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Setting the Specifications for my Build

A pinball cabinet has a lot of parts. I mean a lot. So many that it's hard to keep track of them without a list, so the first thing I did was start a spreadsheet listing all the parts I was going to need, using The Bible as a reference point. Living in the UAE means that half the parts I need aren't available locally, so have to be ordered from abroad, with all the delays and extra costs of international shipping and customs clearance. Luckily, Amazon handles that all for me.

Size matters

My starting point was that I didn't want to build a full-size cabinet (which will typically be 140-150cm deep and about 140cm tall (excluding legs). The reasons were varied:

  1. I have the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) to take into consideration
  2. I didn't want to build an all-out machine in case I end up not enjoying it as much as I expected and a mid-sized cabinet may eventually be easier to sell.
  3. A mid-sized cabinet will be easier to ship, given that I'm not going to live in the UAE forever
  4. And following on from the last point, whilst I may have enough room in this house for a full-size cabinet, that might not be true of the next place I live
  5. A mid-size cabinet can be built purely from PC monitors, which tend to a) have high resolutions b) have low input lag c) have high refresh rates and d) most importantly, will power on and off with the PC, removing the need for some sort of smart power switching system which would be needed if I were using TVs

With these considerations in mind, and having already enjoyed playing portrait desktop pinball on my PC with its 27" monitor, this seemed like a good starting point. 27" monitors are large enough to feel immersive and offer high resolutions and high refresh rates (my desktop monitor is 2K and 165 Hz refresh). Using a 27" playfield as a starting point, I then took the Pinscape building plan and scaled down all the dimensions linearly by a factor of 1.35. I found that this scale factor resulted in a cabinet that was exactly wide enough for my chosen 27" monitor (an LG 27GP850-B) with just a few milimetres either side to allow me to lift it out when needed. Having established 1.35 as the magic number, the sizes of the two remaining monitors was set by the space available inside the backbox. I could have chosen to deviate from the 1.35 scale for the backbox, in order to allow me to use a larger DMD display (the space between the backbox speakers is 278mm, so this constrains the DMD to 10.4" or smaller), but to keep things simple I've kept everything at 1.35. For the backbox display, I found a Samsung 22" monitor (LS22A330NHMXUE) that fit perfectly inside the width of the backbox, with a few mm clearance either side.

The DMD itself I'm still undecided about. For the time being I have an old iPad 3 which I can connect to the PC using USB and control using Showdesk and which will work fine, except for the fact that it won't switch off when I turn off the PC. Which means that its battery will run out if I don't play for a few days. And then I will have to manually open the backbox and turn the iPad back on again. So not ideal, but this is one area I'm waiting to fix later in the build.
[Edit] I ended up buying this 10.1" display which is a perfect fit, powered by USB and takes a standard HDMI cable. Couldn't be happier with it.

Screens

The other main starting consideration is whether to go for a two-monitor backbox, or single-monitor backbox. This decision is a matter of personal taste - I went for the two-monitor design because I think it looks better, and has the advantage of leaving room for backbox speakers, which is something I wanted to have.

Buttons

The next choice was how many buttons I wanted. Two flipper buttons, a start, an exit, a coin button and a way of launching the ball (button or plunger) are always necessary. Additional choices include magna-save buttons, a launch button to supplement a plunger (or vice versa), a coin door button, power button, volume buttons, ... the choice is endless. You can also decide if you want them to be LED-illuminated or not. In the end, I settled for the following buttons on the front panel:

In addition, the floor of the cabinet will have:

And finally, I am also putting a two-port keystone template into the base of the cabinet. This will hold 1x USB connector (so I can backup the machine to an external HDD without opening it up) and 1x Ethernet connector (in case the WiFi built-in to the motherboard struggles to work through the cabinet walls). On that latter topic, I largely intend to keep the machine off the internet once it's built and working, to avoid annoying Windows updates messing things up.

Sound

I want to build a full 7.1 surround-sound feedback (SSF) system into the cabinet, because I am not going to put in contactors or solenoids and I think (hope) that for a cabinet of this size, the SSF will be a good enough approximation. Thus I'm going to need:

The PC

Finally, an area I know something about. I have a few bits and pieces lying around but need to buy the bulk of it. Sadly, with GPU prices being what they are, combined with living in the UAE with very limited choice, I'm being "forced" to go for a RTX 3xxx series GPU rather than buying an older 2xxx or 1xxx series. This is probably over-kill for the resolution I'm driving, but is at least future-proof and frankly, nothing else is available here. The parts:

Power

The PC itself will be powered using a Corsair 600 W SFX (small-form factor) fully-modular PSU. Fully-modular means that you only plug in the cables you need (this is a more expensive option, but it avoids the rat's tail of cables that come out of the back of a cheaper PSU, half of which are unnecessary for a cabinet build). The PC will only draw 400W or so (based on the PCPartsPicker tool) so 600W should be fine.

I will use another, smaller (450W) PSU to power the LEDs in the cabinet. At the outset, these will only be LEDs in some of the front-panel buttons, which just need a 5V supply. I have an ATX power breakout board that will take the 24-pin ATX cable from a PSU and provide simple connections to 12V and 5V rails, the latter of which will go to the button LEDs. The three amplifiers need 12V supply at around 108W combined (3A per amplifier), which I can also draw from the PSU (though it turns out that powering amps from a PC PSU is a bad idea - so this idea was scrapped in implementation).

Cabinet hardware

I bought a set of authentic Williams/Bally chrome legs with the associated levellers, brackets, buts and bolts. This means the table will be near to standard height. I'm hoping this will be comfortable to play on...other build guides I've seen for mid-sized builds like this don't mention issues with the height. On top of this, I'm getting the standard Williams/Bally plunger assembly, to connect to the Zebsboard digital plunger.

Lights and other feedback devices

I don't have immediate plans to install any lights or other feedback devices, but I have a few ideas that I will possibly implement later on once the main machine is up and running:

Next

With the basic specs set, the next step was to design the actual cabinet