Suggestions on making a custom computer case

What I'm trying to do is make a case that will be open air, rather than enclosed, so in a way I'm trying to make a not-case (lol). Does anyone have any suggestions on how I should go about mounting any needed fans? Or will heat dissipate enough with the open air design that I won't need any fans blowing over the motherboard?

What I have in mind so far is this:

Take off all the outside plastic on the case, cut away any metal that's not crucial to the structure, keeping mainly just the motherboard tray, an optical drive bay and a hard drive bay, as well as where the power supply would mount.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Will provide pictures later on.

+1. Good calls on the workbench setups.

Add cheap desk fan.

^LOL. Do you just hook up all the cabling, toss inside, and zip tie it so it doesn't fall out?

Decent idea...although, if you wanted to clean that up a little...I bet it would be more asthetically pleasing.

I by all means, wouldn't recommend it for anything else except for maybe lan fests or w/e, But I mean it's so easy to modify cheap all steel cases/ they even have extremely light ones too [as light as an aluminum counterpart], and at least it completely covers your pc, and you can add ports for fans/ w/e your heart desires pretty quickly, or add a handle, etc. etc. etc.

It's just something has always intrigued me about the crate PC, I saw one first at a lan fest, like 9 years ago, the guy only really played counter-strike and starcraft, and I remembered it b/c it was just kind of cool.