Hey, it's me again.. hi.
Lab rats can't leave anything well enough alone.. we're always effin' around with something. I dunno about you, but I
really hate tearing my system all apart to change something around and get it all put back together only to find something isn't working or maybe I change my mind about something. Here I go again.. tear the damned thing apart again, pull the mobo, etc, etc, put it all back together.. bla bla bla. It's enough to make me kick puppies.
So I think about an open rack-mounted system where I can get at things easily and tweak things around until it's 5:30 am and I gotta get up for work in a half hour, only I never went to bed, I'm freakin' exhaused, and today's gonna blow moose..
Problem: The damned things are
expensive.
Solution: Build one for 10 bucks.
Requirements:
1. It's gotta look halfway decent.
2. It's gotta be strong.
3. It's gotta have room for everything.
4. It's gotta be easy to get at stuff.
I have a computer desk that I got about 10 years ago.. I've beat it all to hell and back but it's still sound. There's a shelf above the monitor where I've always put my system in it's full tower case. I'm gonna use this shelf for the system since my computer room is 10.5x13 and there's just no room to add anything except upward. It's kinda ridiculous but I've got the following stuffed into this room:
- a large computer/office desk w/chair
- a filing cabinet
- another computer desk w/chair
- 2 large bookshelfs
- a grandfather clock
- 2 full sized leather chairs
- a coffee table
- 2 guitars and an amp
- a ton of computer hardware
- a chainsaw
The room is stuffed so dense that it's ripped space/time and there's a small black-hole forming in the corner, but that's kinda cool since I can use it for a trash can and get rid of pizza boxes, beer cans, fried mobos, and dead bodies.
So here's the shelf above the monitor:
http://home.comcast.net/~jnk1000/1_base.jpg
I told you it's beat all to hell!
It's open at the front and the sides go up about 2.5 inches on the other three sides. I've drilled two holes in the back, the reason will be apparent soon.
I use an Innovatek passive radiator to cool my chipset, mosfets, video card, and RAID array. Since combined they don't generate too terribly many watts, I can slip the radiator nice and out of the way right on the shelf.
http://home.comcast.net/~jnk1000/2_passive.jpg
Yep.. the holes in the back are for the tubing to and from the radiator.
So now I've got to find something to use to hold all the parts, and it's gotta be under 10 bucks. Time for a late-night trip to Sprawl-Mart. I find some plastic shelving for $9.95. I wait around a bit for the little yellow smiley bastard from the commercials to head-butt a couple bucks off the price, but he's probably getting drunk back on the loading dock with all the cashiers.. how else do you explain 48 checkout lines but only 2 cashiers. So I dodge the degenerate chasing me down the aisle with the floor buffer.. the signs say he's been to prison so I don't offer any rude finger gestures his way. I take my place in the shorter of the two lines, it's only running ten customers deep, and I wait behind a woman with six kids and a bad case of emphysema. Her bank is also apparently in some third-world country because she's trying to write a check that requires the approval of no less than 4 managers and the ghost of Sam Walton. 45 minutes later, the cashier greets me brightly, "Puttin' up some shelves, are ya?", "Yea", I reply cheerfully, "It's gonna hold my collection of severed heads!" Some people got no damned sense of humor. So I get home and get the shelves laid out to accept the mobo.
http://home.comcast.net/~jnk1000/3_overview.jpg
Made in China? Damned straight. Sprawl Mart might talk up the red, white, and blue, but when it comes to the bottom line, they bleed the red and yellow.
It sits above the passive radiator and it's held firmly in place by slipping the legs over some nails I've driven into the desk. Some standoffs for the motherboard and I'm ready to start shoving in the components.
http://home.comcast.net/~jnk1000/4_mobo.jpg
Mmmm.. lot's of room.
So I shove some stuff in there.. I've got two cooling loops, one for the chipset, Dual RAID HDD array, mosfets, and videocard using the passive radiator, and another dedicated loop for the CPU using one of those outragious Black-Ice Extreme III radiators.. the one with the space for three 120mm fans. You could cool a backhoe engine with this muther. In this photo, you can't see the passive radiator because I hid it underneath, but the mobo, the HDD enclosure, the Black-Ice Extreme III, and the various waterblocks are visible.
http://home.comcast.net/~jnk1000/5_water_cool.jpg
Still lots of room.. let's shove everything else in there.
http://home.comcast.net/~jnk1000/6_system.jpg
We have the passive radiator hiding out underneath. On the first shelf, we have the mobo with it's waterblocks, the fanless PSU, and the various stuff that comes off the mobo (power switch, LED's, redundant BIOS selector switch, USB, and firewire connectors). These miscellaneous switches and connectors will be mounted to the front side of the shelf below the mobo and the wiring will be hidden by drilling through the shelf and shoving all the excess down through the holes. On the second shelf, we have the HDD array in it's watercooled enclosure along with the Black-Ice CPU radiator and fans mounted in the rear. Also we find a DVD drive, an IDE drive in a passive aluminum radiator enclosure, and a floppy drive. The pumps also sit up here. An Innovatek HPPS pump for the drives, chipset, mosfets, and video.. and a Laing DDC-17 pump for the CPU pushing about 80 GPH through a Dangerden TDX waterblock and the Black-Ice radiator.
The next step will be to drill the holes. Then the switches can be mounted and the drive cables and water tubing routed to and from the mobo to the stuff living upstairs.. and I'll spray-paint the whole thing flat black.
More to come.
Notice: No puppies were kicked in the posting of this thread.
Strip and Go Naked - Caseless System
Linear Mode
