Well, you already knew I had trouble getting inspiration for this case. These are some of the things I destroyed in an attempt to find that inspiration.

I think I’ll work this in too…

Now here’s the damage that happened to the top bar. Ouch. Again…

I made another trip to Howarth Switchgear, and these are some of the materials that I got. I finally got some diamond plate! I think I know what I’m going to do with it, but all will be revealed later. I taped up the aluminium before cutting at this point.

Although I won’t reveal how that’s going for a wee while. I have some of these metal bars that are from a broken IKEA bed. I’m going to use one of them to help support the edges. I’ll get there in the end.

So I cut one of them down a little bit and hammered in the ends to make it nice and square.

Then I took the CD stabiliser¹ off the top of the case, and used it to further strengthen the side rails. Some epoxy stuck the stuff together, and it looks like it’s going to work pretty well.

Tada!

I was quite impressed with this new Xclio PSU when I took it out of the box… although this label, perhaps, should have warned me about the product…

Although I have to say, the PSU has a nice matte finish, and a good selection of cables, and in the ooh…hour that it was working, it was quiet as a mouse. Although mine blew up, I suspect that this was a one-off, so maybe you shouldn’t write off the company quite yet. Here’s a pic of the PSU.

I’ve also got a picture of the damaged graphics card! I’m pretty disappointed, but I expect those nice guys at scan computers will have it all sorted out in no time. They’ve already got me a nice new PSU.

As I hinted at earlier, I’ve made a lot of progress since I took these photos, so when I’ve finished the next stage, I’ll let you know. See you later guys!