Personal Project - Laser Cutting PC Case out of Plywood

Hi everyone I thought I would share a project that I'm almost finished.

I've always been a bit of a nerd when it comes to computers. I also enjoy making things and working with my hands. For these reasons I planned and designed a new smaller, high performance computer for myself.

The basic idea was to make a rectangular prism shape that can be easily screwed / attached together. I took 2d and 3d drawings from websites to get the rough dimensions then did some creative spacing of holes to get the desired effect. Designing the perforated layout was actually pretty fun. I essentially took the dimensions of the fan, split it into a number of holes and spaced everything accordingly.

After this it was onto the laser cutting machine. Huge thanks to @Andreas GROSSMANN for helping me with so much information and guidance!

After playing with some settings we found the right ones for this wood and started cutting. It's so much fun watching this thing go with amazing accuracy!

First test build went well.

Later that evening the actual build could start.

I countersunk the screw holes so they are flush and somehow crammed in all of the components

You can't see it but on this side the memory is 0.5mm from the fan!

Finished Case V1

In the end I though the front design looked a bit strange compared to the rest and I had a few incorrect measurements - thus the bulging case sides

But not to worry, back into CAD to do some fixes

Round 2 cutting

Round 2 assembly

Round 2 finished!

I now made the case stand as I like it better in this orientation

Unfortunately the PSU died over the weekend so it is technically not finished yet

Specs for other enthusiasts out there:

Ryzen 5 7600 (AM5) - undervolted / power limited

32GB DDR5 RAM

Nvidia Geforce 4070 (Undervolted to 900mV)

The end result is that my new PC is smaller, uses around 30% less power and with 30-100% more performance. But my old PC was 4 years old and used a lot of power :)

Thanks again to FABLab Munich!