Wooden Box PC

[Dead Reckon]

Was thinkin', I got all this junk laying around, PII's, PIII's, PIII Celerons, P4's, heck I think I got a core duo 1.8GHz somewhere, anyway, I was thinkin', I could build a Pentium 4 Northwood based system, got the junk to throw in it, but I wanted to do something custom for a case. As of current, I have no idea what I'm going to use. Anyone got any idea's they'd like to throw my way?

[Calum]

What sort of materials do you have/want to use?
My experience with custom cases runs as far as a shelf with the hardware slapped on it and a load of fans pointed everywhere to cool it - I did and do have more ambitious plans but don't have the time, equipment or skills yet.

[patio]

[Mulreay]

Genius!! lol

[patio]

Note the AC control box on the wall...for regulating cooling !

[Mulreay]

Note the AC control box on the wall...for regulating cooling !

I competely missed that  I was to busy laughing at the speaker at the top. I want one!! 

[Dead Reckon]

I dunno, I was almost thinking of making a wooden case 'cause I've got some 3/4" plywood. I have a saw I bought recently, Nikita mutli-speed two way battery operated drill, and a belt sander. Wooden box would be pretty sweet I think. Could get my father to help me stain it, I've only stained a couple things and I'm honestly not that good at it.

Heh, I could make a wooden cube. Nice uh.. Wire rig.. by the way...

[Mulreay]

I dunno, I was almost thinking of making a wooden case 'cause I've got some 3/4" plywood. I have a saw I bought recently, Nikita mutli-speed two way battery operated drill, and a belt sander. Wooden box would be pretty sweet I think. Could get my father to help me stain it, I've only stained a couple things and I'm honestly not that good at it.
Heh, I could make a wooden cube. Nice uh.. Wire rig.. by the way...

your limits are your imagination and ventilation of course.

[Dead Reckon]

Heh, ventilation would be no problem, plenty of fans, some vents, make it look retro probably. Like an old cube shaped floor standing radio.

[Dead Reckon]

Alright, got a basic design lined up, uploaded it below.

It'll have plenty of venting and I'll use some 60's or 70's looking cloth as a fan filter, might use a prefabbed motherboard tray and PSU mount out of a case I have laying around, or atleast to make a stencil. The lid will open to the left or rear, not sure which, but  there will be a lot of empty space in this thing. Good for later modifications, so I can keep reusing it and maybe one day water cool it or something. Also going to add something to the bottom, legs, or something for it to sit on. Further note, its not exactly to scale but I think the box is going to be about 2.5x2.5x2.5ft, or 3x3x3ft, maybe a lil larger if I have enough wood. The design will likely change as I'm working on it to suite needed modifications, the four rings on the front represent the buttons and LED's

From left to right the front button layout will be:

Power switch, Power LED, HDD LED, Reset switch. the vent below the switches will be the hard drive bay. The two vents on the sides will be front 80mm or larger intake fans. The mesh around the rest of the case will not be filled with fans, most of it will be covering wood, some of it will be intake. It will be removable and washable.

As a final note, I'm doing this for my love of the Fallout series, something about that Puppet PC hanging from the ceiling tripped in my head "Wooden Retro PC"

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[Dead Reckon]

Think the specs are going to be a 3.0GHz socket 478 pentium prescott or a 3.40GHz Socket 775 Pentium 4 prescott, GPU will be a 512MB 128b AGP 8x 7300GT, or, if I can coax my PCI-E 1.0 16x 256MB 128B 7600GT back to life, I'll use it. If I use the 775 P4, I'll need to get more DDR2 RAM, but if I use the 478, I can just toss in a couple 512's I got around here and be done with it. Think I'm going for the 478 P4 once I get my friend to repair the motherboard I intend to use with it. Its got some bad capacitors. The power supply I'm using is a 550W 35A rosewill ATX PSU, hard drive will be a 320GB ATA-100 WD3200 series. Don't have another DVD burner at the time, I'll have to get one.

[Calum]

Like the design and the idea.
Good luck and keep us updated.

[patio]

Calum didn't you do a wood case somewhile back ? ?

[Calum]

Started off trying to, but decided it was too much effort.
It ended up just sitting on a shelf under my desk, so it was enclosed top, bottom and right but the shelf it sat on pulled out so it was easy to dust/poke.  Worked well enough for what I needed, the successor to that machine uses the same principle but due to space constraints it's on a smaller shelf, no pull-out board, and enclosed on the left side too.
For what I was doing, making a proper case was too much effort for no real purpose, I was pulling the machine out and doing something to it a few times a week and was also gauging temps by a finger on the heatsinks (not very accurate but better than Speedfan's random readings which didn't correspond to anything, the board was supposed to have temp sensors but didn't see the need to report them to any program I tried), which is hard to do when it's in a case.

[Dead Reckon]

Heh, finger testing, man that can suck. I've gotten bit many times by hot circuitry and heatsinks. Anyway, Zylstra is loaning me some server space for a blog, it'll be a slow coming project, I'll post a link when I get the blog or whatever setup.

And thanks, the design is quick, prototype, it'll change over time. My father thinks I can get some vintage stereo cloth. It breaths pretty good, that nylon stuff, but it will also catch dust good enough to act as a "Filter".

I am considering other designs as well, got plenty of time, its gonna be a week or two before I can get a 7 1/4" blade for my circular saw. That's something I don't get, why did they call it a circular saw? What else is it going to be? A cuboid saw?