Custom Wooden Case with separate Chamber for 1080 Radiator
My holiday-project last summer was a self designed case. I want a case with room for a cutom waterloop and integrated 1080er radiator. But I found no such case. And I don*t want to put the Radiator outside of the case. This was the time the idea grew to build my own case. I am not good on metalworking, so i thought, wood would be an idea, it is easy to work with an you can saw and glue it yourself with tools i had in my garage.
Many month of thinking, planning and constructing with freecad the final design was ready. I builded it in the cellar, where i got no disturbance from my wive and my son. It was quiet fun and I think the result ist not bad for the first time and without professional tools. I Used 7 layer plywood, to get enough stability without getting to thick.
I took an old case, stripped it and used the Mainboard and HDD mounts an to get better electrostatic shielding from the metalframe. Then the wood was build around it.
On the right is a seperate chamber with a 1080mm Radiator, wich can be unfolded to get into the Radiatorchamber. 4x 180mm Fans from Phobya are mounted to the Radiator, cold air is pulled from the front intakes and pushed out to the right side of the chamber.
The mainchamber of the case contains a 90° rotated Mainboard to use natural Airflow (hot air rises). 3x 140mm Fans at the Bottom pushing air from the bottom to support the airflow upwards. The outcoming air is releades at the top back of the case. Here also the cables come out.
One large waterloop has the CPU, the GPU and the Mainboard integrated, the large radiator can handle them easily and thanks to the 180mm fans, very quiet.
I placed a window at the front of the case with view on the watertank, not at the side of the case, as usual. Looks Different but nice I think.
Furthermore, there should be enough space for storage. A total of 4 harddrives and one SSD are installed. One harddisk can be turned on and off separately with a switch. So I have one internal external HDD for Backup purposes.
Overall, the hardware is no longer the newest, but still serves me well... till the next upgrade may come :-)
Sure, there are many things you could have done better or differently here, but I'm proud of my project and it serves me well every damn day.