zeusenergy
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2004
- Messages
- 323
That's right. I said a Railgun. As in, a full sized replica of the Quake III Railgun with PC components inside good enough to run any modern game. I've been working on this idea for quite some time, as you will soon see. Currently, there are about 30 drawings in my notebook along with pages and pages of ideas and specs. This machine will be tight as a drum with many innovations- such as an inverted motherboard (that's right, upside-down), an internally opening DVD-drive (drive tray ejects inside the case), and a powered opening mechanism which will slide the outer portion of the case off the inner frame.
Even the display base will be a work of art. I plan to run the cables through the "trunk" of the base so that you won't be able to see them. The single mounting flange for the base is set just before the handle of the Railgun. There will be mirrors in the base itself to see the inverted motherboard in the lower window of the Railgun, along with the windowed hard drive. The DVD-drive is finished now and it is a work of art as well, it will be viewed from the two top windows in the Railgun (see pic below). Oh, and the handle is a genuine Colt J-Frame grip. The stock will be custom cut out of a single piece of aluminum, as will many other parts. Even the "sight" at the top will double as HDD and DVD indicators, and the levers on each side of the rear cover that you can see in the game will be functional. To top it all off, the front barrel of the gun will have an intake fan mounted in it, with the exhaust fan at the rear of the gun between the handle and stock pipe. A straight-thru design should do the trick for cooling. The Nvidia 6800 will be viewable from the left side, in the lower window.
Speaking of cooling, the Biostar 210v SFF case I bought for this project runs COOLER upside-down! This goes against the theory of thermal transfer with a heat pipe design, but my readings were triple checked. Maybe the motherboard tray with its thermal bonds on the back of the motherboard chipset and power circuit helps? Cooling perfomance was not my original plan for having the motherboard upside-down. It's a great side effect though! Actually, it was to hide the motherboard tray area from view at the side of the gun, where the outer housing connects the front and rear of the gun. It also allows the DVD-drive to be bolted to the top (bottom?) of the motherboard tray and still leaves room underneath it all to mount the HDD on center supports that will reinforce the front cooling duct and attach it to the motherboard backplane area. The power supply will only power PC boards, the cooling and lighting along with the powered opening and audio amp will be powered separately from an additional transformer arrangement and harness custom built by me. The power supply itelf will be mounted above the handle, and behind the motherboard connector backplane.
The DVD-drive tray opens inside the gun. You will be able to see the opening from the top windows of the Railgun, and you can access the disk by powering the outer housing forward. The powered housing also allows access to all internal components, and since it acts like a sleeve to the inner frame, it slides completely off too, with no screws or fasteners to deal with. Just keep holding the powered open switch, and the housing becomes detached, safely remaining on the rails and tracks attached to the motherboard tray itself for someone to pull it off. Reattaching it is just as simple.
This will be one of my serious mods, one that will take many hours of love and devotion to the hobby. I hope that some of my ideas will insipe others to do something different with their hardware! My website is still up as always, and www.zeusenergy.com is now redirecting traffic to it. Soon I will be changing the zeusenergy.com domain to be a business site with info on my services, but till then you can see my personal stuff. I'll be updating all of this soon enough, not enough time in the day you know :0)
Here's my teaser shot:
Even the display base will be a work of art. I plan to run the cables through the "trunk" of the base so that you won't be able to see them. The single mounting flange for the base is set just before the handle of the Railgun. There will be mirrors in the base itself to see the inverted motherboard in the lower window of the Railgun, along with the windowed hard drive. The DVD-drive is finished now and it is a work of art as well, it will be viewed from the two top windows in the Railgun (see pic below). Oh, and the handle is a genuine Colt J-Frame grip. The stock will be custom cut out of a single piece of aluminum, as will many other parts. Even the "sight" at the top will double as HDD and DVD indicators, and the levers on each side of the rear cover that you can see in the game will be functional. To top it all off, the front barrel of the gun will have an intake fan mounted in it, with the exhaust fan at the rear of the gun between the handle and stock pipe. A straight-thru design should do the trick for cooling. The Nvidia 6800 will be viewable from the left side, in the lower window.
Speaking of cooling, the Biostar 210v SFF case I bought for this project runs COOLER upside-down! This goes against the theory of thermal transfer with a heat pipe design, but my readings were triple checked. Maybe the motherboard tray with its thermal bonds on the back of the motherboard chipset and power circuit helps? Cooling perfomance was not my original plan for having the motherboard upside-down. It's a great side effect though! Actually, it was to hide the motherboard tray area from view at the side of the gun, where the outer housing connects the front and rear of the gun. It also allows the DVD-drive to be bolted to the top (bottom?) of the motherboard tray and still leaves room underneath it all to mount the HDD on center supports that will reinforce the front cooling duct and attach it to the motherboard backplane area. The power supply will only power PC boards, the cooling and lighting along with the powered opening and audio amp will be powered separately from an additional transformer arrangement and harness custom built by me. The power supply itelf will be mounted above the handle, and behind the motherboard connector backplane.
The DVD-drive tray opens inside the gun. You will be able to see the opening from the top windows of the Railgun, and you can access the disk by powering the outer housing forward. The powered housing also allows access to all internal components, and since it acts like a sleeve to the inner frame, it slides completely off too, with no screws or fasteners to deal with. Just keep holding the powered open switch, and the housing becomes detached, safely remaining on the rails and tracks attached to the motherboard tray itself for someone to pull it off. Reattaching it is just as simple.
This will be one of my serious mods, one that will take many hours of love and devotion to the hobby. I hope that some of my ideas will insipe others to do something different with their hardware! My website is still up as always, and www.zeusenergy.com is now redirecting traffic to it. Soon I will be changing the zeusenergy.com domain to be a business site with info on my services, but till then you can see my personal stuff. I'll be updating all of this soon enough, not enough time in the day you know :0)
Here's my teaser shot: