- Joined
- Mar 1, 2004
- Location
- Alberta, Canada
First of all, this is not a mod but a complete build from scratch. So I'm posting this in the Cases and Power Supplies forum. Should the mods feel it belongs somewhere else, feel free to move it.
My rig needed a new home, and after going through the options of what's out there I finally decided that I've had enough. I'm sick and tired of the off-the-shelf standard casing that have been around for ages, especially after seeing some lame weird-looking ones that have recently flooded the market. So I started working on some ideas. I ended up doing 5 or more concepts until I settled on MINOTAUR. The idea was to keep it simple yet functional. I would be working on a very limited toolset, no precision tools for cutting and bending, etc. It would all be manually constructed. Hence, the construction methodology would be a little crude. This is my first attempt at designing and building a computer case, so this will serve as an early prototype for what I decide to do after MINOTAUR. Whatever I learn from working on this project will serve to guide me in refining my next one in the near future. As to the choice of the main material, it was easy. I would use aluminum, light and relatively easy to manipulate. Once again, this is not just a mod, but a complete build from scratch.
I will post the whole progress of the project here, showing pics of only the relevant stages of the construction, instead of a step by step presentation, explaining some as I go. I respectfully request that any comments be reserved until after I put up my concluding post of this thread. There were a lot of improvisations and on-the-spot choices/decisions in the construction process, since I didn't bother designing it down to the tiniest detail. I only determined the framing and overall shell.
My 2 primary goals:
1) Isolate motherboard from PSU and Hard Disks
2) Motherboard should lie horizontally on the case and not standing sideways like in the standard ATX cases
Okay, I've babbled long enough, so let's get to it.
My rig needed a new home, and after going through the options of what's out there I finally decided that I've had enough. I'm sick and tired of the off-the-shelf standard casing that have been around for ages, especially after seeing some lame weird-looking ones that have recently flooded the market. So I started working on some ideas. I ended up doing 5 or more concepts until I settled on MINOTAUR. The idea was to keep it simple yet functional. I would be working on a very limited toolset, no precision tools for cutting and bending, etc. It would all be manually constructed. Hence, the construction methodology would be a little crude. This is my first attempt at designing and building a computer case, so this will serve as an early prototype for what I decide to do after MINOTAUR. Whatever I learn from working on this project will serve to guide me in refining my next one in the near future. As to the choice of the main material, it was easy. I would use aluminum, light and relatively easy to manipulate. Once again, this is not just a mod, but a complete build from scratch.
I will post the whole progress of the project here, showing pics of only the relevant stages of the construction, instead of a step by step presentation, explaining some as I go. I respectfully request that any comments be reserved until after I put up my concluding post of this thread. There were a lot of improvisations and on-the-spot choices/decisions in the construction process, since I didn't bother designing it down to the tiniest detail. I only determined the framing and overall shell.
My 2 primary goals:
1) Isolate motherboard from PSU and Hard Disks
2) Motherboard should lie horizontally on the case and not standing sideways like in the standard ATX cases
Okay, I've babbled long enough, so let's get to it.