I have to preface with this, I am a programmer, not a carpenter. Anyway, let’s move on to the meaty part shall we? This summer, I was building my girlfriend a computer, then the problem of the case came up. I wanted it to be somewhat small, nice, and cheap. There were several nice, small cases that costed $70! There was no way I’m going to spend that much money given the financial situation that I am in. I decided to look around the house and I had this really old computer that was given to me a few years back. I don’t know it’s actual age, but it was struggling to run the OS that it had on there, Windows 98 SE. If any of you can determine the age, let me know, here’s what it looks like stripped.

 

I was very happy that the case was of the mini-ATX form factor. This means that it’ll fit the mini-ATX motherboard that I had bought. The problem is that this thing does not have a front USB port. So, I removed the front USB from a broken case that my brother’s using as his fileserver. I desoldered the front speaker/microphone ports because it didn’t work. Then I carefully hot glued it onto this case. Although not pictured, I also took apart the fan of this case and added more lubricant to it. 

 

 

 

Since I didn’t want to use the power button that came with the old case, I had to buy one from RadioShack. The switch needed to be normally open (NO) and I wanted two colors. One for power and the other for reset/restart. They didn’t have ones that looked good, so I settled with this,

 

All that work took me about a week. Very slow huh? Now that I’ve assembled all my parts, total cost so far is ~$5 for those pushbuttons. I ventured out to the nearest HomeDepot and bought a sheet of 4×8 1/4′ plywood. I figured my dad would have a use for the rest of the sheet, but I only needed about a third of the plywood. After making my measurements (multiple times), I pulled out the saw and cut four pieces, two sides, top and front. Total cost so far ~$17.

 

As you can see in the previous picture, I’ve already had some markings on the front piece. Since the front piece would require a slot for the CD/DVD drive, USB and the pushbuttons, I proceeded to mark where everything is. This process took me a long time since I was watching the 2008 Summer Olympics while doodling on this board. This is what I had after hours of measuring, erasing and drawing.

 

Impressive eh? I went and tested my saw skills some more, then when I felt comfortable, I brought the front panel out to work my magic. As you would have guessed, it didn’t go to terribly well. My hole for the USB was slightly slanted and my cuts weren’t exactly straight either. I went to work on it with file and sandpaper. When it looked good enough, I took two pictures :). The top picture is the back view of the panel, the bottom is the front view. I also drilled two holes for the pushbuttons.

 

It did not come out too badly. If you hadn’t guessed by now, I am Vietnamese. I used the newspaper to hold any sawdust I may have on these panels. I was sanding it down in the entertainment room while watching the Olympics and didn’t want to get it all over the house. I then realized that I didn’t drill holes for the case. It needs to remain cool and currently, it’s completely blocked off. So back to the garage one more time for more drilling.

 

You may think I’m girly, but those holes look pretty. Now, onto the staining. My dad had some clear Minwax stains, so I went with that. I wanted the case to be shiny, so this was the process I went through to do so. I stained it the first time and let it dry for a day. I went back and sanded it with fine sandpaper, I think it was 220 grit, then stained it again. I repeated this process 2 more times. The total time it took for staining was about four days.

 

Good thing I didn’t have to buy the stain or the sandpaper. That would have certainly added to my cost. I tested it on my case to see how everything looks and she’s a beaut! I drilled small holes in the outer part of the case and steel screws to hold everything on.

 

Remember the broken speaker ports I talked about earlier? Well, it had wires that connected to the motherboard. Since I needed a few for my pushbuttons, I just cut them and soldered them onto my pushbuttons. Here’s how everything looked after the soldering and assembling onto the frontpanel. You can see the messy staining job that I did from this picture too. Those wires fit the little pins on the motherboard, so I was glad I had them.

 

I assembled the case, slipped the CD/DVD drive in and it fitted perfectly! Here’s everything hooked up and ready to go!

 

I had a blast doing this. Total cost, not including my time, was ~$17. This was a really cheap case, occupied me, and I learned a lot from my dad about cutting things. I would definitely do this again in the future, I may go with an all out wood case next time and not use an existing frame. Yea right, that would take way too much time. This was fun and my girlfriend loves it!