The toolbox is mostly made of plastic, with metal sides
(the red part) and latches. There is also a metal groove in the top. It has
a removeable tray that I was originally going to leave in, but it turned
out that I just didn't have the room. The underside of the lid has much reinforcement,
and a couple of the spots were just perfect for 80mm exhaust fans.
I had to make sure my motherboard would fit into the toolbox, so I measured
before I bought, and I checked it against the dimensions of some MicroATX
boards. I also had to wait until I received the motherboard before I could
determine how much I could trim off the tray. I purchased a Biostar M7VKQ
from Newegg.com, which was really cheap ($51) and has integrated sound, video
and LAN. A high-performance box this is not. It's intended for my daughter
who is currently less than two years old, for her to play her little kid
games on, and to crunch SETI for me.
The Modding Begins
I marked up the tray with a Sharpy, and there was really quite a bit that
needed to be cut off so it would fit into the toolbox.
This tray has quite a large lip all the way around the back, and I knew
that it would hang down quite a bit on the bottom. I decided to cut off
about half of that and so marked that up too.
It was time to start cutting, so I busted out the hacksaw and went to
it. By the time I was done, I had a much smaller motherboard tray and lots
of lovely chunks of metal and sharp edges. You'll notice in the picture
below that there is now no panel on the side of the recess by the last slot
opening. Luckily, the original end of the recess was a piece that was only
attached at the ends and spot welded in the middle. I cut the ends and the
spot welds popped right off with a little pressure.
I glued the extra piece back onto the tray with some 5-minute epoxy. After
much grinding on the edges with a file to get rid of the burrs, the tray
was pretty much finished.
