: How I Keep it Together
Update #17: EK Waterblocks Sponsor
Update #18: Woe Is Me
Update #19: Front Panel
Update #20: Lamptron Goodies
Update #21: Media Card Reader Cutout
Update #22: Coming Together and Side Panel Design
Update #23: Cutting the Mobo Side Panel
Update #24: Custom Waterblock and Cables
Update #25: EK Waterblocks Goodies
Update #26: Installing the Rad/Res
Update #27: Lighting
Update #28: Supplies, Rivets and Sleeving

 

[Fuganater]

Got my mobo in today!

Here is the final cut of plexi sizes.

1 sheet of:

• 17 1/2" x 17 1/2" Black Plexiglass 1/4" Thickness - BACK
• 17 1/2" x 17 1/2" Clear Acrylic Plexiglass 1/4" Thickness - FRONT
• 18" x 18" Black Plexiglass 1/4" Thickness - BOTTOM
• 18" x 17 1/2" Black Plexiglass 1/4" Thickness - TOP
• 16" x 17 1/2" Black Plexiglass 1/2" Thickness - CENTER
• 12 1/4" x 4 1/4" Black Plexiglass 1/4" Thickness - PSU COVER

2 Sheets of:

• 17 3/4" x 18" Clear Acrylic Plexiglass 1/4" Thickness - SIDES

4 Sheets of:

• 4" x 17 1/2" Black Plexiglass 1/4" Thickness - HDD RACKS

12 - 1" x 1" Clear Acrylic Plexiglass cubes- CORNER SUPPORTS

4 -1" Transparent Amber Extruded Transparent Colored Acrylic Plexiglass Rod 1" diameter - CASE FEET


Cheers till later.

 

[Fuganater]

Finally got parts in.

AMD Athlon II X4 640

XSPC 2 meter Orange LED kit

OCZ 1000W PSU

Came with these nifty Velcro ties.

2x2GB G.Skill RAM PC 1600

Media Card reader

Lots of Orange sleeving and shrink tubing.

Still waiting for the framing and for my sponsor to reply about the Plexi.

Cheers till later.

 

[Fuganater]

Got my saw yesterday Just waiting on a few more things to arrive then its off to work!

All put together!

New blad installed.

I should be finalizing the deal with my sponsor on the plexi today or tomorrow then hes shipping it all to me. Hopefully I get the drill press soon.

Cheers till later.

 

[Fuganater]

Got my Drill Press today

Not as many pieces as I was expecting.

All done.

Vise

Circle cutter for the fan holes.

Cheers till next time.

 

[Fuganater]

Started working on the side panel again. I wasn't happy with the last one so here is the new one so far.

Going to be doing more work tonight on it.

 

[NobleX13]

Let me know how that circle cutter turns out; I have wanted one for quite a while.

 

[Fuganater]

Got the motherboard tray from Mountain Mods finally and I decided its time to test out the hardware to make sure its all good. I didn't attach the other back part that had the fan hole in it because it will just get in the way when I go to mount this to the case.

Mobo, RAM and Power/Reset switches installed.

CPU

PSU

Since Everything was hooked up correctly I figured it was time to power it up. I flicked the switch on the PSU and hit the Power button and BOOM. The freaking $200 PSU blew up. I was so mad. Luckily I have my old one that I'm giving my sister.

That PSU booted just fine. I started the RMA already with Newegg for the PSU so I need to mail that out tomorrow.

Here are the switches in the dark. The "O" one is power and the dot one is the reset button. I put the LED for the reset to the HDD activity LED so it gets lit and I can see the HDD activity! 2 with 1 is good!

Everything after that went pretty smooth. I found out that my SATA DVD drive was bad so I put on an old IDE one and it installed WHS just fine.

My Plexi sponsor is sending me the plexi tomorrow or Friday so I should have it in about a week and then I can remeasure everything and start cutting the frame. Once that is built I will start to figure out how to mount all the plexi to it.

Cheers till then.

 

[Fuganater]

Got my order in from Newegg with some nice case fans!

8x Zigmatek 140mm Orange fans with White LEDs

They have small blades but they move a ton of air.

Now lets make them look pretty!

Removed the sticker.

Sleeve them!!

At first I kept the stock white connector but I then decided that it would look funny and stand out. So I replaced them with the black ones I ordered for the fan extension cables. Didn't take a pick but they look good.

All of them done.

I got bored last night so I figured I would start cutting the shrink tubing to 15mm lengths.

14.99.... close enough

These are all ready

Need to trim these ones down later. They are about 1mm off. Maybe less. Just need to trim a hair off of them.

Cheers till next time.

 

[Fuganater]

So I spent the past 6 hours roughly working on the design. Leaning some new techniques too.

Here are the shots I took after figuring out how to get Kerkythea and Sketchup v8 to play nice. They are all very low res for now. The final design will be all high res. They will take probably close to 15-30 minutes to render ^^

Inside the mobo side

You can see I started playing with the cabling up top where the ATX Power cable comes through the pelxi.

HDD side

Now in the middle I had an ingenious to hide my cabling. I would put a piece of plexi down the center about 1 to 1.5" off the center panel. It would be anchored with nuts and bolts and I'll use aluminum spacers to make it sturdy and exact. there is also a piece of orange pexi that will either be UV reactive or have LEDs in it.

This is not the final layout. Its getting close but isn't there yet. Lets see if I can score a WC sponsor or 2 and then we will have some major changes. I have them in mind but don't want to jinx myself by making the model yet.

I found a few things out and I just might have to put some tutorials together for everyone. But that will take a few days.

Cheers till next time.

 

[Fuganater]

Big update coming this weekend! Stay tuned!

 

[Fuganater]

Let me know how that circle cutter turns out; I have wanted one for quite a while.

If you have a full size drill press or you can mount a mini one it might be great. But it vibrates horribly so I can't even use it. I'm looking into a 5" hole saw.

 

[mannyman]

Nice so far, Keep it up.

 

[Poplap]

wow wish i had time and funds to do a server case like this.

 

[Jesse B]

Should keep things nice and cool with all them fans in there

 

[Fuganater]

Nice so far, Keep it up.

Thanks!

wow wish i had time and funds to do a server case like this.

Its actually not as expensive as you think. Even less with the sponsor. Roughly $250 for materials which is nothing compared to the cost of double wide cases which is anywhere from $450 - $800.

Should keep things nice and cool with all them fans in there

One can only hope. I'm talking with Bitspower now to try and score some HDD blocks.

 

[Fuganater]

I got my 2nd sponsor!

Big thanks to Bill at MNPCTECH! He will be providing some Billet Machined Aluminum case feet, 2 types of modders mesh and a Beer Bottle Opener!

 

[Fuganater]

Since this is my first scratch build I am a bit out of my comfort zone. Before I get to what I did here is some stuff I received.

Orange LED strip

Its not very bright for being 12v....

Honeycomb mesh from MNPCTECH

It had a thick end to it that had to go.

Tin snips worked great but this is what I had left.

So on to some real modding...

I had some scrap pelxi left over from an old mod that I started expermenting on. I traced a 140mm hole on it and started drilling.

And after the first round of sanding.

2nd round

3rd round was finally enough. Here it is with a fan.

Its not 100% smooth but its damn close. I'll probably use a 140mm hole saw on the actual case plexi. This was me trying it out by hand.

Now to the frame. Here is the little mock up I made so I could figure out the best joint to use.

It proved to be pretty sturdy. It's not exact... so I have to make sure my cuts on the real pieces are exactly on.

So to solve the gap I used some J-B Weld.

Its curing right now. I'll sand it later tonight or tomorrow and post pics of how it looks.

Here are the screws I will be using. 6/32 self tapping hex head screws.

They grip like nothing else. Greatly improves the joint over the crappy screws I used at first. I might switch these for some black anodized hex head screws that I'm using everywhere else in the case.

And finally I didn't want the mesh to look all flat and lame. I wanted it to be "domed". So I cut a peice, put it in the mock 140mm hole and pouned it with a rubber mallet. It came out rather well.

Well that's it for today. I have a 3 day weekend so expect another update. Hopefully I can get the frame done this weekend.

Cheers till next time.

 

[Fuganater]

double post...

 

[mannyman]

Looks great, Keep up the good work.

 

[shadowlord]

individually sleeved wires for the power switch....

...this will be an interesting mod to follow. keep up the good work !

 

[Fuganater]

Thanks guys!

I worked all day today fabricating the frame. Too a lot longer than I was expecting but I guess that's the price to get it right the first time. Well... pretty right. There are some small gaps but I knew that would happen because the L brackets I made are not exactly at 90 degrees.

Here are the brackets. I cut 1"x1" 1/8" thick angled aluminum in 1/2" sections.

I then measured and drilled the holes for the screws. Very easy but time consuming job when I needed 32 of them. Plus spares.

The first side cut.

And all put together.

I then measured the straight peices that connect both sides together and cut, drilled and installed them on one of the side pieces. (Sorry about the yellowish images. I took these at night so no natural light coming in the window.)

No real gaps like my small model I made so that's a good start. I won't have to use too much J-B Weld to fill the gaps.

I then put the other side on top so I could make sure it came to 18" exacly from end to end and it didn't... I was 1/8" off on all legs. So I marked them and will be cutting them down first thing in the morning. Its too late to cut now.

More work on the frame tomorrow and probably starting to map out the cuts in the acrylic. I probably won't cut any of it until after my vacation.

Cheers till next time.

 

[BrooksyX]

nice mod. subscribed

 

[Fuganater]

I finished putting the frame together and I have to say, its really nice to finally see something from this mod.

Now that it is all together lets see how the plexi aligns with it. Hmm... a bit off...

Ok so 3 corners are too high. Well that's better than being too low. Can't add but I can cut. So after about another 4 hours of cutting, re-drilling and recreating 3 of the parts everything aligned nicely.

Just perfect!

Man... this piece is about 2mm off... Its the side so its not a huge deal so I'm going to let it ride for now. If it looks horrible later than I can remake the 2 pieces. They are very easy because they are not angled. Just straight pieces.

Now here is a 2mm gap.

I took the dremel to that back corner and shaved away some of the aluminum. We will see how it aligns again later.

Since everything was good except for those 2 parts I decided to start the J-B Weld process.

It has to cure for 6 hours before I can work on it again so maybe tonight before bed I can sand it down.

Cheers till next time.

 

[Stark.Jr]

This is going to be some serius hd-space in this small case
keep on the good work

 

[Fuganater]

I've been working non stop to get as much done before my vacation next week. Last night I got the dremel out and used a sanding bit to sand off all of the excess J-B Weld. Worked out well.

Then I started designing the front, back and center panels.

Here I had to cut a notch in the center panel for the aluminum frame to pass through.

Next I traced where the PSU would be sitting next to it so I had a frame of reference when I do the mobo tray.

Then I started on the front panel. Here is how the fans will be mounted.

All drawn out. Its pencil so it might be hard to see... sorry.

Back panel.. deff hard to read it but you get the idea.

A closer shot.

And the center panel design. The big rectangle in the middle will be raised 1 1/8" off the center panel. It will be a hiding spot for all the cables.

Tonight I started drilling. Before I actually drill in the real pelxi I figured I would try out the hole for the power and reset switch.
3/4" hole

Fits without a problem.

Now... this is the first time I have to cut my own pelxi since I ordered all the other pieces to be cut by a laser.

Well it came out great and you'll see it in a few. Here is the order that I'm mounting the things.

2 1/2" bolt > 1/8" plexi > 1 1/2" tube > 1/2" plexi > acorn nut

Here it is all broken down.

Me working hard! I ordered the bolts too long for the next part and had to cut 1/4" off. No jokes about the face shield... if your not using one then the jokes on you when you get hurt.

Here are the holes I put in the mobo tray to mount it to the center piece of pelxi. 7 mounting points is way more than enough to keep this up.

And here it is mounted.

Remember that piece I cut myself? Here it is.

My measurements were pretty good. Only 2 of the 9 bolts are at a small angle but it doesn't matter because you will never see them once this gets mounted into the case.

Here you can see where the cables will come through. This will feed one side of the case to the other.

Hope your enjoying the work!

Cheers till next time.

 

[Fuganater]

Got my 3rd sponsor today!

Lamptron will be sending me one of the FC5v2 Fan Controllers and two 2xUV Cold Cathode kits.

 

[fventura03]

wow, very nice so far!

 

[jackofalltrades]

Interesting did you cut the tubing with your miter saw? because you can cut aluminum with a carbide toothed blade, if you didn't know

 

[Fuganater]

Interesting did you cut the tubing with your miter saw? because you can cut aluminum with a carbide toothed blade, if you didn't know

So MNPCTECH saw it fit to sponsor my build with a few things.

A box! Yay for me!

OH you wanna see whats inside the box?

Beer Bottle Opener

And no the keyfob was not included... I made it myself.

A sheet of Honeycomb and Round Hole modders mesh.

Billet Machined Aluminum Case Feet

Blow Hole 120mm Fan Kit (Will be used on Project: Green Light)

A big thanks again to Bill at MNPCTECH for supporting my mod!

 

[Joe S]

Nice work so far. Looking forward to seeing how this ends up.

 

[Modred189]

Subed, if only for the VERY NICE method of passing cables through.

 

[Fuganater]

I never posted anything about how I plan on keeping the case together except for the threaded screws but that has changed so here it is for all that are curious. I bought everything from mcmaster.com.

6-32 x 2 3/4" screws are used to secure the acrylic that hides the cables on the HDD side.

6-32 x 1 1/4" secure the motherboard to the center 1/2" piece of acrylic.

6-32 acorn nuts are used to secure both of the above screws. Keeps the look very clean.

I ordered some 8-32 x 1 1/2" screws to be used with these 8-32 nuts to secure the fans to the acrylic.

8-40 x 1/2" screws are replacing the below 6-32 x 3/8"threaded screws. I wanted all the screws to be the same type. Black socket head cap screws.

These 10-32 x 3/8" screws will be used to secure all of the exterior pieces of acrylic to the aluminum frame. They are much bigger than the rest because I want to make them easier to take out and they need to be noticeable.

These aluminum unthreaded spaces are 1/4" OD, 1 1/2" length for a #8 screw. They worked great for the 6-32 screws because there was acrylic on each side of the spacer so I didn't need to worry about the head size of the screws.

 

[Fuganater]

Just got confirmation that EK will be sponsoring my mod. Their new Nickle blocks come out tomorrow and I will have some of the first ones

They will be providing:

1x EK-CoolStream RAD XTC (420)
1x EK-Supreme HF
1x EK-RAM Dominator-Nicke
2x EK-DCP 4.0 (12V DC Pump)
2x EK-Multioption RES X2 – 250 Basic
20x EK-PSC Fitting 10mm – G1/4 Black
8x EK-PSC Adapter 45 G1/4 Black

Big thanks out to Gregor at EK!

 

[Modred189]

HUGE score. That will make the system look/cool VERY nice. Congrats.

Just got confirmation that EK will be sponsoring my mod. Their new Nickle blocks come out tomorrow and I will have some of the first ones

They will be providing:

1x EK-CoolStream RAD XTC (420)
1x EK-Supreme HF
1x EK-RAM Dominator-Nicke
2x EK-DCP 4.0 (12V DC Pump)
2x EK-Multioption RES X2 – 250 Basic
20x EK-PSC Fitting 10mm – G1/4 Black
8x EK-PSC Adapter 45 G1/4 Black

Big thanks out to Gregor at EK!

 

[mnpctech]

Congrats on scoring EK

 

[Caliche]

Nice work so far and a good project log! Congrats on the sponsorship

 

[bobisgod]

So when are you going to be ordering those 20 3TB hard drives?

 

[Fuganater]

So when are you going to be ordering those 20 3TB hard drives?

I'll only be using 2TB Green drives. I can get them on sale for between 70-80 bucks.

Still waiting for the Bitspower and EK gear to arrive.

I've started cutting the back panel.

I'm now filing it then I'll cut the fan holes. Lots of work but not much to show.

Next Day:

So the hole saw is not working out. Nor is the drill press. It does not have the RPMs to cut the plexi with the hole saw.

Here it is all setup to be cut.

Then disaster happened. The arbor bit for the hole saw some how... snapped?

It wasn't cheap but yet it wasn't an expensive one. $15 Irwin brand which is a well known hardware brand.

So when the drill press stopped mid cut it torqued the whole panel and snapped a piece of it.

Its the back of the case so I am going to see if I can repair it. If I can great, if not, I have to order a new piece and spend another 20 hours working on it.

Cheers till next time.

 

[cnealjr]

Bummer! Hope you get it sorted out.