Stackable aluminium open air case frame for GPU Mining Rig

This DIY minercase was made with simplicity in mind. It is made from aluminum angle bar that can be found in any hardware store.

Cryptocurrencies

It wasn’t meant to mine any specific coin but it’s used in real life with 6 AMD RX570 2x600w PSU, mining Dagger hashimoto (ETH, ETC, …) and/or Cryptonite (XMR, ...) algorithms.

Design

Aluminum is light, robust, durable and elegant. It is not very conductive, (and you could push that even further with anodized aluminum) and doesn’t retain heat. And keep the overall frame lightweight thus easy to move around.

The base design is open and keep space between your electronic components and graphic cards for better thermal dissipation and preventing them of interfering with each other for a quitter result. Reserved enough space for equipment overhaul enhancing the cooling and extending the lifespan of graphics cards

The basic design dimension are as follow 640mm x 320mm x 320mm

<3 round numbers :)

• Dimensions 640mm x 320mm x 320mm
• Weight ???
• Material aluminium.
• Color silver

The design is modular and variations can be made :

• to fit high capacity
• as a shelf / rack
• adapted to 6, 8, 12 GPU

CAD (Computer-aided design)

The conception was made with Freecad but a few exports are available for other CAD softwares:

• STEP or IGES for Solidworks
• DWG for AutoCad or Sketchup

Parameters

The rig as been parameterised in Freecad via a Spreadsheet for easier customization. The following parameters are available:

Every piece of the frame are made of standard aluminium corners but you can change their characteristics depending on your findings: bar_thickness 1.5mm bar_width 20mm bar_height 15mm graphic_card_length 270mm graphic_card_height 112mm width 640mm height 320mm bottom_empty_space 20mm top_empty_space 20mm

You can easily switch these values from mm to inches For example of you’d like to fit 12 graphic cards instead of 6 you could simply raise the width of the design.

• You could put 2 range of graphic cards or 1 range of graphic card with a double width design
• Could fit any kind of motherboard, graphic card, any kind of hardware with the proper tweaks.
• It was tought for usage with 120mm fans but not a requirement.
• The design can be made stackable in two ways.
• If your planning from the start to fit many mining rig in the same design you need to double or triple the vertical bar and duplicate the design as many time as required.
• If it’s an afterthought process, just make another case and print this little 3D printed piece (we’re to call it the joiner) to maintain the cases together.

Make

Required tools

• rivet plier
• drill bit for aluminum (1 of )
• tap (to create threaded holes, to secure the graphic cards)
• metal saw

Consumables

• 28 pop rivets - 4x10mm
• regular case screws
• spacers to secure your motherboard (usually shipped with any case, but can be found online, or scavenged from old cases)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Toennchen_IMGP5029_wp.jpg

This rig is only made of 2 types of aluminium angle bar:

• One with equal sides, from a profile view it would looks as this ⌟
• One with a shorter side, from a profile view it would looks as this ｣

https://www.bricodepot.fr/lyon-st-priest/corniere-en-aluminium-brut-l-250m-l-20mm-h-20mm-ep-15mm/prod1791/ https://decines.entrepot-du-bricolage.fr/pr-corniere-egale-en-aluminium-anodise-15x15cm-couleur-argent-2-5m-rqdb020205-1089668,40917,71,332,794,1238.htm

Here is a formula to calculate the total length of raw material required. length of ⌟ required = 4 * height length of ｣ required = 5 * width + 4 depth

For example if the bars were sold by units of 2 meters each: You would need: ⌟ 4 * unit_length sold_length number_of_bars_required |Sold_length / 4 * unit_length|

Manual

The manual as other parts of the project is a work in progress...

Bonuses

• To reduce vibrations you can create rubber washer out of old bike tires and a hollow hole punch for leather.
• There is a 3D printable foot projects/foot.fcstd that could be made out of soft plastic or rubber like material, but these kind of materials doesn’t come cheap unfortunately.