I've been wanting to do this for oh, about two years. Have a dedicated pc for mp3/dvd/divx/video capture in my entertainment center. I finally have all the hardware for two machines and a kvm, so I'm good to go. However I have serious doubts that my full tower is going to fit in the entertainment center
So I need to build a case for it. And seeing as my budget is $0, it's going to be made of plywood from the basement.
I thought some people might benefit from going through the design process I went through. I started by taking inventory on what had to go in the case and what I had available to use.
On the hardware side, it's got to hold all this:
ATX mb (kt7a)
1.2 gig tbird
4 cards (video,sound, nic, ide controller)
2x hdd (room for a third wanted)
dvd-rom
either sparkle 300w or enermax 350w psu
And for cooling I have on hand:
Alpha 8045
1x 120mm panaflo H1A
2x 92mm Innovative - 48 cfm
2x 80mm panaflo L1A
2x other noisy 80mm fans
bay cool 3 (from pc power and cooling)
I've never been able to find a dba rating on the 92mm fans, they came with the full tower. They're fairly loud at 12 volts but not too bad at 7. The bay cool saves me from having to build a hdd cage, and I've got it so may as well use it.
As design considerations, first as far as dimensions go the only definite is 17" width to match my sadly low end audio stuff. Depth is important, as the max depth I could fit is about 17", though I could move the whole thing further out from the wall in a pinch. Height is pretty unimportant, I'll be taking out the cd changer that is on its last legs which is 7.5", and I could move the vcr to another place or ditch the cassette deck if need be. I'd rather not have any fans in the front of the case, just for appearances and to help keep noise down. Most importantly, it has to be quiet. Lookswise, once it's in there you can only see the front and the first inch or so of the sides. And I don't want to have to be taking it out all the time to clean, I should be able to just stick it in there and forget about it. I won't be upgrading the box very much, ease of access is not a primary concern. The machine is not intended to run 24/7, only when I need to cap or play a movie, or I'm doing something with the primary machine that prevents me from using it as the mp3 player. But in a capping/encoding session it needs to be able to run full load for 12-24 hours.
To work out the layout I took the actual parts and started playing around with the actual parts on a 17" wide piece of plywood.
I started out with essentially a desktop type layout. There were a couple problems with this though. For one, the thickness of the 3/4" plywood sides only leaves 15.5" internal width to work with. This means that the mb and psu will essentially be right up against each other. The cpu socket on the kt7a is very close to the edge of the board, and the huge heatsink actually overhangs the board slightly. Plus the atx connector is right on the edge. I really didn't like that whole situation. Plus depth wise it was really pushing it, I couldn't do much better than about 21" or so.
I started playing around with having the psu partially over the pci slots, the bay cool sideways infront of the pci slots, and the dvd rom over the bay cool facing the front of course. It was pretty cramped over on that side of the case, and it would have meant the cards would be sharing irqs, but it was workable and I almost stopped there.
Then I thought well why not just turn the psu horizontal and put it up high enough to clear the cards. Then I was able to move the bay cool up in front of the psu, and the dvd over on the opposite side. This allows the depth to come way down, at the expense of being very high. And that is the configuration you see in the very not to scale attached drawing.
Now the question was how to make the thing buildable. I hit upon a pretty wacky idea. Make the case two open topped boxes, the top box sitting upsidedown on the bottom one. The mb is the only thing in the bottom box, everything else is in the top box. This makes building the case tremendously easy as I don't have to worry about access, and maintenance wise once the two halves are apart it should be very easy to work in. The only problem is all of the connections between the two halves. I can picture myself trying to hold the top up with one hand while fumbling around trying to plug in ide connectors. But, it's not too bad. Nothing in the bottom half needs a molex, so powerwise the only connector is the atx one, which is right at the edge of the board. And then all the ide connections. Then I thought I could put legs at the corners of the top that are as long as the height of the bottom box. This way you could lift up the top, rest the legs on the top of bottom box, and then have plenty of clearance to reach in to plug/unplug everything. Also, since the height of the whole thing is fairly massive, at least 10.75" I reckon, I could take advantage of the two boxes and make it appear to be two completely separate boxes, even though it would be open between them in the back half.
Am I completely bonkers?
For cooling, I am thinking that I will put 1 of the panaflo L1As in the baycool for hdd cooling and intake. The other L1A on the hs, I hope will be sufficient once I stop overclocking/overvolting the tbird, I can always switch to one of the other 80mms if need be. Then the 2 92mm fans for exhaust at the top of the case over the hs area, as well as the single 80 mm in the sparkle psu. For additional intakes I'll take the fan filter for the 120 mm fan, cut it in half and put a 60x120mm hole on each side of the bottom box, set back about 2 inches from the front. That way all of my intakes are filtered and still able to be cleaned out without having to completely pull out the box.
I have no experience with a wooden case, I'm hoping this is enough cooling. Hopefully I can run the 92 mm fans at 7 volts, I can always go to 12v if needed, or swap in the louder 2 fan enermax psu.
Any suggestions? I've already started working a little on it, I have the top and bottom pieces cut.