January 1 2014

I liked the mobo/GPU tray and thought about how it could be put to use in the new build. The main line of thinking was, ‘should I use what I’ve already made’ or, ‘make a new assembly just slightly modified’. In the end the decision was made to graft the completed work onto a new chassis, see how it looks and works, and then go from there.

So to that end I laid out the major components, including the tray, and drew up plans for the chassis.

And the final design is drawn up on some 6mm plate.

The chassis consists largely of one large plate to which all the components are fixed. For strength I’m using 6mm plate. To help reduce weight, as much material as possible will be removed. This is a bit tricky as care must be taken to leave some areas for part location.

This part is cut and shaped in the usual way with a jigsaw and hand files. I use a round file in the corners purely for looks. Square and pointy inside corners doesn’t look very good. That these parts end up looking ‘milled’ is just a coincidence and not the intent.

© Copyright 2014 Attila Lukacs

 January 5 2014

The power supply mount is made from some 6mm plate. This will bolt to the chassis and just ‘hang’ from one edge. The power supply will also just hang with only the back panel touching the chassis.

To mount the radiator, it first had to be disassembled. Then the opportunity was taken to tap out the mounting holes for M4 threads. I’m constantly surprised that some new equipment still comes with archaic thread sizes.

Continuing on with internal components, the res/pump was propped up to find the correct position, and measurements taken. Then, using some 4 and 6mm scrap, a support bracket is constructed.

The res already has pre-drilled and tapped holes for mounting so all that was needed was to drill some holes in the support to match.

The res and radiator are new but the fittings and CPU block are being re-used from an earlier build. This is necessary for me to be able to make new projects economically.

But once this assembly was in place, it looked clumsy and very rough. The different sized screws were very jarring and immediately work began to make this look better.

The back and lower part were OK but the front needed to be remade. There was no way to make all four screws the same size so a way had to be found to make them look OK as they were. So the thickness of this outer plate was increased to 6mm so the socket head screws could be counter bored. This brought up the problem that to counter bore the M3 screws would have to break the edge. So the edge was extended and all removed except for a small amount around the screws.

And this turned out looking good.