Baby Steps

My idea here was to use 2 x 10mm thick acrylic sheets for the top and bottom panel of the case and have all the other 4 panels being secured to these two by means of screws. I didn't want to use chloroform or acrylic glue as if I made a mistake, it'll be difficult to remove the already glued panel. All the other 4 side panels are of the 3mm thick variety.

First job was to get the motherboard onto the bottom acrylic sheet. As you can see, the acrylic sheet is just a tad larger than the mobo itself and this keeps the overall case small and compact. Using a marker, I marked out the position where I'll need to drill holes to secure the motherboard stand-offs.

I chose the simplest method of mounting the mobo in. I used standard brass stand-offs that you'll get when you purchase a case. I had tons of it anyway in my toolbox so why crack my head thinking of other ways. LOL! Once all the holes were marked out, I drilled all the holes for the stand-offs. Since the acrylic was 10mm thick, I didn't have to drill thru it.. just roughly 3/4 thru the sheet. BTW, these stand-offs are of the M3 size and have wide threads. Use a 3mm drill bit for the hole.

Once I got all 6 holes drilled, using a pair of pliers, I secured the stand-offs into the holes. The first few turns would be very tight so I suggest a dab of WD40 or other lubricating oil to assist in the securing of the stand-offs and prevent the acrylic sheet from cracking. I managed to get all six stand-offs for the mobo secured without any problems. Securing the motherboard was also easy with the stand-offs lined up perfectly with the mounting holes on the motherboard. With the mobo in place, I've just taken the first step towards my own custom case. Woohoo! Now all I need to do is build everything around the motherboard and the bottom acrylic sheet.

Moving on...

It never hurt to stop and check every now and then so I did a little check on the installed mobo and looks like the gap between the mobo and sheet was fine, although there was one problem. When I tried to install my GeForce card in, it wouldn't seat properly onto the AGP slot and this is due to the metal part of the card touching the acrylic sheet below. There was a gap between the mobo's edge and the acrylic sheet's edge and so that had to be filed off for the expansion card to sit in properly. It wasn't a huge problem after all since the rear panel would cover up that area anyway. So I go ahead and filed off a portion of that edge not only for the AGP slot but also for the other 3 PCI slots.

The next step was to cut a rectangular opening for the I/O plate at the rear panel. Using the plate as a guide, I took a rough measurement for the position and mark it out on the rear panel. Once I got the position marked out, a quick Black and Decker RTX makes light work of the acrylic to get the rectangular opening. A few minutes of filing to get the exact shape and the opening is ready. While you're doing the filing, it's best to stop once in a while and check it with the I/O plate itself to make sure it's not too big.

Once you're certain that the fit is good, you can now test it with the mobo connectors itself. It's much easier to cut the opening for the I/O plate than to cut individual openings for the different ports on the motherboard. Just in case you wanna change motherboards and the new mobo happen to have a different arrangement of ports, you'll just swap the I/O plates and you're good to go. But if you somehow lose that I/O plate. then you'll have no choice but to take the long-winded route and cut individual openings.