Hello. It’s been a while, like, for the second time. And speaking of which, this PC case here, was built over a year ago now. It is time. In terms of design, it’s a continuation of our previous DIY build – a semi-open chassis where the motherboard and graphics card are out in the open, while the power supply, cables and storage drives sit in the compartment behind. This was inspired by Thermaltake’s Core P3 with its open nature showcasing the components, as well as the Corsair Crystal 280X, and its dual-compartment layout. Overall, the mix of these two cases has served me well as a rather crude test bench. So what’s different this time? For one, it’ll be a mini-ITX platform instead of micro-ATX, so it'll be even smaller in length and height. Despite the downsizing, I want to fit not only a fully-sized graphics card, but a larger tower-style air cooler, and 3.5” drives. We’re getting ambitious here. And unlike the previous build, we won’t have the same access to our machinery. So yeah, time to bust out our old, Victorian-style tools. My usual material, laminated MDF (floorboard), won’t be as easy to work with this time, so we’ve opted for American White Oak – a readily-available and popular wood for this type of project. And considerably more expensive as well. All these pieces are 7mm thick. The width of our main compartment, the box, is pre-determined at 80mm, so we just need to cut these to the correct lengths. This takes us to this rather crude bench hook, where it holds down the wood and keeps this tenon saw straight for cutting. Except that even this part is a struggle. It could be impatience, the angle I’m cutting, or the bench hook itself – my cuts are pretty rough. Either way, we have four oversized pieces that’ll make up the sides of our box. Next step is to prepare its edges for joining. I’ve previously used what’s called a rabbet joint, with an ‘e’, where one edge has a recess. This served me pretty well in going about the laminated nature of floorboard, and so as to pay homage, let’s say, we’ll also use rabbet joints on this one. Which leads us to our tool of choice – a plough plane. It has this thin blade and an adjustable fence that makes it perfect for dados and rabbets. Our table sure has seen better days. but with a sort of planing board to help with clamping our workpiece down, providing clearance for our plane, as well as a flat surface, we can fetch ourselves a rabbet. The trick is to start at the end, and work your way across the length until it stops cutting. That’s thanks to the depth stop, which is set at 3mm in this case. I’ve also set to cut half of the required width, doing another run the next day. Here, a piece is used to set the fence to 7mm. Now don’t they look pretty? There’s still quite a while to go. Let’s move onto the top of the box, where our motherboard and such will be on. It consists of four separate pieces with holes for necessary connectors. The next step for this piece is to create a slot, or dado, 7mm wide – our cutter’s only a ¼”, so 6.3mm, so two runs are required. Making accurate mark-outs require at least two edges that are straight and square from each other, points of reference, known as datum edges. Here, one end is being filed down until square, and is practically done on all pieces here. Since this is where the ATX 24-pin, SATA data cables and USB 3.0 connectors will go through, let’s make two square holes, which are marked out, holes drilled in each so a coping saw blade can poke through, and cut them out. This saw is pretty much indispensable for these types of holes, as well as complex shapes. Trouble started with a visible chip from sawing way too hard, where I tried to glue in a scrap of wood to fix it, but ultimately, the whole piece itself was cupping, or warping along its width – so we started again with much more manageable wood, taking extra care when doing both cut-outs, as well as getting the slot right for a fairly tight fit. This one’s for the bottom, where the front panel and graphics 8-pin connectors will go through. Reducing its width is made easier through the power of our plough plane. Two square cut-outs are then made, and filed to a finish. Most flat files have a non-cutting edge that prevents it munching any other sides of our piece. I’ve chosen to cut these out instead of drill holes for the connectors, as they’ll expose the rabbet of its joining piece – seeing it in real life for the first time, it looks decent. Same procedure goes for the top, where this large cut-out is for the EPS 8-pin, and a smaller one for the humble fan connectors. After squaring all ends, it’s time to prepare the corners of our box. Mitring has always been my go-to with laminated MDF, though let’s be a bit adventurous – double rabbets all around. Starting with scoring our mark-outs to prevent going beyond the line, I’ve unwittingly begun chipping away with a ¼” chisel. And er, yeah, it was messy for the first time. I’ve resorted to cutting down the line with our coping saw, finishing off with the chisel. And this is how they meet up, one side showing its end-grain. All is well. Only a tiny bit of fine adjustments to do. After that, we shall face the tribulation of gluing these together. Luckily, that there’s a surviving tub of PVA. Coating each joining edge with glue, the sides and pieces of the top are set in place, wiping off excess glue, in areas such as the holes. This little piece was made off-camera, but it simply fits here. And with these frame clamps, and some extra light clamping, it’s time to retire for the night. [Light rain] Let’s take care of the power supply. Not only it needs holes to be screwed and held in place, but also a large cut-out for ventilation. Preferrably not dropping it in the process. The inside of our box is slightly wider than the PSU’s width – that gap’s for our front panel wiring. But if anything, here’s a tip – keep your mark-outs as simple as possible, because that has led me to centre-punching the wrong holes, leaving awful marks on the surface. I - I think I can live with that. Let’s drill a hole and securely clamp the box down, to make the cut-out. 4mm holes are then drilled through for screws to fit through. The whole thing is once again clamped to clean up the front, But this is where it turns ugly, real ugly – the holes don’t even line up. Serves me the hell right for using a handheld drill. Drastic action is in order. After marking out the absolute top and bottom of the PSU, we’re going to cut these old holes off. Next step is to clean these sides out, being careful to not put unruly stress on the already thin wood. We have this spare oak, which edge is planed down to around 3mm, and easily cut off and filed down, until we have this fairly thin strip. Intensely squaring off each end leads us to these, snugly where the holes would be. Speaking of which, guess who’s returned? Our unbranded hero, with rusted battle-scars from the last winter. I’ve treaded much more carefully using the smallest drill bit available, working our way to 4mm. After checking that these in fact do fit, these two pieces are glued in place, solving the centre-punch marks and incorrect holes, concluding the power supply saga. Okay, our criteria says that our case must accommodate a 3.5” drive. Let’s check our clearance. Oh. Like, literally no room. Ideally, channels for these caddies should have been planed before gluing everything together. [Hesitantly] I can’t wait what’s next. Let’s make out (sic.) our cut-out for the drives, following the same procedure as the power supply, including heavier jigs to baby the even thinner material. With a bit of clearance and this piece of hard drive caddy, the necessary channels are marked out. With lines scored down with a knife, and occasionally the coping saw, work with the chisel begins. And then it dawned on me – the channel’s too long. Oh well, no harm done. On the second channel, some clearance from the first one is determined, meaning the hard drives are spaced out between each other, and the same process ensues. Well, it looks good. At least the other side’s tad easier as it can be planed. The markings are simply copied, and four runs are done on this piece of oak. In the end, they’re surprisingly straight. Last thing for us now to do, is to trim off excess channelling, decorate it up a bit. We’re making a small strip of oak, by planing one off a larger piece, sawing it off, and cleaning up all edges, same as what I've always been doing before. Remember that slot in one of the top pieces? The strip fits cosily in it, and helps with bracing up our drive caddies. A couple more pieces are required above and below it, just so it looks good. After planing off and filing down, this piece helps brace up the caddy and the case in general. Time to glue these together. The edge of this cut-out does need to be freed up, and sit flush with the channel, so let's get to that. This side is a worryingly tight fit. For the eagle-eyed of you, a crack popped up the moment I pushed this hard drive in. Whoops, just need a bit more filing. At least as to bow-tie the caddies, this rather redundant piece is glued in. We have a long strip of oak, 20mm by 7mm, which will become the side panel, covering the box’s internals. Let’s pick up our plough plane and adjust its depth stop to 1mm – make a shallow recess on one side, across this whole strip. Avoiding clamps that are in the way involves planing only a small section at a time. And to reach both ends, a spare piece of wood can be clamped behind, to rest on. It doesn’t need to be accurate. Then, to make this into a side panel. How, you might ask from a strip of wood? As a frame of course, with something in the middle. We’re going for the good old butted joint, cutting these with a coping saw as close to the line as possible, then easily filing down each end to size. Before gluing these together though, we should clean up the sides of the hard drive cut-out. I’ve decided to glue the strips inside the case for the sake of accuracy, thus with some masking tape to prevent excess glue causing trouble, each mating surface is coated and pressed in. Some light clamping should keep everything nice and flat. Time to retire. So what will be thing that makes it a side panel? Well, this ultra-fine, stainless steel mesh, for exotic pets I guess. Some sharp tin snips or large scissors would do the trick for cutting these – I unfortunately had this diddy disposable pair. But with some double-sided tape, it fits well. Almost over, right? Nah. We've still got a while to go. Let’s mark the position of this power switch, up top, and bumped as close as possible to the front. Now, going about the fact that this pillar drill isn’t tall enough for the box, requires simply loosening it from the column, and rotating it, making sure that the base is clamped down. Jammy, I know. At least we’ve whipped out one of our old-time friends – the forstner drill bit. 16mm, this one. Let’s chop up this USB 3.0 cable, and mark it as close to the switch as possible, as well as scavenging some spare pieces of oak, to concoct some form of removable mechanism. Superglue should be fine for things non-structural. Basically, the USB will be screwed onto another piece of oak, which we’ll call the mount, as it’ll hold it in place, inside the compartment. The port also needs tending, taking care not to munch it up when drilling through, sawing around, and finishing it off with some diamond files. And after trimming these radiator screws, the unit’s pre-assembled and only the mount has glued applied. We’ve now got a removable USB port. Lovely. It is time to tackle the thing that makes this a PC case – the acrylic panel, laser-cut to the exact length and height of our box. Our standoffs will be 12mm away from the edges, and baby steps are taken to get these right, such as 1.5mm pilot holes on the panel, then using it as a guide for the box’s pilot holes, and progressively drilling up to 8mm. I swear I dozed off at this part, because these holes on the box were supposed to be tapped M8, so it requires a 6.8mm drill bit, but I've drilled 7.5mm. Upon tapping it anyway, we’re lucky this time. worst comes to worst, we might have to use threaded inserts. Here are the glass standoffs. Unlike the P3-esque build, standoffs between 150 to 200mm are hard to find online, so since these are a ½” in diameter, we’ll only fetch the screws and make our own, with this. First step is to cut and file these to 180mm, A S H Y C L E A R for a 140mm air cooler. The internal diameter needs enlarging before even touching a tap, from around 6.3 to 6.5mm. The tapping process involves using oil, and hand-turning our tap into the material while trying to keep it straight. Once nice and good, every full turn is followed by a half-turn backwards, called ‘breaking the chips’. But here’s yet another doozy – the side that screws into the box is M8, but the acrylic side is not. This dawned upon me when the stubby standoffs won’t thread onto an M8 tap, thus the screws won’t thread into an M8. What is this, you may ask? 5/16” UNC, requiring a new tap. Could have used that all around, but we already had M8 grub screws. With this spare motherboard, standoffs for it are marked and drilled with 1.5mm, then 2.5mm holes, which are then tapped into M3. These standoffs are only 4mm long, which I hope you won’t use in a steel case. Yet another oversight are slots for the graphics card. An awkward sense of déjà vu envelops me as what we have to do, has somehow been done before. Regardless, I’ve taken a 1.5mm bit, and repeatedly drilled blind holes across the required markings. Yes, there’s an attempt to chisel out something 1.5mm wide. This ain’t working, chief. Last resort is to completely drill through, making everything easier at the expense of these popping up on the other side. [Lots of hesitation] They're ugly, but I simply have to accept it. This is a fun part. Last time, I opted to make a frame to hold our graphics card, using MDF. It ultimately was a jammy design, but you guys at the comments showed me that these PCI slot holder things exist online, or could be custom fabricated. I love these ideas, and have ordered one for the P3-esque case. But since a standoff happens to sit fairly close to our graphics card, let’s make full use of that. Measurements are taken, then a centre is marked onto this piece of wood, where we’ll drill through with this 12mm forstner, then a ½” bit (12.7mm). Spoiler alert, the hole was in a completely wrong place, so, it was done again. More sawing and filing, and we have this L-shaped piece that sure looks funky. But guess what? It’s too short. Only course of action here is to add some material, which happened to be this small strip. Anyways, as much as I’ve grown fond of the pale, dainty appearance of raw white oak, it’s best to treat its surface. All wooden parts are prepped by going over all sides with sandpaper, and edges with a rusted, smooth file. Our chosen treatment is Danish Oil, a mixture of oil to bring out the wood’s appearance, and varnish to provide better protection than oil alone. Plus, it’s awfully easy to apply. I think so, anyways. On returning to the graphics card holder, I was planning to file this extra bit down until flush, but the musical-note-look of it is kinda cool. Let’s trim it instead, as well as coat it in oil. Let’s tackle the power switch. This is a momentary type, meaning when you press and let go, it returns to its normal state. There are also three terminals related to the switch itself – the common, normally closed and open. NO and NC are pretty self-explanatory, meaning that for this to work as a PC’s power switch, it needs to close the circuit as you press it, so we’ll be using NO and common. So what about the other two terminals? These are for the built-in LED. It can run off up to 12V, but our front panel will provide nowhere near that, so I’ve tested it with a 5V, 500mA power supply, and it looks good. It hasn't burnt out. Feeling extra, and because the wiring otherwise won’t fit through, an ugly four-way braid is made to hold these together. The beauty of removing pins off connectors is how plugging in the front panel can be much easier, with the help of this single block of connector. The rubber feet of our previous build were of the dome type - not grippy enough. So we’ve gone and fetched a sheet of rubber. It’s satisfying to cut into cute, little strips, and are stuck in with double-sided tape. Ah, look what we’ve unearthed, the Sapphire R7 260X. We only need it to mark out our holes for the graphics card holder, and the same-old 1.5mm pilot holes are made, before moving to a 4mm for them to accept screws. Whoops, that top piece split. There’s one, final thing to take care of. The lack of space between our hard drive and the inside of the case, means that the EPS 8-pin wiring could touch said hard drive. Yeah. So our next course of action is to make cable tie or Velcro strap points, by planing a U-shaped channel on this piece, and sawing it off into tiny pieces. Two of these need some extra filing as they’ll sit on the inner corner. A quick oil-up and these can be glued in place. I never thought I’d say this, but it's time to build ourselves a rig. Well, here it is, the DIY Core P0.5 in its habitat, so let me share my thoughts. Firstly, it looks better than I’ve planned or ever dreamt of. Being a fan of mini-ITX does make you hyper-conscious of space, and the Core-esque P3 built for micro-ATX did leave this distant wonder of what it would look like, if it was shrunk down even further. Plenty of elements have worked surprisingly well, like the connector holes showcasing the rabbets underneath, front panel that is clean and straight, power supply cut-out and graphics card holder in their weird twists, adding some charm. And let’s not forget, the hard drive caddies – I never thought these would work. So what are the downsides to using this case if it was something you could get? Well, it’s genuinely frail. There’s no doubt that like the previous build, the box is too shallow to stand up on its own, thus it relies on its acrylic panel and dainty standoffs for support. Another is literally no watercooling support, unless custom fittings are made – even then you can only fit up to a 240mm radiator. What about dust? Yes. There’s nothing to avoid it settling onto your components, thus it requires compressed air every now and then. What really helps are if your fans turn off when the PC’s doing nothing – decent graphics cards, fairly high-end power supplies, and even premium fans do exactly that. The thing becomes an HTPC. But the largest problem I’ve encountered are the hard drives. two 7200rpm units, sitting that close with no active ventilation, don’t exactly remain cool. Their max temps at full utilisation peaked 60°C and 55°C, too toasty for my liking. So, what was this building experience like? Well, I mostly disliked it. First of all, the strips of oak came through bow-legged and cupped to hell. This refers to warping both length and width-wise. Despite the use of wet towels, sunshine and an iron, it’s as if these weren’t properly treated and just shoved through a thicknesser. I dreaded having to straighten these each time I worked with them. The second reason were the countless times I’ve made errors. Most of it is from the fact that I hadn’t made a proper plan for it – so it’s not just a bed, but a full padded cell that I made and laid in. There were times that I drifted off into a sedated state, not fully aware that I was drilling too large holes, or my measurements were nautical miles off. It’s such a bizarre feeling. At least some of them turned out so much better for it. Lastly, this whole project had taken two and a half months to complete, simply because I’ve got work now. The challenge came in the way of finding any sliver of time for it. Overall, this whole thing was a huge test of my temperament, of meeting high standards on an unknown material, with unknown tools, and learning to accept the times when those standards fell out of reach, as well as the possibility of failing to finish at all. But otherwise, it had put woodworking back on the map. If you’re ever inspired to get into it, I’d say do so – it’s not cheap, or easy, but the freedom and joy are there. And I won’t say I’m happy, but content with how this case turned out. It’s the same mix of my two favourite PC cases, in the mini-ITX platform, and is something unique that makes up for its cost and time taken. In a weird sense, it’s what I wanted all along. And so, thanks for joining me on this journey. This is the Budding Engineer, in the meantime, imma go out for a smoke and buy some milk. See you soon.
