The "Cool Cube"
By Travis Hydzik, Perth, Australia
Posted on March 9, 2005
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The VIA Epia M was then attached to the motherboard tray.

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Following the octagonal theme, halved and quartered sections were used in the center and corners respectively. MMMmmmm Shiny!

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The case was beginning to take shape, the front and back face's still needed to be constructed and all the faces joined. I chose a slim DVD rom drive for the project since I knew it could be stealthed in between the fans to look like C-channel. Initially a slot loading drive was planned but due to the price, a tray loading drive was bought. In the end the tray loading drive worked well, it was easier to stealth, and when ejected was to only evidence of the case being a computer.

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The construction of the front face was slightly different, being that the horizontal C-channel was replaced with the DVD rom drive. A bracket was made for the drive to sit on and drive attached with double sided tape, this prevented the drive from sliding.

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One problem with the drive was that is was slightly thicker then the C-channel, and because it was being squeezed the tray had problems ejecting. This was solved by adding spacers to slightly increasing the gap, but still making it not obvious. As it happened the eject button was in the same position where a screw head should have been, so this allowed the drive to be stealthed nicely.

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One change that was made was the protruding sharp corners were cut down to form a hexagonal shape. This made the case look a lot nicer. Also the Perspex strips can be viewed, which were used when joining two pieces of aluminum sheet.

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The back face was a bit trickier. There needed to be a hole for the motherboard connection panel, power/reset buttons and controls for the fan speeds. The initial design was first constructed out of paper to get a feel for how the octagonal theme would be integrated. The power/reset buttons would be on either side of the fan controls to maintain the symmetry of the whole case.

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