Readers Drives - Fibre is good for you

Posted at: Tuesday 17th February 2009

Sam Hall wanted a case that could hold two full water-cooling loops, but rather than buy a chassis, he built his own from fibreglass.

I'd experimented with overclocking for around a year before I decided it was time to move on to water cooling. Due to problems with overheating, my old AMD Athlon XP 3200+ system was a poor overclocker - the most I could squeeze from it was an extra 200MHz. I wanted to overclock it further, and I hoped that a water-cooling setup would solve many of the thermal issues I'd been having. Luckily, Christmas and a birthday were just around the corner, so I asked Santa for enough water-cooling equipment to make two separate loops - one for the CPU, and another for the Northbridge and graphics. I knew I'd eventually upgrade my computer components too, so I made sure the equipment could be used again when that time came.

The kit arrived, but my Antec Nine Hundred case wasn't big enough to house two full water-cooling loops. Mounting the radiators outside the case wasn't an option, as I regularly move my PC and didn't want to risk having an easily damaged external radiator. This left me with the choice of either spending a lot of money on a truly monstrous case that could hold two radiators, or building my own from scratch. The choice was quite simple for me, however, as my dad is a fibreglass engineer, and fibreglass is an excellent material for cases.

The quantity of fibreglass I'd require wouldn't cost too much, and it's a useful material to use for a case; it's tough, durable and also very lightweight. This would help to keep down the total weight of the PC, despite the number of components that would make up the two water-cooling loops. Using Google SketchUp, I downloaded pre-drawn models of each component and began arranging them in the smallest space possible. I wanted the motherboard to be mounted horizontally to facilitate any probing and tinkering I had to do, so I designed the rest of the chassis and component placing around this. I also wanted to compartmentalise the case as much as possible to ensure good airflow around my five hard drives.

The final design I settled on was a 450mm cube with two Thermochill PA120.3 radiators mounted vertically at the front, with their six 120mm fans pulling plenty of air into the system. The motherboard would sit on a shelf across the middle, which would split the case into two sections. The lower compartment would hold the hard drives and PSU, but still leave plenty of space on either side of the shelf for a D-Tek DB1 pump and a Swiftech Micro Reservoir plus, of course, the space to accommodate all the necessary tubing. Two further 120mm fans would be mounted in line with a stack of three hard drives and, together with the PSU fan, these would blow hot air out of the rig.

The first step when making a fibreglass component is to create a 'plug' from which a mould can be taken. My dad and I chose to create a mock-up using MDF, as it's easy to work with and very cheap too. We very quickly knocked together a basic cube shape with the help of a table saw and plenty of PVA glue. Next, we had to mark up the radiator fan holes accurately on the front face of the plug, as these were to be rounded back into the mouths of the fans. We cut two large holes from the plug using a jigsaw, then used a router with a 0.25in round-over bit to create a smooth return into the fan hole. As the PSU and DVD-ROM drive would sit flush against the exterior of the case, we could cut these holes directly from the finished fibreglass mould.