Contents

1. Design
2. Building
3. Building
4. Carvings
5. Metal Parts
6. Finished Case
7. Final words

Introduction

Little beige boxes used to house our PC hardware. Now our cases are plexiglass with crafty looking fan grills, flashing cold cathode lights and little LCD displays for showing the case temperature. Somebody once said that "Modding is the application of artistic ability and craftsmanship to solving technological problems". Case modding has become too easy these days, there are prefabricated modding parts for everything you can think of. Hard-core modders build the whole case from scratch.

If you are not interested in how the case was build and just want to see what it looks like finished, skip to Finished Case.

The reason I started making a new case was my old case, which was heavy, noisy and ugly. Instead of buying a new case, I decided to design and build something I could really call my own. I've always loved wooden furniture, and my father had a lot of woodworking tools readily available, so I opted to make a wooden case.

Design

I'm no engineer, I know nothing of mathematical calculations of air flows, electrical safety regulations, or soundproofing. I'm no carpenter either, I have little previous woodworking experience. Fortunately my father is a carpenter, so I could ask him for advice from time to time.

Main factors:

1. A lot of wooden cases out there are real cabinets, they must weigh a ton. To be elegant, the case must be as small as possible, but it still must be able to house normal size equipment. I'm not going to get a miniature motherboard anytime soon.
2. The case must generate a minimum of noise. A lot of other wooden cases have big fans right in the front panel, I'll wager they make a lot of noise. I ended up placing only one 12 cm intake fan inside the case. To reduce the fan noise, the fan sucks air through a short tunnel in the bottom.

   Case airflow plan. Blue lines represent air flowing through components.

3. To be useful even after the ATX standard is gone, the case must be flexible enough to house new types of motherboards and graphics cards. At this point I cannot tell whether BTX is the next standard, but I decided to prepare for it. Since BTX motherboards are mounted on the left side of the case, my wooden case must be able to have a motherboard on both sides.
4. I didn't want just another box. I wanted the case to look good. For months I juggled between different types of looks, finally my design looked like this: