I've built a few cases out of aluminum in the past but this time around I'm going to build out of acrylic. It will have a metal frame for the motherboard but the rest will be acrylic. I'm planning to vacuum form the body/shell of the case. To design the case im planning to use modeling clay and wrap it in foil. The case is going to be some what of a mock up of the Apple TV but a tad bit taller so I can use a nice tall heatsink. The case it going to be used for a carputer system i'm helping a friend build.

I was wondering, since ambient temp for mobos and components is around 95 F, how do you plan on overcoming the problems you had with the last one that smoked. Wouldn't an aluminum case work better to dissipate heat? Even if you have enough fans on blowing on it if it's hot outside the trunk will be too hot sometimes, unless you pipe AC to it.

The vehicle in question is a chevy cargo van that he's turned into a mobile office since he job takes him on the road.
We are planning to route a A/C line to it to keep it extra cool. Not to mention there is going to be a huge zalman cooler for the CPU a socket7/A heatsink on the north bridge and coolers on the memory modules. There will be a single 80mm fan to blow out the spent air out keeping a constant flow of cool A/C air.

I've had a carputer for a great while and have rebuilt it many of times for upgrades and repairs so the cooling part I got down to a science. The hard part is how to route cables with minimal signal loss, mounting points and keep the hard drive from taking a dump unless I can talk him into SSD.

Thanks for the info, sounds cool.

Since my last reply I have been playing with some ideas on the case design. As said before it's a mock of a Apple TV case but taller to fit add-in cards and also debating where to have the optical drive. Slot load style would be nice but a hidden tray style would be better.

The case is on hold until my friend gets back into town and that won't be until after new years.

Project is canceled.