In the process of moving into my new house, I realized I had a lot of extra dead motherboards laying around. So I got to thinking and decided it would be cool to build a PC case that had its "guts" on the outside. This turned out to be more difficult than expected as chips, resistors, transistors, and interfaces get in the way of making cuts. I also decided to make it as small as possible so I could use it for a Media PC box. I had recently set up a Windows Media Center 2005 box for a client and was intrigued by the OS. I had a Micro ATX motherboard and AMD processor laying around so I went to work.

Total Cost: $800 (after rebates of course :-))
Total Build Time: Approximately 40 hours

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tHE bUILD pROCESS

• I started out with 2 sheets of 1/4 inch think plexiglas from Home Depot. I laid the motherboard and a spare power supply on top and began positioning them until I found a layout I felt would work. I then took measurements for the length, width, and depth, adding 1/2 inch for the joints.Once I had all the measurements, I cut out each side, the top and bottom.

• To join the sides and bottom, I used metal corner pieces and screws. This helped me maintain the angles and plus it was easier to put together :-)

• Once the basic box was assembled, I used a hot glue gun to seal the edges. To mount the motherboard, I first marked where I needed to cut holes for the rear panel. Once this was cut, I was able to lay the motherboard down, mark spots for the mounts, and drill holes.

• With the motherboard mounted, I set the power supply in and marked where I needed to cut holes for venting, the power cable, and mounting. I removed the power supply and motherboard and drilled the holes.

• Now that the motherboard and power supply were mounted, I could focus on cutting the holes for the video card and TV tuner. I lined them up where I thought they would come out and cut the holes. I bent back the top lip on the cards and put a screw through them into the plexiglas from the inside.

• Next, I placed the hard drive where I thought it should be mounted, marked the holes and drilled them. At first I wasn't to sure about mounting the hard drive on it's side, but I researched it on the Internet and didn't find any issues.

• I wasn't sure how to mount the Slimline DVD drive, so I decided to wedge it between the lid and sides. I removed just enough material from the box so it would sit on top of the side and when the top was on, would add more support. I further secured it with the hot glue gun.

• With all the main components installed, I attached all the necessary cables and went to turn it on. That's when I realized I needed a power button! I had an old case sitting around so I stripped off the front cover and removed the button assembly. I attached it to the front panel connectors on the motherboard and powered everything on. Everything came up with no problems so I powered it down and moved on.

• Next came the hard part, cutting and fitting the motherboards so that the case didn't look like a jumbled piles of parts thrown on top.

• I started with the front. I took the longest mother board I had and mounted it against the front. I then drew a line along the back and used the Dremel to cut off the extra.

• Another reason I started with the front is because I needed to integrate the power switch in some way (and other LED's). I positioned the motherboard so that the processor port was accessible from behind in the case. I had 2 spare 486 processors laying around so I decided to integrate it into the case as the power button. I wasn't sure how to keep the processor in place, so I took the easy way out and put a screw on each side. I then drilled a hole through the motherboard and plexiglas, mounted the switch, attached a spring and spacer to the processor, and mounted it so it would press the switch on and off. This was actually much more difficult than it sounds :-)

• With the front done, I proceeded to fit the additional motherboards to the case. Everything was going fine until I mounted a piece on the side of the hard drive. I needed to drill a hole close to the hard drive, but instead of taking the drive out I decided I could carefully drill a hole as needed. WRONG! I took out about 4 contacts going into the hard drive's controller board processor and killed the drive.

• While waiting for a warranty replacement to my "defective" drive from Western Digital, I proceeded to add more motherboard sections. This was a difficult and messy task. I carefully measured the sizes so I would have a top that I could slide into place and have an almost seamless look. It was also difficult to cut the openings for the power supply. I was able to use rubber feet as spacers when attaching the secondary pieces to make it look like one big board.

• Once I finished fitting the front and 2 sides, I began to focus on the top. I cut a thinner piece of plexiglas to slide on top. After some tweaking and sanding, I had it sitting nicely on top with a good fit and holding the DVD drive in quite well. I went through the same process as the sides and fitted the remaining motherboard pieces I had.

• Once the top was finished, the only thing I had left to do was cut a vent in the back of the case for another cooling fan. I also integrated the power LED and hard drive activity LED into the front of the case.

• With this complete, I put everything together and installed Windows Media Center Edition 2005. With the help of www.thegreenbutton.com I now how a fully functional MCE machine with my Toshiba 46 inch projection HDTV as the monitor!

tHE sPECS

• ASUS A7V333 Motherboard

• 1 GB PC2700 DDR RAM

• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE TV Tuner card

• GeForce FX5200 w/ DVI/Svideo/VGA

• AMD Athlon XP 2500

• 200 GB Western Digital Hard Drive

• IBM Slimline DVD Drive

• DWL-G132 Wireless USB Adapter

• BTC 9019URF Wireless Multimedia Keyboard w/Dual Mode Joystick

• Philips MCE USB Remote and Reciever

• Windows Media Center 2005

• DVI to HDMI cable for full HDTV high resolution

• Toshiba 46 inch Projection TV

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