Queen of Dreams. White Box Case Mod.

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
131
91
28
40
Thanks. :)

Not a huge update but it was very time consuming.

Didn't like the 11ty standoffs and holes the motherboard tray had. So I epoxied all the standoffs in place. Filled all the holes. Then flush cut off all the standoff holes.


Then a whole lot of sanding, primer, sanding, primer, sanding. Not perfect. But at this point I'm just chasing the dragon.



This is a server and I don't want to have to carry it outside to blow it out whenever it needs cleaning. So I wanted all fans to have toolless fan filters. After some work in Fusion 360. I came up w/ this.



Filter is a charcoal paint booth filter. Pretty restrictive but on the 140mm Yate Loon PCIe cooling fan there is still enough air coming through.



 

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
131
91
28
40
Been doing a whole lot of priming the last few days. Using 'Rustoleum V7400' industrial primer. Bought a gallon of it and using an electric HVLP sprayer. Even though I thinned the primer by a good 30% it is ridiculously thick. Which is giving everything a new texture. And its extremely durable. A few more coats on the motherboard tray and it looks perfect.



A few of the other pieces that are done w/ primer.


I totally humped up on the how I mounted the drive cages. I riveted the cages to the aluminum sheet that I installed to seperate the chambers. I didn't think how I was going to paint behind the drive cages. So I had to paint and primer the drive cage section first. Rivet the drive cages in place. Tape it up. Epoxy, file, and sand them smooth. Then need to finish primering the main chamber. Yes I also accidentally primered the entire main chamber before hand.:eek:





Finished the toolless filters for the CPU coolers. Pretty much the same design as the 140mm one I did earlier.


The IPMI module came for the motherboard. The tiny board w/ the yellow sticker.


The Mellanox ConnectX-3 cards and DAC cables showed up. This server is in the same room as my workstation so I don't need very long cables.

 
Last edited:

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
131
91
28
40
Been painting pretty much daily for 2 weeks. Painting is a lot more work than I expected. It is very hard to find a happy medium between good coverage, no runs and no overspray.

After the primer, the interior was painted w/ Dupli-color Jet Black lacquer. Used about 2 quarts, so about $70 CAD.









Put the case together w/ MDPC-X rivets. Painted the tips of the rivets black so that the backsides of the rivets would be 100% black.


Trying to limit damage to the paint from the rivet tool.






Once the weather clears up I'll be doing the pearl coat on the interior.

Using this paint. It is matte clear lacquer. 1 quart should be more than enough. Was $35CAD.


With some candy apple metallic flake. Have no idea how much I paid for the metallic flake as I bought it years ago.


The case exterior I used plasti-dip. I used a gallon to do the entire exterior. Cost is about $100 CAD / gallon. I have tons of the stuff though as I had planned to dip my vehicle a few years ago.





Then using HaloEFX Real Clear as the pearl coat. Think of it as a premium plasti-dip. Using a blue aluminum pearl. Don't think you can buy it in Canada anymore. But it was about $100 CAD/gallon.


Here is a teaser of the exterior colour after the pearl coat. It is on thick so no black shows through really. The black was installed mostly to add thickness for durability. Having a hard time taking pictures of it. After like 15 pictures one actually turned out.


For I tried for an entire weekend to get that IKVM-ASMB6 module working on this board. I add the module and it takes the board from 2-12 hours to post. I even tried to flash the firmware on the ASMB6 but after posting it doesn't even list the device in the flashing software. :mad:

So I ended up buying some Raspberry Pis and I'll just make my own KVMoIP. I've ordered the rest of the parts required from China. One of the Pi Zeros will for my PfSense machine.
Fmstrat/diy-ipmi

 

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
131
91
28
40
Maybe STH should start running a build of the year competition...!
Given this thread, don't think it would be much of a competition!
Can I complete against myself? :)

I have two more systems that I'll be building after I finish this.

Models of a 3d printed enclosure I'm going to start ASAP. For a PfSense system. These models are complete AFAIK. Hoping to start printing the parts this weekend.






And then I'll be starting my next gaming/workstation machine.
These models aren't complete as I put working it on hold to finish working on my server.






 

Aestr

Well-Known Member
Oct 22, 2014
967
386
63
Seattle
Maybe STH should start running a build of the year competition...!
That would be quite the interesting set of entries. I'm not sure how you'd judge it, but I'd love to see all the builds in one place anyways. Maybe a "Best of 201x" to at least highlight some of the amazing setups and builds here.
 

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
131
91
28
40
I haven't put this aside. After the last update I took a few weeks off to back home. Got back and continued w/ the painting. Ran out of the metallic red flake :(. It shipped from the USA unfortunately so I had to wait a few weeks for it to arrive. And due to the forest fires near by its been smokey and ashy so I haven't really had a chance to paint in a while. Since I don't have a garage, I setup a little modding workstation in the corner of the room.


These showed up the other day. 8x16GB LR-DIMM DDR3. :)




So the CPU fan filters were too restrictive. My CPUs were throttling w/ the low speed fans. So a new simpler design.

I adhered some small earth magnets to the fans. And then 3d printed some small plastic pegs.


Filter is a magnetic Silverstone filter. Not a super strong hold, but the 3d printed pegs hold the filter in place.



I liked the fan filter design enough that I'll be using similar methods for the other fans. I've ordered filters for the remainder.

The front fans I drilled holes for an m3 screw too easily align the filters, then adhered magnets around the fans.


The 140mm PCIe cooling fan.




Got some painting done today. The mobo tray is done. Finding it really hard to get pictures of the paint. The first 3 pics were taken on the Canon 17-40 f4 L. It look a lot of editing to get them too look anywhere near correct.






And these were taken on a Sigma 105mm f2.8 DG Macro HSM. These look a lot more accurate. :cool:


 

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
131
91
28
40
I finished painting the rest of the interior today. Unfortunately only 2 pics as most didn't turn out. Figuring out how to use artificial light is a lot harder than I expected. :eek:



 
  • Like
Reactions: leebo_28

lowfat

Active Member
Nov 25, 2016
131
91
28
40
I've got the board wiring back in (combs removed), installed all the PCIe cards, installed the LED strips, as well as a bunch of general case hardware. Had to remove the CPU coolers to reach the wiring. Upon reinstalling the coolers I noticed I had them installed wrong the whole time. The CPU heatsinks are no longer crooked. :rolleyes:

Also not going to be installing the Fusion-IO ioDrive Duo 320GB SLC in the system. Now that I have 128GB ram I don't think I'll need the drive. I'll just throw it in the workstation.