The Final Countdown

Bolting on the USB bracket is a breeze and everything is hooked up inside.

Now we have come to a slight problem in the design. With all the components installed, how are we going to keep the GIGABYTE graphics card from moving around too much? - The prototype bracket worked well, but was a real bother to make again.

The answer was a simple one; using a long bolt and some nuts to essentially create a pin that pushed up against the lid when closed. The lid with enough flex held the card firmly in place.

Finally, the system was ready to roll. The fruits of my long labours finally ripen and are ready for the picking.

The fan above the CPU pulls in cool dust-free air to keep the criticals like the Kingston RAM nice and chilled while the fan above the HDD sucks it out, keeping airflow tight.

You will notice I used a 3.5" drive-bay fan controller velcro'd to the lid. This was a last minute decision to allow manual control of the fan speeds to keep the system cool as well as providing me with a cable that actually reached my fan headers.

With the case closed up and ugly lid hidden away, we see that this unit doesn't look half bad from the outside! - With no more weight than the components inside, this unit is easy enough to carry around to and from LAN parties. And I'm about to do just that...