Personal Rig Update 2015 Part 2 - Designing a Case from Scratch
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,774 words · ~8 min read
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this personal rig update is going to be a little different for starters I'm
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filming right now obviously and yet my personal rig is about 20 minutes away by
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car at my house on my desk so how can we
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update it well good question we are going to be doing something that we've
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never done before we will be building a
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case from scratch so come along with us
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for the ride of your life as Taran and and I collaborate to design the new case
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that we'll be sending to protoc case for
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fabrication oh and if custom cases don't
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appeal to you then you can drop a like on this video if you want to see another
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video that I'm planning where I'll be building a sick rig with no case at all
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that's going to be awesome
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too the master case 5 by Cooler Master gives you the freedom to truly make your
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midtower PC case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories check
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out the link in the video description to learn more so our adventure started in
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the server room not because we couldn't look up the dimensions of a standard
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rack mount chassis on the internet oh yeah for those of you who missed part
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one we'll be building my personal rig in a rack mount case this time but because
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to control the scope of the project I
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wanted to pick out a size that I figured I could move around fairly easily then
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work backwards to see what kind of Hardware I could fit inside versus just
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kind of coming up with the dream Hardware spec list and then ending up
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with the Corsair 900d like what evidently happened to George so then it
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was time to take those measurements to our 3D modeling program of choice
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SketchUp and yes yes I know SketchUp is
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not the best modeling software on the face of the Earth but you know what it's
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what Teran knows how to use and this is a video about designing a case not a
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video about learning a brand new 3D modeling software or whatever so we
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built out the outer walls making sure that our case would conform to the
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standard width of a rack mounted case and to my length Target to keep the
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overall size reasonable we're going with a 4u case so that takes care of the
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height that's four standard rack mount height units tall because while a 3u
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would accommodate full height expansion cards like graphics cards it would make
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using all 120 mm fans in the design
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untenable and while the Acoustics of the system technically don't really matter
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with this project because I'll be moving the finished system outside of my office
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into a closet I'd still prefer to use them even if only so that I can use the
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custom n12 fans that we have noct to making in our LT color scheme so there
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were a couple noteworthy things that were really cool about this project for
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us the first was that we discovered just how How deep the library of PC component
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models is in the online database and while some of them are not to scale for
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some reason um others are both shockingly accurate and perfectly to
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scale allowing a custom rig maker to really test out his or her design before
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doing any of the really expensive prototyping steps it's really great for
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working on PC projects like this I also
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discovered why most case designers probably learned to 3D model themselves
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I swear Taran spent about a billion years fixing the coherency of the model
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or some stupid crap when I must have told him a dozen times Taran we're just
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submitting this to someone else to fix up and ultimately manufacture they're
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going to deal with the picky details but he was like no it's
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important so fine speaking of guidance I guess this is a good opportunity to show
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you guys why I did need Taran to help me
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so this is the mockup that I origin submitted two protoc case when I was
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pitching them the concept of an Enthusiast grade water cooled for you
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case they were like H okay yes I see
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where you're going with this but could we get something a little
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more uh detailed but but but for all its faults
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that original mockup did help us through the creation of the proper 3D model so
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we determined after some fooling around with different fan models that we'd need
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to use 120 mm fans in the front because while 140 mm fans would fit there
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wouldn't be enough clearance for the tanks at the ends of the radiator if we
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wanted the middle fan centered in the front of the case something my OCD
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simply required to happen and then using
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the tried and true method of folding it out of paper then handing it to someone
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else to 3D model I showed Taran how I wanted the Second Bank of fans and
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second radiator to mount behind the first one uh between these two and the
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potential final single 120 mm that gives me now a total of seven 120 mm radiator
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spots uh plenty of cooling for the hardware I'll be putting inside the next
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stage was figuring out how the rest of our components were going to fit in the
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space that we had now the original plan yes I know it's terrible had a dual tube
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Reservoir setup with two pumps one for each which is more for redundancy in the
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event of a pump failure than anything else after inserting a motherboard and
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power supply we realized that in order to have our hard pipe tubing setup look
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good I mean yes we could have made it work the original way but to make it
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look good we had to scale it back to a
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single pump and Reservoir not what I was aiming for but a first world problem for
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sure so no real no big deal with all that in place all that was really left
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was the little picky detail work which ended up actually taking about as long
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as the test fitting uh space ing of the motherboard and power supply had to be
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tweaked to ensure that a dual slot card could be installed in the bottom PCI
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slot on a 7 slot motherboard to give the system more expandability uh Teran
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remodeled our D5 pump to have the same EK top that I'll be using in the build
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then adjusted the mounting foam for the pump to ensure that it would line up
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perfectly with the outlet on the reservoir giving our Hardline tubing a
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really clean look there the cable management holes were created in the
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radiator mounting plate for the front rad and fence uh we added SSD mounting
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on the side of the chassis because even though I'll be using a 1.2 TB 750 series
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PCI Express SSD from Intel um and a as
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for my main storage I mean who knows someone else may want to replicate this
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project but use a normal SSD so we might as well build in that functionality and
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then finally while this was basically
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eyeballed Cable Management space was left to run the 8 Pin and 24 pin
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motherboard connectors and PCI Express power cleanly along the bottom of the
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chassis next to the motherboard and this is basically it what you're looking at
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here my next case which will be hidden away in my closet where I actually don't
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have to look at it but it will be able to be looked at it'll look pretty good
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still and it'll deliver the same performance and functionality that it
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would even if it was right next to me so
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now it's time to submit this puppy to protocase along with technical drawings
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of key components like radiators um who
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is then going to mock it up and hopefully if all goes according to plan
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fold up some steel screw it together powder coat that sucker and send it back
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to me when you guys will get the next update I Can't Hardly
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