www.Viperlair.com - The MoBorg

I came up with this design when I was visiting a computer-fair in Utrecht, the Netherlands. On a Friday, I passed by a Chaintech sales table, with my fellow case modder T-Mug, where they sold used motherboards for only 5 euro’s each. This gave me idea to cover a case with mainboards. I returned to the fair a couple days later, and bought 3 big boxes, filled with approximately 40 mainboards, most of which were broken.

I paid only 12 euros for all three big boxes. At a other sales-stand I bought a cheap, and rather standard looking case, also for 12 euros. Once we arrived back home, T-Mug helped me out by first testing all of the mainboards, and the few that were still operational were put aside. With the rest of the broken main boards and the newly bought case, I started my case modding.

First, I removed the left and right side panels, followed by the top panel of the brand new case.

I picked two main boards from the lot, and fitted these two to the right hand side of the case, directly on to the frame. I screwed the main board firmly with screws, for which I pre-drilled the holes in the frame.With two smaller main board I covered the rest of the right side. Since the main boards where sticking out by now, I took my Proxxon micro-drill (a sort ultra-Dremel) with the fibreglass enforced cutting blade, and cut off the exceeding parts. When the main boards fitted, I screwed these also directly to the frame.

On the same manner, I covered the bottom part of the front, but in the top part of the front the CD-RW had found it’s place, so that should be cut out of the main board, which should cover it.

The Philips CD-Rw series 1600 had to be placed in the case, without being noticed prominently, it should be ‘assimilated’. Therefore, I had to ‘stealth’ the device.

With the Proxxon cutting tool, I cut out a square, slightly larger than the front of the CD-Rw, and the part I glued on the front of the drawer of the device. With a small capisitor, which I mounted directly above the open-button of the player, you can open the CD-RW manually.

After finishing the work on the right side and the front, now it was time to look at the left sit of the case.

As the computer should be fully functional, this side should be abled to be opened and closed for maintenance just like any other PC. Therefore I had to mount all mothe boards on the panel itself, and take care that the original mounting studs are used.

The (standard) 350 Watts power supply unit has a temperature controlled fan, which increases the rotation speed of it’s fan when the temperature rises. This PSU has on the bottom side, right above the processor, some cuttings for taking in fresh air for cooling. The ideal placement of these cuttings would have the warmed-up air from the processor heatsink to be extracted immediately from the case.

As for the finishing touch, I’ve removed the original fan of the PSU and replaced it with a Crystal Clear Case Fan with four Red LEDs in the side, and two pulsating Blue LEDs in the middle.

Through a buy-it-together action on a forum in the Netherlands, I had bought a 2 x 20 VFD display, which I had never used because it was a bit too wide to mount in a front bay.

I used this VFD display to give the case a bit more of a ‘bizarre’ look, and I placed it prominently on the front of the case. With some 2-component glue, I glued 4 studs on to the front, on which I mounted the VFD with 4 M3 screws.

Behind this display I mounted a row of high density red LEDs, which were kindly donated by a car’s 3rd break-light.

As sort of an ‘extra’ I placed a skull on top of the VFD display, in which I’ve placed a Ultra-violet coloured LED and 2 yellow LEDs behind it’s eyes, which are blinking.

Because I like Graphic LCD displays very much, and because I have some displays lying around, I wanted to mount one on this case also.

I had this DataVision 240x128 pixel display, which is quite easy to connect to a LPT port. It only needs an additional 5 Volts for the backlight, which is connected to a molex of the power supply.

Now I only had to think of a place for the display... on the top of the computer was no option, since it stands on top of my desk, and I would not have any view of it. Therefore, It had to be mounted on the left hand side.

I had to think of a way to place the LCD firmly on to the case, but also have a good view of it. Therefore I had to make it retractable.

At the previously mentioned computer fair, I had bought a small heat-pipe cooling unit from a laptop computer. This cooling unit was exactly what I needed for my retraction-system.

The LCD display is now firmly mounted, and it can be extended in any angle. For the graphical output, I used a great program called PowerLCD. You can find information about the PowerLCD on .

The back-light and the reset-button of the graphic LCD display should be easily reachable for me, but it should not stand out against the rest of the machine.

Therefore I mounted on the axis of the potentiometer, a capacitor as a knob, and a small switch next to it.

I used a Epox EP8K7A+ mainboard, with AMD Duron 1.3GHz proccessor, 256MB PC2100 memory, a 40GB Maxtor HDD, a 16MB PCI Graphics card and a Philips series 1600 CD-Rw.

For the processor cooling I’ve used a Zalman CNPS6500B-Cu cooler, with a normal 80mm fan mounted on a home-made bracket.

Exactly above the cooler are the holes in the bottom of the PSU, where the warm air from the heatsink is immediately extracted.

On the front there are 20 LEDs, 10 blue LEDs and 10 ultra violet LEDs (405nM), which are controlled by a 20 LEDs HDD VU meter, built around 2 LM3914 IC’s, which makes the LEDs light up by HDD activity.

More information about the electric circuit used, you can find at the of my website.

On top of the case I’ve mounted 10 ultra violet LEDs (395nM) which are controlled by a PCB built around one LM3914 IC.

These LEDs are responding to LAN activity, much like the above mentioned HDD VU meter.

In the front, there is a 10mm multi-coloured LED. With a special little PCB, this LED regulary changes colours...from blue, to yellow, to red and to green, as well as mixed colours.

Mounted on the front is a 80mm tri-coloured fan. This runs on 5Volts, and is only there for the looks, as it serves no real purpose.

In the skull, which is placed above the VFD display, there are mounted two Yellow LEDs as eyes and a UV LED, which pulsates.

Ed. Note: As enthusiasts, a lot of the times we strive to be different. The MoBorg will not allow for extreme overclocks, nor does it easily folds up and fits under your bed. Bart basically did something that he wanted to do, and maybe something a few of you have thought of. Aesthetics are a matter of opinion, but there's no question about the MoBorg breaking from the norm. We hoped you enjoyed this article, and wish Bart thanks for allowing us to show this to you.

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