If you’ve been following along, I decided to build an external GPU for CUDA development and mobile robotics. In the first part of my article, I explained the actual eGPU controller and in part two I started building the enclosure for it. In this part, I’ll be wrapping up the external case build for my custom-built external GPU.
On day two, you can see that the lower case is basically complete and is now passively cooling, since the back of the case already has a “wavy” vent—but I still need some venting holes in the front.
The initial idea was to cut away a bit of area for “few” 80mm fan grills, however, someone got too excited (not me) to help and went ahead and cut out two big rectangular areas for me. Obviously the adage “measure twice cut once” wasn’t known here.
I feel pretty....
Look, two big ugly rectangular areas, it reminded me of this.
Anyways, the damage was done, and those two areas are actually the same size as my fan grill, which leaves me no way to mount it—or at least no easy way to mount it. The nice and easy solution is to find a bigger grill to cover it, but since I don’t have any, I have to salvage it from elsewhere. Voila, the front HDD fan intake will work!
Ugly hole be gone!
Problem solved!
The initial plan was mount the PSU on the bottom of the case, since the PSU is much heavier, but now the case is much longer than the PSU—so the PSU is going on the top. I was going to build an upper housing for it, but I crapped that idea.
The new bracket for the PSU
In the end I decided to make two simple mounting brackets for the PSU, by salvaging the same front part of the case. I replaced most of the screws with rivets, so now there are only six screws to take the case apart instead of more than 30.
Finished product
Here is what my mobile workstation looks like now:
My custom-built mobile robotics development workstation
Look, dual GPUs, and they work properly!
Ta-da!
Stay tuned for benchmarking!
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