Maximum PC

Hey all,

I have been thinking of making my own case. I have the most experience and access to tools with woodworking so that is what i am aiming at using as my main material. I have some old cases that I can pull off various materials, but am not sure of all the basics that are probobly needed before undertaking this project. What are some good tips to consider when designing a case? What components need special mounting consideration, ie grounding. I can use the motherboard tray from an old case so that takes out some problems I would think. I just really wanted to know if there were some basic tips and mabey things not to do haha. Thanks in advance.

A perfect time to whore out my wooden computer case I built last year!

http://cammorrison.wordpress.com

Much of your questions can be answered if you skim through that work log that I have posted on that blog.

Scroll down and go back a few pages to get to Day 0.

Oh yeah i had looked a bit over that, but i only had my phone haha so i couldnt see much. Very nice work though! and thanks for reminding me of it.

Thank you!

Honestly, review the ATX specifications, take some dimensions from a case you like, and run with it.

I don't know how wide HDDs are; I just put two piece of wood on either side of one and measured that; a lot of that can be done on the fly. Look up specifications of ODDs, HDDs, FDDs and other things if you really want to make everything to spec, otherwise, you're a wood worker; 1/32" is good enough.

Taking out an old motherboard tray is a good idea, it's what I did. It saved me a lot of headaches.

Is there anything major that you have to worry about when making a case? Ill read through your blog later, its just pretty late here haha and i want to read through most of it at once. The major problem i have is if there is anything that you have to make sure to ground. Or can you just mount the components to wood as you would to a steel case? And yes i can see not using a pre-made mobo tray to cause problems.

I grounded the hard drive cage using 18AWG wire attached to the power supply and a screw hole on individual hard drives.

It's not the prettiest system, but it gets the job done.

Every component has a ground wire going to and from the PSU, so I don't think it's a huge issue. I haven't had any problems with static or fried components, and the computer is currently a 24/7 Xubuntu COD4/Vent server.

The motherboard tray makes grounding the motherboard easy as well.

In my case I'm making currently I snarfed up an external disk drive cage from an old case.

I am using this one for hard drives: http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=25527

I used a motherboard tray from an older case as well but I saw these on PPCs: http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... 10_750_753