A case to chop
up. The HX 45 is an excellent candidate, but pretty much anything will
do. It doesn't need to have a standard space for a front-of-case fan,
but it does need to have enough room for whatever fan you choose to
put in it. Installing the fan will probably make it impossible to install
full length expansion cards. I can't remember the last time I even saw
a full length PC expansion card.
A finger guard to match
your fan. This is optional, but a really good idea. Poking a finger
into an 80mm 12V fan stings a bit. Poking it into a 120mm mains fan
stings a lot more. Wire finger guards in the standard sizes are available
from any electronics store for a few bucks. Needless to say, I got cheap
ones with my cheap fans!
Some basic geometry tools
- a compass, a ruler, a pencil, a protractor - for marking out your
cuts. You can do it freehand, if you like that "I do my metalwork in
the dark" look. Don't come crying to me if you have to extend your screw
holes into three inch slots to get it all to fit.
A soldering iron and solder.
Not a big fat plumber's iron, a low powered electronics iron. A 25 watt
cheapie will be fine.
Heatshrink tubing for insulating
soldered wires. Vinyl electrical tape will do in a pinch, but heatshrink
is so much more elegant. When exposed to heat from hair dryer temperatures
up, it shrinks to half of its previous diameter, moulding itself neatly
to the wire join.
Something for cutting case
metalwork. A jigsaw is excellent, good curved tinsnips will do, an angle
grinder is brutal but effective, a coping saw with a metal-cutting blade
will give you an excellent workout and a wiggly circle, a cold chisel
will give you a broken case, an oxyacetylene torch will be magnificent
overkill. I used a Dremel Moto-Tool. I do not recommend you do this;
1mm steel is more than a little Dremel wants to deal with.
Something for cutting the
plastic front panel. All sorts of tools will do fine for this less demanding
job; the Dremel was perfect. I suggest you not use the oxy torch for
this.
Something for cleaning up
and rounding out your holes. A file, an angle grinder wielded with a
delicate hand, or a Dremel with sanding drums, if you don't mind going
through a few sanding drums. If you don't care about having a fan hole
with 13 sides all of different lengths, you may omit this requirement.
A drill. A power drill makes
putting fan corner screw holes through 1mm steel easier, but a hand
drill will do. Um, you'll also need a set of bits for the drill. If
you didn't know that, I suggest you stop now.
Some cable suitable for
wiring the fan. If it's a mains fan, cable with sturdy, mains-rated
insulation is necessary, to avoid destructive mishaps if the cable gets
pinched. Using fairly chunky cable for a 12V fan is also a good idea,
because blown power supply fuses are annoying, and a dangling severed
12V lead can fry motherboard components almost as effectively as mains,
if you're unlucky.
A switch or a relay to activate
the fan, if you're using a mains powered unit. If you're chopping up
an old AT case, you may have a nice manual power supply switch you can
use to power a mains fan. If you're using an ATX case, though, there's
no switched AC power available anywhere (ATX power supplies are normally
left turned on all the time; "off" is really just "standby"), so you'll
need to switch the fan manually or via a relay - an electrically operated
switch. A relay is more complex but more elegant; it can be energised
by the 12V line from the power supply.
Various nuts and bolts and
other bits of hardware, depending on the oddities of your situation
and what embroideries on the concept you come up with. I came up with
a couple myself, as you'll see.
