To assemble the case I aligned the finger joints and attempted to press them into place. They were firm. Very firm. The first few sides I eased into place by gently rocking them back and forth to the tune of much squeaking from the perspex. Eventually they eased down into position and held tight.
There had to be an easier way than that. And there was. By applying a thin layer of silicone oil to the finger joints all my problems went away. The pieces now just slid into position with the greatest of ease. Make sure you’ve got some silicone oil handy when you’re doing this. I use some heavy 5000 weight oil designed for RC hobby use. It’s clear so you don’t see it and thick so it won’t ooze out and run down the sides of the case.
Here it is with all the sides on except the top and before the screws are inserted. After inserting the screws the next step is to add the power connectors, the fan and the board itself mounted on PC motherboard standoffs. I’ve added rubber ‘feet’ to the bottom of the case in the form of clear 3M silicone ‘bumpons’. The 8x4mm variety is the perfect height to lift the box above the screws that protrude from the base.
I broke the fan!
I’m normally more careful than this. Before fitting the fan I hooked it up to my bench power supply based on the pinout for a 3-pin fan found on the internet and I must have been half asleep or something because I got the polarity backwards and the fan is now dead. Had it been a 2-pin fan it would probably have survived but the Gelid has the third pin for PWM speed control which means that there is a little circuit board hiding under the central hub and that obviously has no idiot protection on the power inputs and it’s now fried.
Oh well, at least they’re cheap. I sourced another fan on ebay. Not the Gelid unfortunately because they seemed to be out of stock everywhere. The one I got instead is a Xilence model.
The mounting holes are at standard locations so no worries about fixing it to the case. The only slight annoyance is that I aligned the struts on the case to match the position of the struts on the Gelid and they won’t line up any more but that’s a small issue that I can overlook.
Now, let’s try to put it together without breaking anything else.
