[Scratchbuild] HyperMod - Finished

[Ch2pa]

Hello and welcome on the worklog of the HyperMod.

I am a mechanical engineer from France, I built mod from scratch since two years now. This is my third mod and my entry for the CoolerMaster 2012 Case Mod competition (scratchbuild category).

•Presentation:

The HyperMod intend to be a showcase for the CoolerMaster Hyper 612s. The name is also a reference to the Kingston HyperX DDR3 module and SSD used in the configuration. Thanks to the unique architecture of this mod, the heatsink is the only piece of hardware visible. It sits on a sober case made of exotic wood and brushed aluminium. The configuration is based on mini-itx motherboard and designed for casual gamer. The mod was designed with CAD software CATIA V5.

I started this mod mid-august 2012.

•3D model:

•Dimensions:

Length: 400mm

Width: 275mm

Height: 290mm with heatsink, 170mm without

•Configuration:

-Asrock H77M-ITX

-Intel i5 3450s

-CoolerMaster Hyper 612s

-Kingston HyperX 3k 240GB SSD

-Kingston HyperX DDR3 2x4GB

-MSI NGTX 560Ti TwinFrozr II OC

-500GB HDD 3.5"

-PSU Seasonnic X-560 gold series

-1 CoolerMaster Excalibur 120mm fan.

•Material:

-Solid wood (Heritiera utilis (Sprague))

-Aluminium

•Progress: Finished

•Final pictures:

I wait for your comments and feed back

Note: I am from France and english is not my native language so please forgive my spelling mistake.

[Ch2pa]

First of all, I will show you the components that I will use in this mod. Here is all what I ordered:

I still miss the CPU, the GPU and the SSD. I don't know yet what component I will choose.

Unboxing the motherboard:

The bundle is a bit poor (only the driver CD, the IO shield, the user's guide and two Sata cables) for a mobo that cost 100€ but the card seems well build:

With the HyperX DDR3 modules mounted on:

The DDR3 and motherboard gray tones fit well!

Now let's ahave a look to the key of the mod's architecture: the PCIe riser:

It is well built, with ribbon cables screwed on both extremity, and a good quality connector. I will try it as soon as I get a GPU to connect to.

And here comes the CoolerMaster Hyper612s:

The bundle is complete with user's guide, mounting kit, thermal paste, antinoise pads and clutches for a second fan.

The heatsink is massive!

Last but not least, here is the system fan, a CoolerMaster Excalibur:

I chose this fan mainly for its ability to be dismounted:

which will allow me to keep only the needed parts:

Disassembly is nevertheless delicate because the plastic of the frame is fragile. I already broke one of the plastic clip that hold the metal frame (circular parts with honeycomb holes).

Next part of the mod will be the wood structure.

[frozensnail]

like the idea's you have & the concept is good with the CM CPU cooler as a focus point, nice to see a scratchbuild using wood, may I ask if you are to use it as a HTPC when finished?

[Ch2pa]

Let's start with the wood structure.

The first thing to do was to find a wood suitable to my mod, which was more easy than I taught. I found and bought a plank of sprague (Heritiera utilis) at my local materials merchant. Dimensions of the plank were 3950x220x41mm, which is enough for the two or three next mods .

Once at home (at my parent's home precisely, I will be using the woodworking machine of my father), I cut the plank in three pieces: the two flanks and the bottom.

That was the easy step.

Then started the planing:

That was a long, dusty, noisy, exhausting work but after 15 pass, the planks for the flanks had the right thickness.

It only remain 30 pass for the bottom plank...

The planing machine makes a lot of wood shavings!

Finally the wood reveal itself:

Actually it is a bit more red under sunlight and it is a bit "oily" on touch.

First dummy assembly to check if I going in the right direction:

Until now it seems correct, there is a good potential!

@frozensnail: I don't intend to use it when finished, I intend to sell it (if I am allowed to and in case I do not win ).

I already have a decent PC, I don't need a second one. This one will be designed for casual gamer as said in presentation (GPU will probably be a 560ti or a HD7850).

[Ch2pa]

The three planks are now cut and planned:

The router can make its entrance now!

First router's job: reduce the thickness of this plank from 30 to 20mm.

It's about 20 time faster than using the plane.

The shaving pile keep growing...

[editor22]

Looking mighty fine so far Ch2pa!

[frozensnail]

Thanks for taking the time to reply, looking good & can't wait to see the final results of your work, real craftmanship using the hard wood, lots of wood shavings

[Ch2pa]

Thanks for your comment

The four pieces of wood (flanks, front and bottom) are now cut and planed, let's use the wood shaper.

I am really lucky to have this kind of tools at my disposal

The objective is to make rabbet at the front of the bottom and on the three sides of the flanks:

Then I rounded the angles using files and wood chisel. Lots of patience required here.

I am quite satisfied of the result:

The covers can now fit in their final position (though they still need to be cut).

Some more works on the flanks with chisel, file and patience: the chamfers

and the cut in the bottom, then again with chanmfers.

Another work started on the wood structure: the integration of the 120mm fan. First step was to cut a circular hole in the plank.

I used for this task a specific and very useful Dremel tool:

Here come the critical phase:

Plop, hole done.

The result after sandpapering:

Once the big hole was finished, I drilled the holes for the fan fixation and placed the M4 nuts with screws in the holes:

Then I put some wood filler to hold the nuts.

In parallel of that work, I prepared the fan for its integration.

Before:

After:

That's all for now.

[Ch2pa]

New update of the mod!

First, the integration of the fan. It didn't go well with the nuts on first attempt because the holes were not deep enough and the screws were too long. The nuts went off their holes on first screwing :/.

I made a second attempt with deeper holes, shorter screws and more wood filler:

It worked!!

Next big update on the wood structure concerns the bottom. At the begining it was just a parrallelepipedic piece of solid wood measuring 310x210x30mm with a 15x20mm rabbet on the front.

I began by routing the hole for the PSU (150x160x12mm).

Then I draw

and routed a hole for the PSU fan. I also routed a 140x140x2mm pocket for the dust filter underneath the bottom.

Here comes the biggest routing job for the bottom: the flat underneath must remain with only two 55x30x10mm feet at the front and a 15x210x10mm strip at the rear. All the hatched surface will be removed.

Before:

After:

Again, a big pile of wood shavings . With all those routing work, the bottom plank has lost 50.9% of its volume.

Unfortunnatey I made a splinter on the front side of the bottom plank while routing

I will have to hide this with wood filler.

After filling down the angles to abtain chamfers and sandpapering the surfaces, the bottom is finished:

Top view:

Underneath view:

With the dust filter in position:

I made a first dummy assembly with old components:

It's tight but all fits in .

You may have noticed that the wood colour varies from one picture to another. This is due to the camera that I use which has a faulty "Auto white balance". I will try to get a more decent camera for the final pictures of the mod.

I also cut the aluminium covers and made some brushing tests. Until now I am not satisfied by the result as the covers have scrathes and marks that I didn't manage to hide.

The box is finally closed:

Next work will be on the flanks.

[Ch2pa]

New update of the mod!

This is the summary of one of my last day of work on the mod.

The goal of the day was to make the holes for the integration of the DVD reader and the front panel. As shown on the CAD models, they are both located on the front side of the flanks:

(The power switch and the states leds are missing from the front panel).

I used a mortiser to make the holes in the flanks:

(I really love my father's woodworking machine )

Here is the left flank after two vertical pass of mortising:

The table horizontal stroke force me to do two horizontal pass.

The result is very rough:

But after some filing, wood chiseling and sandpapering work it is much better:

I will make the finishing while integrating the DVD reader.

Once It was over with the mortiser, I took out the router again to make a hole on the inner side of the flank. This way, the mortise will have two openning:

This kind of work is the dustier work I have ever done. Even with a filtering mask I ate dust!

I make the finishing of the holes again with file, wood chisel and sandpaper. It took me about 1h30 to get to that:

The DVD reader almost fits in, I still need to file a bit:

Next update will come very soon.