- Mar 18, 2013
- 4,634
- 0
- 16,960
The case is the only component you can see in your computer, unless you have an open design or window to show off your components. Because of this, you want your case to look nice. You also want plenty of room for components, and adequate cooling. With so many cases on the market, it's difficult to decide on one, and even harder to justify spending a good amount of money on something that isn't really a core component. This guide will teach you how to, or at least help you to build a custom case. This guide will be based off of a micro-ATX build, but may be used for any size and type of case. I will be using wood.
First, you need to decide what size you want. This will influence what material you use, as some materials cost too much for a full ATX case, or are too thin, or too thick. You need to have adequate cooling, structural integrity, you need to be able to actually work the material, and it needs to look good. Some good options are:
Wood- Easy to work with, can look really nice or really bad, insulator
Acrylic- Somewhat easy to work with, generally looks great, many color options, scratches easily
Metal- Difficult to work with, hard to make look polished, difficult to paint, looks best in the end
Pre-built boxes, like a briefcase (not all steps will apply)- Novel, but usually limited on space and appearances, but usually easy to work with. Cooling and cable management are major issues. You may need to shorten wires.
For mine, I picked wood, specifically 1/4 inch oak plywood. I picked this because I like the look of oak, and it was $9 for the amount I needed (2 foot by 4 foot sheet, got it at Lowe's or Home Depot, can't remember).
Tutorial really begins here!
Design it, figure out what form factor you want, and what you want it to do. Wood will be best if you want it to be quiet, and you can find many varieties at any hardware store. Then, either draw up or use a 3-D modelling program to illustrate your idea. I used SketchUp, it's free and very easy to use, it does include measurements on the screen.
Make sure to include the thickness of the material in your design, as that influences the lengths of material you need to cut. If you don't, you will have gaps at each corner.
For this, I measured or found the measurements of every component. For example, the I/O plate for nearly every ATX micro, mid, and full motherboard is 6 1/4 inches by 1 3/4 inches. This starts about 4 1/2 mm below the PSU.
An ATX PSU is 6 inches by 86mm (sorry for varying measurements, but it has to be exact). The depth varies by the PSU, I would save about 8 inches of space so you have enough room for wires.
MicroATX=244x244mm, or 9.6x9.6 inches
Standard ATX=305x244mm, or 12x9.6 inches
Extended ATX=305x330mm, or 12x13 inches
I suggest getting your parts first, and then working the cutouts into your drawings. For the motherboard, have enough room for the largest of the form factor, with about half an inch of extra space.
Now you should have a basic idea of what your measurements will be.
Next, make a to-scale drawing of your material, and draw cut-out lines.
When you get your material, you can just draw the same lines and cut there.
When cutting the material, you want to use the right tools. I used a table saw to cut the wood.
Next, you want to assemble it, as you'll just have a bunch of wooden planks. Glue will work for thicker material, framing nails work for thinner, although you may have some poke through. Simply nail or glue the pieces into place, you may want to have a friend hold it while you hammer nails in. I just used a clamp and vice grip.
Now you have the basic case, but no cutouts. I put my parts in to get a basic idea of how they worked, and how they would fit in.
I then traced where I would cut, using a Dremel. A reinforced cut-off wheel works best, not too high of a speed or you will burn the wood. If it's not reinforced, it will break and send sharp pieces flying all over. Very unpleasant to have embedded in your arm. Wear goggles. Depending on how you assembled it, you may have nails where you cut things out. You can either cut through them (there will be sparks), avoid putting nails where you will be cutting, or lift the parts above the nails.
Start cutting, slowly, but don't let it linger in one place too long or it will burn the wood.
Once you have your holes cut out, you can start sanding, otherwise it will begin to splinter and look bad.
Make sure to have holes for your I/O plate, power supply, power button, DVD drive, PCI slots, and fans. For fans, cut a circular hole the size of your fan (you can trace it with a pencil) and drill holes for screws.
At this point you can stain it or leave it natural, like I did.
Use an air compressor or canned air duster to spray out the sawdust, there will be a lot of it. This will cause heating issues, interfere with gluing, and a whole lot of other bad stuff.
Trace where everything will be going, pre-drill holes for motherboard standoffs, attach brackets.
At this point you will have a real, functioning case.
Screw in motherboard standoffs, and put your motherboard in. I glued my PSU in in addition to adding brackets, just for security. The glue breaks if you twist it a little bit, in case you need to change it out. Screw in fans, feed your power button through (I'll explain that at the bottom), and assemble like a normal case.
For the cover of the case, you can use dowels that slide into holes on the cover, make a french cleat, or take the easy way out and just put a piece of wood on top like I did.
For the case itself, make sure you have material you can drill into for motherboard standoffs, a PSU bracket, and your drives. You have a couple options, making a multi-layered "back" of the case, so that screws go all the way through (this really only works with metal), or make sure you have enough material for the screws to go into without poking out the back, or just glue everything you can.
Because I only had 1/4 inch wood, I actually glued cut up sections of a 1x2 plank right behind the motherboard backplate (which is not completely necessary). This meant I was not screwing into the structure of the case and could avoid screws holding the case together.
For the power supply, I actually glued two metal brackets underneath the motherboard backplate using Elmer's wood glue, it supports the power supply just fine.
For the harddrive, you can just use more brackets and glue or screws.
If you use wood, I recommend half inch if you do anything larger than a micro ATX, and even then, you need to make some adjustments to the structure with 1/4 inch. Also, a lot of screws will poke through the side or cause bulging, which looks awful.
A power button is simple, all it is is two pin that when connected, complete a circuit. You can actually "jumpstart" a computer by connecting those two pins with a screwdriver. The easiest way, however, is to pull a power button out of an old case, or buy one. Not only do they look better than rigging up a button, but it works much better. You can find some really nice looking ones here
Expect a lot of work to go into this, even more if you want it to look good, but at the end, even if you have an ugly box, if it works, there is a great sense of accomplishment. All I needed was one sheet of plywood, tools, nails, glue, and some cheap wood I had lying around. The whole case cost me $9.
First, you need to decide what size you want. This will influence what material you use, as some materials cost too much for a full ATX case, or are too thin, or too thick. You need to have adequate cooling, structural integrity, you need to be able to actually work the material, and it needs to look good. Some good options are:
Wood- Easy to work with, can look really nice or really bad, insulator
Acrylic- Somewhat easy to work with, generally looks great, many color options, scratches easily
Metal- Difficult to work with, hard to make look polished, difficult to paint, looks best in the end
Pre-built boxes, like a briefcase (not all steps will apply)- Novel, but usually limited on space and appearances, but usually easy to work with. Cooling and cable management are major issues. You may need to shorten wires.
For mine, I picked wood, specifically 1/4 inch oak plywood. I picked this because I like the look of oak, and it was $9 for the amount I needed (2 foot by 4 foot sheet, got it at Lowe's or Home Depot, can't remember).
Tutorial really begins here!
Design it, figure out what form factor you want, and what you want it to do. Wood will be best if you want it to be quiet, and you can find many varieties at any hardware store. Then, either draw up or use a 3-D modelling program to illustrate your idea. I used SketchUp, it's free and very easy to use, it does include measurements on the screen.
Make sure to include the thickness of the material in your design, as that influences the lengths of material you need to cut. If you don't, you will have gaps at each corner.
For this, I measured or found the measurements of every component. For example, the I/O plate for nearly every ATX micro, mid, and full motherboard is 6 1/4 inches by 1 3/4 inches. This starts about 4 1/2 mm below the PSU.
An ATX PSU is 6 inches by 86mm (sorry for varying measurements, but it has to be exact). The depth varies by the PSU, I would save about 8 inches of space so you have enough room for wires.
MicroATX=244x244mm, or 9.6x9.6 inches
Standard ATX=305x244mm, or 12x9.6 inches
Extended ATX=305x330mm, or 12x13 inches
I suggest getting your parts first, and then working the cutouts into your drawings. For the motherboard, have enough room for the largest of the form factor, with about half an inch of extra space.
Now you should have a basic idea of what your measurements will be.
Next, make a to-scale drawing of your material, and draw cut-out lines.
When you get your material, you can just draw the same lines and cut there.
When cutting the material, you want to use the right tools. I used a table saw to cut the wood.
Next, you want to assemble it, as you'll just have a bunch of wooden planks. Glue will work for thicker material, framing nails work for thinner, although you may have some poke through. Simply nail or glue the pieces into place, you may want to have a friend hold it while you hammer nails in. I just used a clamp and vice grip.
Now you have the basic case, but no cutouts. I put my parts in to get a basic idea of how they worked, and how they would fit in.
I then traced where I would cut, using a Dremel. A reinforced cut-off wheel works best, not too high of a speed or you will burn the wood. If it's not reinforced, it will break and send sharp pieces flying all over. Very unpleasant to have embedded in your arm. Wear goggles. Depending on how you assembled it, you may have nails where you cut things out. You can either cut through them (there will be sparks), avoid putting nails where you will be cutting, or lift the parts above the nails.
Start cutting, slowly, but don't let it linger in one place too long or it will burn the wood.
Once you have your holes cut out, you can start sanding, otherwise it will begin to splinter and look bad.
Make sure to have holes for your I/O plate, power supply, power button, DVD drive, PCI slots, and fans. For fans, cut a circular hole the size of your fan (you can trace it with a pencil) and drill holes for screws.
At this point you can stain it or leave it natural, like I did.
Use an air compressor or canned air duster to spray out the sawdust, there will be a lot of it. This will cause heating issues, interfere with gluing, and a whole lot of other bad stuff.
Trace where everything will be going, pre-drill holes for motherboard standoffs, attach brackets.
At this point you will have a real, functioning case.
Screw in motherboard standoffs, and put your motherboard in. I glued my PSU in in addition to adding brackets, just for security. The glue breaks if you twist it a little bit, in case you need to change it out. Screw in fans, feed your power button through (I'll explain that at the bottom), and assemble like a normal case.
For the cover of the case, you can use dowels that slide into holes on the cover, make a french cleat, or take the easy way out and just put a piece of wood on top like I did.
For the case itself, make sure you have material you can drill into for motherboard standoffs, a PSU bracket, and your drives. You have a couple options, making a multi-layered "back" of the case, so that screws go all the way through (this really only works with metal), or make sure you have enough material for the screws to go into without poking out the back, or just glue everything you can.
Because I only had 1/4 inch wood, I actually glued cut up sections of a 1x2 plank right behind the motherboard backplate (which is not completely necessary). This meant I was not screwing into the structure of the case and could avoid screws holding the case together.
For the power supply, I actually glued two metal brackets underneath the motherboard backplate using Elmer's wood glue, it supports the power supply just fine.
For the harddrive, you can just use more brackets and glue or screws.
If you use wood, I recommend half inch if you do anything larger than a micro ATX, and even then, you need to make some adjustments to the structure with 1/4 inch. Also, a lot of screws will poke through the side or cause bulging, which looks awful.
A power button is simple, all it is is two pin that when connected, complete a circuit. You can actually "jumpstart" a computer by connecting those two pins with a screwdriver. The easiest way, however, is to pull a power button out of an old case, or buy one. Not only do they look better than rigging up a button, but it works much better. You can find some really nice looking ones here
Expect a lot of work to go into this, even more if you want it to look good, but at the end, even if you have an ugly box, if it works, there is a great sense of accomplishment. All I needed was one sheet of plywood, tools, nails, glue, and some cheap wood I had lying around. The whole case cost me $9.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram