The 2.5" Hard Drive Mounting Plate

The first component made was the hard drive plate for mounting the hard drive. It was the easiest piece to make even though this was my first Perspex outing. My original idea was to place a Perspex window in the HDD to see the platters going round and the heads moving as this project was also about see all parts of a computer. This was delayed to the end of the project but has not been completed to date.

Tip in using Perspex - A fine saw and a plane works wonders in creating a smooth edge with a glass look.

Another picture of the HDD plate with the LED.

Blue LEDs are the theme for this project so every opportunity to place an LED in Perspex was taken.

The PSU Plate.

The power supply plate is a shorter height to enable the airflow to move around the board as these Morex boards can get hot. The lower height also allows the wires to come over the top towards the motherboard.

The working component placement prototype

This is where the base plate was created and the PSU and HDD plate fixed to the base. This provided a test bed for placing the DVD and running the motherboard.

The PCI riser board and XP

This view shows the PCI riser in place using the HDD plate as a stay. The PCI slot is for a wireless network card. Oh it does run XP.

Another view of the barebones system.

This view also shows the blue LEDs to light the HDD and PSU.