Primary design parameters: money is not the object, smallest size possible,
absolute or near silence, less bling - more speed, expandable.
The offerings from Shuttle were considered and ruled out. Multiple Micro ATX cases
were also considered, but ruled out for lack of room, bad internal design, poor looks, etc.
Hardware, circa 2006:
Initially, I was using Asus A8N-VM motherboard, Plextor SATA PX-716SA DVD writer, and Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card. However, the motherboard turned out to be unstable, its BIOS sucked, and there was a weird buzzing noise as soon as I opened a connection to the Matrix Orbital VFD. The SATA DVD writer and X-Fi sound card turned out to be both incompatible (!!!) with the nForce4 chipset... So, I ended up selling them all... You will see these items in some of the pictures. The build took about a year of planning, and about a month of building. The case is left pretty much stock, besides some mods done to the internals to fit the VFD, as well as 3rd hard drive. This is not to say that I will leave it that way, but for now, that's how it is. Future plans may or may not include a sheet of lighted acrylic under the case, windows, lights, and whatever else. Everything will be done in such a way as to make the case appear stock when not lit. P.S. Current configuration, as of March 2011:
 the chassis is made of 1mm aluminum, the edges are nicely rounded, riveted together. pieces are screwed together.
 the cover is a single piece, those screws are going to be replaced with thumbscrews.
 the hard drive caddy is removable, with a single low-speed 80mm fan. the caddy is designed to hold 2 hard drives, but it has just enough room for 3 hard drives, with about 2mm space left between the drives.
 the optical drive bay is riveted to the chassis. it is screwed to the rigid panel that joins the front and back plates of the chassis.
 the power supply is supported by an L-shape bracket, mounted to that rigid panel.
 the PCI slots are cooled by one low-speed 80mm fan, with an option to mount another fan. btw, all these fans will be replaced with low-speed panaflo fans - you can't beat fluid bearings!
 Foxconn motherboard.
 note the heatsinks on both northbridge and southbridge. the Asus didn't have the southbridge heatsink, and it got hot - over 60C - and unstable to the point of BSODs. the SATA ports are positioned better than those on Asus, and there are 3 PCI slots, not 2 PCI + 1 PCIe on Asus.
 there is an actual COM port on the back plate - i need it for the IR receiver for my remote control.
 power supply - heavy.
 and sexy.
 all the wires are modular, so no need to snip wires i won't need.
 very very very nice.
 that 120mm fan sucks air out from the case and blows it out through this sexy grille.
 3 hard drives. that right there is 1.15 tera-bytes of storage. :)
 a very expensive CPU.
 matrix orbital VFD, very pretty.
 most of these headers will not be used - i'm going to snip them right off.
 it's showing!
 this thing is massive. but - it will fit with 5mm to spare.
 the cover is holographic.
 lots of cables.
 the stock cooler won't do. this beautiful all-copper zalman is perfect, very quiet!
 the more you look at it, the better it looks.
 this corsair memory has activity LEDs on it - it's quite nice, but was only fun for the first 10 minutes or so. :) but, it's very useful for debugging booting problems.
 silverstone's 3.5" to 5.25" transfer plate - yet, it's actually black.
 this is the reason. i need both a floppy, and memory card reader - the stock memory card reader will go away, you'll see why later.
 those activity LEDs are awesome, you can see them with the case closed, too, through the grilles.
 drilled out the rivets to remove the optical bay bracket.
 see, in order to remove the hard drive caddy, it has to be tilted up, to clear a little lip at the bottom of the chassis. with 3 hard drives in, that may be difficult.
 first fit - all drives mounted.
 yes, forgot to install the fan... i guess i'll have to take it apart again...
 this will take a few test fits, as well as drilling out the mounting holes for the hard drives.
 the extra headers on the VFD have been snapped clear off. if matrix orbital engineers saw this...
 the VFD fits perfectly, i just needed to drill out some screw holes and make the brackets.
 the brackets were made from the scrap aluminum from my old lian-li case.
 the VFD will be covered with a piece of 3mm acrylic, the sides of it painted black.
 the acrylic glued into the 5mm sheet of plexi on the back-side of the facia.
 i also had to fabricate a cable for the VFD - good thing i stocked up on the 5x1 headers.
 first test-fit of the VFD and the floppy/optical drives. the sides of the acrylic that cover the VFD were painted, and it looks completely stock. there is about a 2mm space between the VFD and the acrylic.
 it looks completely perfect. much better than i could have ever imagined.
 beginning more or less final assembly. some wire management is needed, because there really isn't that much room in that case.
 break for wiring - there will be one wiring harness that connects the DVD writer, the floppy, all 3 hard drives, and the fans that cool the PCI slots.
 i will be able to disconnect the 3 hard drive in one place, and remove the hard drive caddy very easily.
 initial fit being done. you can see the Asus motherboard, the X-Fi sound card still in there, and the stock fans and grills.
 the IDE and Floppy cables are nicely tucked in, the cables zip-tied, and the USB cables out of the way. there is practically no wires visible anywhere.
 this is the stock nVidia design cooler.
 tons of fins, heatpipe, turbine fan.
 back plate acts as a heatspreader for the memory chips.
 XFX uses these weird thermal transfer pads... they are fairly thick, white paste with some interlaced threads... nothing like i have ever seen before.
 same goes for the heatsink - except for the GPU - that had a regular white thermal paste.
 the paste on the GPU is applied fairly even, but i guess that was not enough.
 GF-7800-GTX-A2 GPU, all nicely cleaned up.
 this is all the thermal tape material i collected - nastiness! you can see the texture of the threads showing.
 there was also a smaller heatsink on the video card - i had to pull that off too, of course - Arctic Silver 5 is still the best.
 Arctic Cooling NV cooler installed - it blows the hot air from the GPU directly out of the case. the back plate of the cooler is all copper.
 the fan throud clears the capacitors and the small heatsink just fine. there is very good contact with all video memory chips.
 the back heatspreader came with thermal tape, which sucked of course, so i had to use some of 3M thermal tape i had laying around - it holds it in place perfectly.
 larger view. you can see how having the modular cables in the power supply helps with cable management. also, note the exhaust fan to the right of the CPU heatsink, below the PSU. this is the Silverstone's FX-121 case cooler. it was a bit noisy, so i dynamatted the hell out of its motor assembly.
 note the panaflo fan has replaced the stock fans.
 the fact that the sound card is now gone (btw, on-board sound is excellent, and works very well), and you can see the video card in all its beauty. also note the simple chromed grills have given way to some black anodized ones, guarding the panaflo fans from... uhm...
 i did add the third fan - it doesn't add to the noise, but cools off the case a couple more degrees.
 power cables, all tucked in.
 my desk has so much more room now.
 and yes, this is definitely not the end.
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mods >
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