DIY Project High Performance Audio PC with high quality wiring

[Darryl R]

On 2/12/2021 at 10:13 AM, StreamFidelity said:

And it continues with a slightly more complex product. Briefly the prehistory: The back plate of the HDPLEX 2nd Gen H5 Fanless Chassis is made of 2mm sheet metal, bends easily and attaching PCIe cards to it is difficult.

 

New CNC black anodized 4 mm aluminum

 

For comparison, here are the old plate (above) and the new aluminum plate (below).

 

 

 

1st idea: clamp the low profile bracket in place

 

I was tired of threading and screwing the PCIe card fastening! The picture below shows a strip of insulating foam mat (Armacell Armaflex ACE). This clamps the lower low-profile sheet metal. Usually this is in a wobbly recess. The insulating foam mat is intended to reduce any resonances from the sensitive PCIe cards.

 

 

The upper low-profile sheet metal is usually screwed into place. No matter which computer I saw, most of the time it was sheet metal screws that wore out quickly. Stop it! This is now simply clamped in place with a narrow wedge. The wedge presses the PCIe card very firmly into the slot on the mainboard.

 

 

And this is how it looks from the outside. Almost as good as the Taiko Audio SGM Extreme. 😂

 

The holes can optionally be closed with low-profile perforated sheets.

 

 

If a PCIe card is to be used or removed in the future, the screw connection on the entire rear panel is simply loosened and pulled backwards. I love simple solutions.

 

2nd idea: flexible cable openings

 

There are cutouts on both sides of the rear panel that allow any cable material to pass through. Bernd (fis Audio) and I like straight cables without an adapter. And as can be seen, the DC cables can be clamped.

 

 

The finished screwed back cover.

 

 

 

This is very nice work.  Larry said he was going to make a backplate without top and bottom edges this summer, but I thought he needed to lose those slots where the bracket bottoms snap in as well.  I'm so tired of taking that backplate off to mess with expansion cards.  I always wondered why he didn't do it this way to begin with.

 

If you redid the bottom plate, this might give the Taiko DIY chassis (which we haven't seen yet) a run for the money.

[Darryl R]

50 minutes ago, Nenon said:

 

There is a very easy solution. Just cut the part in red:

 

 

Not really ;)  You still have the slots at the bottom (and the thin metal that's sometimes a little warped, and the curved bottom edge that barely clears pre-attached I/O plates, which is why Larry said he's going to change it).