Are those mechanical hard drives? If so, I would want a fan moving air across them. Also keep in mind that most filament is not ESD safe.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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I want a case in a fun shape and this is the best layout I can come up with that fits the build volume of my 3d printer.
There are 20mm tall rubber feet on the bottom allowing air to enter through the bottom. 4 hard drives are in a cage off to the left and spaced with 16 mm gaps between them.
The air flows through them l and pulls heat from the open gap in the front as well as past the edges of the GPU. There is a 140mm fan in the rear sucking it out.
At the top is an SFX power supply pulling air out of the top of the case and venting it out back.
There are no openings on the face or sides.
I’ve had to make changes as one of the goals it to use as many locally-sourced parts as I can, so most replacements can be sourced in a day, reducing downtime. That’s limiting on some ways but there is a microcenter nearby so it’s not that bad.
My concern here is the cooling might not be adequate. I was considering adding a fan just for the hard dries and ducting them to pull their air from the bottom too but that would contract from the available air intake for the rest of the components. I could duct the drives to part of the rear fan so it pulls part from the drive cage area and part from the rear of the case, but that could reduce cooling for the GPU since there’s less room to pull hot air from around it.
It’s a home media server but it might see some transcodes and game streaming use too so I put a 3 slot GPU in there to force me to accommodate such a thing while designing it. I also want to release this when I’m done so others might be able to use it too, which means I need to accommodate heavier uses with bigger CPU and GPU cooling needs.
I’m not entirely convinced this will cool effectively. Am I overthinking this?
Oof, moving plastic filament rubbing on plastic guides. Sounds like static waiting to happen.
I never thought of that.
I don't know much about static electricity and plastic, but would it be sufficient to ground off an arbitrary point in the case to the body of the PSU?
It would not. Static electricity in insulators such as plastic is localized. It can't move across the plastic to the grounding point.
I'd recommend using conductive filament if you can or even just coating it with conductive paint before it touches anything electrically sensitive might do the trick. It doesn't have to be a great conductor, just a tiny bit of conductivity will prevent any significant static charges from building up.
The openings under them and the spacing between them is to allow air to be pulled through them.
I was concerned about the filament and ESD too but have been told the motherboard would just ground out to the PSU through the power connector and not to worry about it. Since the hard drives are also connected I figured they would ground out the way too. There is ESD safe filament I could use for the drive cage though.
Just looking to learn, who told you that?
I don’t know, someone online, I remember arguing the exact same thing about 3-D printed computer cases being a bad idea because of static concerns,but I was basically mauled in the comment section for it
I wonder if I put chicken wire against the inner walls and run that to the case of the power supply would that work well enough?
You can get conductive paint for RFI shielding. It's very conductive, so make sure that the case can't come in contact with any circuit boards or it will short out. Make sure the paint is compatible with the type of plastic you print the case out of too.
They also make ESD safe filament, but it's $150+ a roll.
The paint sounds promising. It just needs to stick to ASA. I’m not sanding anything either so it’s not flat but that might be a good thing to increase surface area for the paint to bind to.
I'm sorry, but what I'm guessing is the PSU just floating like that, makes it look like it's ready for some sort of wrestling move.
Noice!! I cannot offer much knowlegde here, but I'll be cheering in the background for your endeavours. I'm actually in the wishful stage of a similar project; I got 3 old (intel duo) computers I'd like to (somehow) merge into one massive server. And I'd like to make my own case as well. So I'd love to learn from your wisdom
Which CAD software are you using btw?
I’m actually just using onshape. It’s all done in a browser.
If build volume is a limitation, I've seen all sorts of snap together plates you could crib from. For example I recently printed this pacman boardgame. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5396911
The interlocks are completely hidden by the overhangs of the other plates. Once snapped together, you can't see that it is made of separate parts.
I want to have as few visible seams as possible but I can make them where I need. My primary concern here is thermals.
I think you're going to have a problem keeping your power supply floating in the air like that
AirPower is a thing and my CAD image proves it!
Seems fun, but is this case really gonna sit somewhere you actually see it? That seems awfully noisy when you add a few hard drives.
Yes. Hard drives aren’t really all that loud either.
It you want to try something new that gives you more freedom than the print bed, consider 2020 alluminum extrusion. I'll be doing a custom enclosed rack with it soon, using the printer to make shelves/containers between beams.
Can’t fit that in the shape I want.
I've seen worse. That shouldn't have overheating problems.
I understand that your bottom is open for air everywhere?
This seems too much IMHO. I would close large areas maybe simply with duct tape so you can change/improve it later. The air should enter right where it is needed: directly under the HDDs, and right next to that big blue block (GPU?), and maybe right under the PSU if it is located close to the bottom, too.
If you don't restrict the air flow a little, then all the air will take only the easiest way, that is through the open space, and not between the hot devices.
I thought about that, and I can change that bottom plate at any time, but the GPU takes a lot of space in there. I need to be sure there’s enough air reaching the cpu cooler so I allowed bypass to reach that.
So I can restrict entrances or I can add ducting. But then I have to worry about dividing up thins on the intake so much the GPU and CPU side can’t cool effectively.