Do It Yourself Cool Cases

wiZd0m sent us a nifty collection of cool cases. Not for sale or anything, just user designs and pictures. The site is kinda a mess with zillions of these things sorta cluttered on long pages, but some of the cases are quite clever. They range from useless (neon lights and glass panels) to bizarre (putting an AMD chip in a G4 case) to the practical (blow hole fans). Tons of ideas for the do-it-yourselfer.

Comments

I love this type of article :)

[Chris Johnson]

All my own mods are essentially performance mods having to do with NOISE. (What do you expect from a recording studio geek?)

I'm running MIDI sequencing off a Performa 575 which was basically my first computer- for starters, I removed the vent louvers on the rear fan area and lined the inside/top of the case (this is an all-in-one Mac) with fake-fur to try and mute noise. I sold it to a local computer shop for use as their house Mac, and there it stayed for a couple years- then I got it back because it had always been so great for MIDI sequencing, 33mhz 68040 and all (you can do MIDI on a 8mhz 68000 mac but the screen updates are really slow!) at which point I got serious...

• Apple drive replaced with a smaller IBM drive that was significantly less whiny (remember these are all SCSI drives, some are kind of noisy). Also, a layer of thick, loose feltlike stuff (sound absorption from old speakers!) was added over the drive in the cramped little compartment the drive goes in.
• first fan attempt- adding smaller fan in series. Cut airflow dreadfully- computer was running hotter, though the just-ticking-over fans were indeed quiet.
• Final attempt- 5W 92 ohm resistor in series with fan. This mellowed it out just enough...
• Planned- sculpted duct lined with fakefur or felt absorption material to block a direct path for sound from inside the computer. This would be the final touch...

That's the little computer- only for MIDI and playing networked Marathon Infinity :) the powermac was and is quite another story, and currently looks unusual as well- largely because of the hard drive. I'd been running some problematic IBM fast/wide drives that I had to kluge to get to work, and the main partition ate itself one day and I was looking for a 50-pin SCSI-2 drive of 4G or more... and found one... only thing is, it was a Seagate Cheetah. ST15150N. We are talking _shriek_ here. The drive was given to me because nobody else could tolerate it at all! I'd been using it as a spare external drive for intermittent use. Here's what I did to get this drive into my 9500 as the main HD and not go (more) totally insane.

• First, the case already had some sound damping materials in it, from earlier tweaks. Didn't help. The Seagate is just _scary_ in its noise pollution, like an open-header dragster engine spitting flames and noise. The whine is savagely loud and abrasive. I have reason to believe it goes over 20K and gives headaches from ultrasonic noise pollution at very high sound pressure levels. The start was keeping the sound damping stuff in the case, but how to block this penetrating noise?
• The sides of the case are heavy material compared to a lot of PCs, but they're pretty 'live'- resonant. I layered two 50 yard rolls of aluminum tape over the metal parts of the case, inside and out- maybe eight layers deep. This has two effects- the weight helps to block sound, but more significantly, aluminum can soak up a lot of vibration and resonance when used in this way- forcing it to distort rather than using it for rigidity.
• The front of the case was only plastic so even more ruthless procedures were in order: concrete :) actually I didn't do this right- I didn't leave enough space to seamlessly put the case back together, stripped a screw (actually, broke a plastic bit) and kluged it with strapping tape. However, the concrete does suppress the noise of the Seagate- this combined with the aluminum-clad panels cut the noise by two-thirds.
• Next, I'm going to try some fan mods from another 'silent PC' site- putting diodes in series with the fans (apparently startup current is greater this way than if you just used resistors). There are two large fans in the Power Mac 9500: a PCI slot fan that also cools the CPU daughtercard, and an internal power supply fan. Both will get slowed down a bit by series diodes (the air the power supply output blows is always _cold_... 300Mhz G3s don't make much heat, nor does the ATI Nexus).
• Finally- gotta get rid of that horrible Seagate :) if the system is rendered relatively quiet even with a ST15150N in it, imagine how nice it's going to be with a Fujitsu or IBM Ultrastar instead- I might even be able to record with it.

Even stranger mods might be possible- I'm picturing layering concrete on the _outside_ of a case. No sound's going to get through that. The only problem would be keeping it on there- riveting steel mesh to the sides of the case might do the job, or possibly some sort of big casting job might work. Alternatively, a _wood_ case would probably do a good job- speakers are made out of MDF for a reason, it seals in sound better than stamped wobbly steel boxes :)

Another very significant concern given this attention to sound absorption is airflow. However, this is somewhat easily solved- make the airflow go through a Bose-like labyrinth, only one that's lined with sound absorption. It won't take much to impede sound at the frequencies we're talking about (HD whine etc) while still allowing substantial airflow.

I love seeing weird cosmetic mods and general weirdness modes like the Turbine Case- I'd also like to see more ergonomics mods like I've been talking about. It wouldn't be very difficult to build PC parts into a slightly large wooden box- perhaps a box within a box, with an internal suspension system to suppress residual vibration noise. Ideally you could do things like run a RAID array of dirt cheap Seagate ST15150Ns (cheap because they are so ^$%#&^* noisy!) and suppress the noise so ruthlessly that you could record music in the same room with the things! All it would need is really soundproof cases _and_ an exhaust system that allows serious airflow while blocking any and all sound. This would not be easy, and you couldn't do it with existing PC cases- but you could do it. You could probably do it with a couple 4x8s of plywood and a bunch of heavy felt...

(geez Chris, rant often? *g*)

Wooden cases

[spudnic]

I still think someone could make a fortune mass producing a wooden furniture grade computer case. Say a deep mahogony or cherry.

I've seen a few people making them by hand, but they need the volume to make it worth doing on a large scale.

For the ones with the neon....

[sdo1]

Is there room for a big subwoofer in the trunk of one of those?

I'd hate to see the PC go the way of the Corolla.

-S

My box

[wmschris]

My box: citra.

It was originally a COMPAQ

The Turbine

[redial 1]

This one is circulating the hardware sites today:

The Turbine

A very cool case.

-redial

/.ed: Google Cache

[Lyrrad]

Here is the google cache for the webpage:

Here

Custom Cases

[redial 1]

Actually there is a whole group of people who are into this kinda of thing. You will usually find at least one at any LAN party (there is almost always a prize for best case). I've even heard of a group trying to come up with a Sphere case. Since that site got /.'d check these out:

Cassejunkiez Gallery

Case-mods.net - Definately Check this out! Very cool Case mods

The Turbine - I posted this earlier, but just in case (pun intended)

The All Aluminum Case

-redial