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Original case "Loki"
New system "Fenrir"

"LOKI" 2004

Big and blue

"Loki", named after the God of mischief, is now in the November issue of "Custom PC" with more text about it and some professional photo's but here are the pictures to go with the building of it.

I needed, at the time, to fit 3 optical drives, 2 HDD’s & room for 2 more with easy access for testing/backup of data, a temperature controller, card reader, front USB & easy access to test other hardware. Had the idea of two cases together, but it would not look right to me & access would still be the problem then trawling the web I saw the Lubic system. These kits come with various lengths of coloured square bar with channels in to screw in connection pieces or angles to make simple or complex shapes.

Whilst in the DIY store looking at stuff for the clear panels I noticed some aluminium channels & brackets that were only 1mm thinner in width than the Lubic bars & a hell of a lot cheaper & now I would only need one main Lubic 4480 kit & the rest would be DIY parts. I needed from the DIY store a 2 meter length of 15mm X 15mm channel, 2 sheets of 600mm by 1800mm “liteglaze” clear plastic. The Digidoc 5 fan controller had already been stripped down & sprayed black from my last case by carefully dismantling the connection & main PCB from the front panel, masking the front & back of the display window and then sprayed with satin black car spray.
I measured & cut two 46cm channels, drilled 4mm holes to fix the right angle brackets ready to be used in the bottom frame.

The motherboard frame was from a £5 car boot case I cut up and this frame had both proper fixing for expansion cards and it also allowed me the spare Lubic frames normally used to mount the motherboard free for the rest of the case so this was drilled and screwed into the bottom base frame & self made channel. A bracket was fitted to the back to help with support of the frame.

The hard drives were fitted with their fans & temperature sensors then with the DVD drives screwed into the clear pre-drilled panels. The cross supports were fitted to provide rigidity as well as a place for the cables. The motherboard, hardware & fan controller were mounted then the rest of the upright supports for the case. The PSU was put in last. I did a power up test to make sure it would at least go to "post". Turned it off, then conected just one HDD & optical to start software installation (that's a task in itself).

I mounted seven temperature sensors so that it checks the CPU, graphics card, the two main hard drives, the temperature near the DVD drives as they get quite warm, a sensor sitting above the motherboard to sense the air around it & one that will sit outside the case to give a guide to the background air.

I am using 3mm clear “liteglaze” sheets for the outer panels & I decided to start with the basic shaped panels first. I used a hot knife to cut the panels out as it was better than a saw or standard knife to avoid the panels cracking. I did a couple of test pieces first to find the best way to drill the screw holes & found it best to drill a small pilot hole but not to go through the panel then use the correct size drill bit & go slowly right through so not to crack the plastic.

Two panels are having fans fitted so I marked out the fan & screw holes, cut the panel as before, drilled all the screw holes then very slowly & carefully cut an 80cm round hole using the hot knife right through the panel to allow the piece to fall out & not have to force it out. These fans were fitted with grills & noise dampers. The interior of the case has got two sets of LED's & a light tube that can be switched on independently. The wires were cut, soldered & covered in blue cable sleeves then screwed into place. The spotlight LED was set to shine at the back of the case & the light tube was positioned by the motherboard.

The switch panel was made from 3mm aluminum & drilled to fit the computer power/reset switches, LED's & the individual light switches. The light switches were a problem with the being 16mm diameter I had to drill a 12mm hole and file out the rest so that took time & some blood, then sprayed metallic blue. Finally the front & rear clear panels were cut to match the “L” shape required & then screwed in place.