Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!)

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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by skier »

really coming along now! what are you gonna be using the server for?
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Fan Setup

Post by ultimatedesk »

skier wrote:really coming along now! what are you gonna be using the server for?
Yup, this is the fun part! No idea what I'll use the server for lol... we'll see!

After gluing a few blocks of foam together with a spray adhesive, I trimmed the block down to the appropriate size using a bandsaw.

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Unfortunately, it wouldn't fit in order to do the vertical cut...

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So I took out the trusty hand saw!

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Here's the plan for the fan layout

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At first I tried cutting the holes with a good quality knife, but the cuts were not very consistent and it took a long time. I ended up using an old drywall saw, which worked perfectly.

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Test fit

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Cut some more holes

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Awesome!

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Let's see how it looks in the right-hand cabinet

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LOL - hilarious. It shouldn't fit like that. At least, it didn't during my initial measurements! I'll have to tweak that a bit later!

On to the crazy fans. I decided to go with 3 instead of 4. There just wasn't enough room for foam between each of the fans, and I figured there would be a lot of vibrational noise if they were touching. I could always go to 4 in the future if this proves to be insufficient.

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Lookin good

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Stay tuned! More stuff tomorrow!
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Server Setup

Post by ultimatedesk »

I was in an extremely fortunate position recently. A friend of mine's work was moving from a large location to a much smaller location, and he had asked me if I wanted to come scope out the old office for any old bits of computer stuff that might be useful to me. To my shock and amazement, I was indeed able to pick up some pretty fancy hardware that I would have never dreamed of owning. They must have done some pretty big upgrades to leave stuff like this behind!

I was able to get a hold of a handful of Socket 775 motherboards with Core 2 Duo processors, a bunch of DDR RAM, a box full of Hard Drives, and some relatively decent (lower powered) power supplies. The real treasure though, was a pair of servers. You can see that I had already disassembled one of them:

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2 Full 4U Antec Rackmount cases, each of them containing a Dual-Xeon motherboard + Processors. Both with FB-DIMM RAM sticks as well.

This particular one contained a pair of Xeon E5410's, with 16GB of DDR2 FB-DIMM's, 4 1TB Western Digital Blacks (SATA), and the motherboard is an Asus DSBF-DE.

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The other one contained a pair of Xeon E5335's, with 4GB of DDR2 FB-DIMM's, 5 1TB Hitachi Deskstas (SATA), and the motherboard is an Asus DSGC-DW.

Now - before we go on - someone had queried earlier about the PCI Express slot on the board pictured, and I had said something along the lines of "Ya ya, it's there, don't worry about it". I of course, actually looked at the pictures, and no, it's not. It is indeed a PCI Express 16x slot, but on this particular motherboard, it only runs at PCI8. Now, the other motherboard, the Asus DSGC-DW DOES have a PCIX16 slot. When it was released, it did not support the 54xx series of Xeon processors, but I checked the website and there is a BIOS update to add this functionality. I will have to do a test setup with that board to update the BIOS, and then it will be swapped into the desk with a full video card, both the E5410's, as well as the 16GB of RAM, so keep that in mind when looking at the rest of this update. No, unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the other motherboard.

Cool stuff either way. Never, ever thought I'd have a dual processor motherboard. What an amazing find!

These dual Xeon heatsinks mount directly into the motherboard tray, so unfortunately, I couldn't use those spiffy motherboard trays from Danger Den. Also, since they are of size "SSI", there's no way it would mount on a regular ATX motherboard tray anyways. Time to drill out a tray!

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It actually came out pretty nice and clean

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This is a bit of a shame, since I took the time to clean the processors, put new thermal compound and remount everything. I'm just going to have to disassemble it again anyways when I put in the different motherboard. Ah well.

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This is a bit of a hack job getting the tray mounted... Since the processors are mounted to the tray, I had mounted it outside of the desk, so when I went to fasten the tray to the desk, I was *gasp* actually lazy and didn't want to dismount the motherboard again... so umm.. I'm going to replace those odd-angled screws when I switch motherboards..

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The power supply looks pretty good there. It's an Antec 650W - an Earthwatts maybe? I forget. I may consider replacing it with a unit that has a 120-140mm fan just to exhaust the air a bit better. The board has a requirement for a 24pin, an 8pin, as well as a 4pin, so I can't just use any power supply unfortunately.

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The cables, of course, are not nearly long enough to reach the connectors on the board. I've already ordered the extensions and hopefully I'll get them at the beginning of next week. Oh, you'll see that I've straightened out the fans as well.

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The cooling solution looks good. There will be two fans directly in front of the CPU's. I may consider putting an additional hole in the door to allow the CPU's and RAM to exhaust directly.

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There is one major issue with the right-hand cabinet setup. The original specifications called for an ATX board, which is significantly smaller, so umm.. I have no idea where the hard-drives are going to fit. lol! Fun times.

Hope you're enjoying this flurry of updates. I may or may not be able to post an update tomorrow, as I'm going camping for the weekend! At the latest, I'll be posting again early next week!
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by vbironchef »

Just my thoughts, so don't get upset. Why are you using old or outdated parts? What you are building is way outdated. Not to mention a heat hog. I don't get it. Why not build with the latest tech? I would never use a old power supply that I don't know the history. Buy a new power supply, no less than a 750W. Heck, after all that work you put into the desk, I would only use new parts all around. What are you thinking? I could keep going, but I think you get the Idea.
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by skier »

vbironchef wrote:Just my thoughts, so don't get upset. Why are you using old or outdated parts? What you are building is way outdated. Not to mention a heat hog. I don't get it. Why not build with the latest tech? I would never use a old power supply that I don't know the history. Buy a new power supply, no less than a 750W. Heck, after all that work you put into the desk, I would only use new parts all around. What are you thinking? I could keep going, but I think you get the Idea.
lol that's just one of his servers he doesnt even have anything planned for, and just for markup purposes i would guess since he has a couple other nicer servers to boot
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by vbironchef »

Got ya. I wonder how much power the whole system is going to draw. I know in my place if I run two computers, tv, coffee maker and hair dryer plus lights my fuse trips.
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by DJ Tucker »

would love to see that power consumption haha. very nicely done so far on that unit. can't wait for the final finished product :)
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by ultimatedesk »

vbironchef wrote:Just my thoughts, so don't get upset. Why are you using old or outdated parts? What you are building is way outdated. Not to mention a heat hog. I don't get it. Why not build with the latest tech? I would never use a old power supply that I don't know the history. Buy a new power supply, no less than a 750W. Heck, after all that work you put into the desk, I would only use new parts all around. What are you thinking? I could keep going, but I think you get the Idea.
Hey vbironchef, no offense taken so no worries, but as with most things in life, the limiting factor is of course, money! I got these parts for free, which I thought was just fantastic timing. I am under the impression that a dual Xeon setup with 16GB of RAM is quite a bit more powerful and also quite a bit more *interesting* compared to anything else I would be able to currently afford. The PSU is a 650W, which is not a whole lot compared to our modern day power systems, and the server itself was used as a video-on-demand backup server - ie. it never saw any action, which is why it was being thrown away.

I can of course, see in the future, something else being moved in to replace the server system, no doubt, but for now, that is the the second most powerful system at my disposal (Yes - the Core i5-2500K just came in for the gaming system, fyi...)
DJ Tucker wrote:would love to see that power consumption haha. very nicely done so far on that unit. can't wait for the final finished product :)
Heh, that is certainly something to be concerned about. The desk will also have two power strips mounted to it - one for each system, hopefully, with long enough cords so that they will each connect into different circuits.. lol!


A huge thanks goes out to Gigabyte for supplying me with this amazing motherboard - a GA-Z68XUD4-B3.

Without a doubt, the coolest motherboard I have ever owned!

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I could barely wait to open this up when I got it in the mail!

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And this poor motherboard tray that had been sitting for months and months covered in brown paper - finally had it removed. It looks even better than I could have hoped!

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Here is the test fit in the actual desk

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And with the fans in place

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I'm going to trim off the plastic tabs from the motherboard tray to make it a bit easier to build the tunnels for cable management. Also, I'm considering putting a pair of holes beneath the motherboard to pass cables through underneath. Lots of stuff happening in the next few weeks!

I attempted to boot up the Asus DSGC-DW board (The one with the PCIx16 slot) but it would not boot. I'm afraid that that particular motherboard has gone bad, so I will continue to use the board with the PCIx8 slot. Anyone have any suggestions with regards to determining the best video card I can put in a PCIx16 slot with only x8 bandwidth? I was thinking I could look at the theoretical bandwith of an 8x slot and match it with that of the video card to maximize performance (ie. no point in installing a 5970x2 in an x8 slot).

Anyways, hopefully will have a handful of updates this week!
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by lordvic »

Some awesome server systems, handy socket 775 boards + Core2Duo's..my god..you've struck gold!
Will you considering selling a/some 775 boards + CPUs? what kind of DDR RAM are those? :) :)

For the server, you could mount the drives in the open area behind the top intake fans, in fron of the PSU. Seems to be enough space for several drives...plus the fan will be blowing directly at them, keeping them cool.

As for a graphics card, PCI-E X8 (gen 1.0 or 1.1?) bandwidth shouldn't have too much of a bottleneck for most mainstream/higher-end cards. Of course GTX 580/590 Radeon HD 5970X2, 6990 will be bottlenecked, but cards like the Radeon HD 6850,6870, 5870, GTX 560 Ti, GTX 460, GTX 470 should be okay.

:shock: Xeon E5410 are Quads with 12MB of L2 cache?! They seem to overclock quite well too :) .
Xeon E5335's aren't too shaby either.

Just hate it when the bandsaw is a little too short...so close, yet so far....
The desk is coming along quite nice as well, keep it up..along with the updates and photos.
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by Major_A »

From what I've read in various articles regarding 16x or 8x the difference in performance is negligible. The only place you'd notice the difference is running a video card benchmark. In actual gameplay tests you wouldn't notice the difference, even with a highend card.

I hate point to Tom's but here's an article testing various PCIe speeds.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci ... ,2887.html
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by ultimatedesk »

lordvic wrote:Some awesome server systems, handy socket 775 boards + Core2Duo's..my god..you've struck gold!
Will you considering selling a/some 775 boards + CPUs? what kind of DDR RAM are those? :) :)

For the server, you could mount the drives in the open area behind the top intake fans, in fron of the PSU. Seems to be enough space for several drives...plus the fan will be blowing directly at them, keeping them cool.

As for a graphics card, PCI-E X8 (gen 1.0 or 1.1?) bandwidth shouldn't have too much of a bottleneck for most mainstream/higher-end cards. Of course GTX 580/590 Radeon HD 5970X2, 6990 will be bottlenecked, but cards like the Radeon HD 6850,6870, 5870, GTX 560 Ti, GTX 460, GTX 470 should be okay.

:shock: Xeon E5410 are Quads with 12MB of L2 cache?! They seem to overclock quite well too :) .
Xeon E5335's aren't too shaby either.

Just hate it when the bandsaw is a little too short...so close, yet so far....
The desk is coming along quite nice as well, keep it up..along with the updates and photos.
Thanks Lordvic, it is indeed the gold mine, no question about that. It is enough that I was able to give away several socket 478 systems, bringing my current troubleshooting stockpile up to date with stuff that is only 2 or 3 generations old lol. The E5410's are insane, yes, but they are proving to be... difficult...
Major_A wrote:From what I've read in various articles regarding 16x or 8x the difference in performance is negligible. The only place you'd notice the difference is running a video card benchmark. In actual gameplay tests you wouldn't notice the difference, even with a highend card.

I hate point to Tom's but here's an article testing various PCIe speeds.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci ... ,2887.html
Thanks Major_A - I think you are 100% on the dot - after doing a bit of searching myself, that's also the conclusion I came to

So - it's been another few busy weeks, so apologies for the no updates. Have been enjoying those last rays of sunshine before the summer ends!

I think I mentioned last update that I tried to boot up the Asus DSFC-DW board but had issues - here was the attempt:

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I got a green LED to light up (Standby power on the motherboard) but jumping the Power ON pins had no reaction whatsoever. Tried it with a different videocard, re-seated the RAM and CPU's, but still no luck.

Moving onwards - since I un-mounted almost everything, I decided to keep the copper heatinks instead of the aluminum ones for the other motherboard. I also picked up a pair of these units from Rosewill via Newegg:

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They should do nicely for my hard-drive racks. I would like to mount them like so, except higher up:

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Unfortunately, they are deeper than the cabinet I built. At the time, I was thinking maybe they would stick out of my air intake window, and I would just build-out the section of the door with the air filter... Not exactly what I had in mind initially though.

With most of the major components in place, I decided to start tackling the cable management with some cardboard templates, and then some 1/8" plywood:

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At this point I was a little frustrated with how slowly this portion of the project was going. Things weren't quite fitting the way I had planned, and they were not looking as nice as I would have liked them to...

Maybe it's time for some thinking instead of doing.

I decided (In hindsight, unfortunately) to go ahead and mount the hard-drive racks so I could get some better measurements and ideas of how to manage the cables nicely.

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Installed the fans and started to route some of the cables

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Took out a handful of old SATA cables... (Yes, let's not forget, that I'm a computer tech first, and a carpenter second, or maybe even fifth or tenth...)

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And had fun connecting all the bits and trying to get them in a reasonable state of organization

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Ugh... this will not do, this will not do at all. Might as well boot it up and see if everything works though (I had mounted and un-mounted the board several times, banged around a few things, etc, so might as well see if it's all still working!)

This would be the first time I see if all the fans work as well. Keep in mind that this is with the door removed.

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Until next time.. still not quite sure what I'll be doing next.
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by DJ Tucker »

congrats on the build. would love to see the whole unit with the doors open and see how it looks :)
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Seasonic and a New Layout

Post by ultimatedesk »

DJ Tucker wrote:congrats on the build. would love to see the whole unit with the doors open and see how it looks :)
Thanks DJ Tucker - I'll get there eventually lol


First off I want to give out a huge thank you to Seasonic, who has decided to sponsor The Ultimate Computer Desk by sending a ~really~ sweet Power Supply my way. An 850 Watt Seasonic Gold.

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Thanks Seasonic! We'll take a closer look at that PSU a bit later..

I had been a little frustrated with the layout of the Dual CPU Xeon board for quite some time, so I finally made the decision to ditch it and setup the right-hand cabinet with an ATX sized board. This is more in spec with my initial design - the extra couple inches makes a big difference, and it will make it easier to upgrade in the future as well.

On one hand, I'm a little disappointed that I won't be using that super geeked out board, but rest assured, I'll find something else neat to do with it.

So I went ahead and removed everything and started from scratch. Looks way better already:

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I then decided that, unfortunately, through the miracle of cable limitations, it would make a lot more sense if I put the optical drive in the front of the case, as opposed to up above the desk, where I had originally wanted to put it. So, time to do some more cutting.

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The masking tape managed to pull off some of the polyurethane, but have no fear, I will be making a faceplate that will contain the power button, LED's, and USB ports that will cover that spot up quite nicely.

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And, we've gone so far, yet, gained so little, eh? It'll get done, I swear!
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by Major_A »

And, we've gone so far, yet, gained so little, eh? It'll get done, I swear!
As they (wish I knew who they were) the Devil is in the details.
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by smack323 »

How are you getting these companies to send you all this stuff?
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New Layout Work

Post by ultimatedesk »

Major_A wrote:
And, we've gone so far, yet, gained so little, eh? It'll get done, I swear!
As they (wish I knew who they were) the Devil is in the details.
They sure are, my god, building the desk was easy! All this small stuff though, phewph!
smack323 wrote:How are you getting these companies to send you all this stuff?
Heya smack323 - lots of work, unsurprisingly!

1. Start a cool project. Your project must have some admirable qualities that companies will want to associate with (ie. quality, performance, aesthetics, etc...)
2. Get some traffic! Post on forums, advertise it on blogs, create a web page!
3. Work! The project needs some traction.
4. Visit websites for potential sponsors (Crucial, Gigabyte, Seasonic, etc...) - what you're looking for is a contact in either the Marketing, or Public Relations department. Sometimes you must go through the general inquiry line, and sometimes even through the sales people! Lots of e-mailing, phone calls, and persistence will pay off here.
5. Make your case
- Hey, company X - I've got this really cool project, and what do you know, it has qualities that are also found in YOUR products!
- I've got all these X people coming to see it, and they say it's cool, so it must be!
- What do you know - all of these X people are actually potential customers of yours, this could be some good exposure!
- This is a win for me because it makes the project more awesome, and this is a win for you because you get to be associated with it, and everyone else also thinks your products AND company are awesome for participating! That's a win win!
6. Hope for the best! Not all companies have a budget for sending out samples! Sometimes it's also not worth it for a company to send you an old piece of hardware, so timing is key as well (Prime example - when Sandy Bridge was first released, I went around asking for a motherboard, but then it got recalled! No one was about to send me a P67 board, that's for sure. Right now, it might be difficult to get a video card sponsored, since all of the cards on the market are "old". Now, if say, AMD goes and releases a brand new card in the next couple months... prime opportunity! Marketing budgets just went sky high!)

There really is a lot of luck involved. Between timing, the current marketing aim of the company, and budget constraints, you never know.

Hope that answered your questions, at least in a basic sense!

Feeling a bit more motivated about the right-hand cabinet, I decided that the foam fan-holder had to go. It was too large, was akward, and was difficult to keep straight and in the proper position.

I decided to put together a nice and clean fan holder:

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After doing some measuring, I took it to the drill press for the initial holes (I didn't have a hole saw for 120mm fans unfortunately... that would be pretty huge!)

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I then took out the spindle sander to sand right to the line. Just an fyi, I swapped out the spindle for a much larger one. This was my first time using this type of sander, and I was very impressed - the degree of accuracy and control is extremely high - perfect for sneaking up on the pre-drawn lines.

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Time to drill some holes for the fan screws

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And a test fit. The product came out quite nicely - accurate cuts, all 4 of the positions are secure with screws, and this piece should be much easier to align in the proper location in the case.

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I had cut a few other new pieces for cable management, but they were rough cuts, as I will not know their exact dimensions until I install hardware. I can't install hardware until I finish cutting and drilling in the right-hand cabinet, and since there is still the issue of the power button, LED's, etc...

Time to get started on that, I suppose!

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Kinda looks like a bull head eh?
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by lordvic »

Spindle sanders are fantastic for those pencil marksings & hard to reach areas. :lol:

IMHO, routing the cables behind the foam fan holders is a pretty good idea.
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by ultimatedesk »

lordvic wrote:Spindle sanders are fantastic for those pencil marksings & hard to reach areas. :lol:

IMHO, routing the cables behind the foam fan holders is a pretty good idea.
Yes, spindle sander - I will use that much more often in the future. As for the cable routings...

I guess it's been a while eh!

Well, you'll be glad to know, that I'm actually almost done. There've been a few changes to the original plan, etc, etc, but I've still been goign full steam ahead, just not a lot of time to post updates lately.

Here you go, some photo bombardment!

First off, my awful cutting job. Notice how the masking tape ripped off some of the polyurethane? Looks pretty great eh.. (NOT!)

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Fitting my original faceplate design

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I thought it didn't look too bad, but the USB ports were difficult to secure, and there were no audio jacks, so I went about and redesigned a new face plate

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Did some work with the band saw, scroll saw, and some sanding, and voila!

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Looks not terrible eh? That's a nice unit from Silverstone that I picked up from my local computer store. Everything fits real nice and tight

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Holes for the power switch and LEDs look good

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And a quick test fit

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Wonderful! I cut the hole for the card reader / usb with a jigsaw, but neglected to take photos...

Anyways - after a couple coats of black spray paint, I think it looks pretty cool.

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With the faceplate out of the way, and hopefully, the last of the drilling / sawing / making sawdust portion over, for the right-hand cabinet, it meant I had the all clear to install more hardware.

Here are the two hard-drive trays with the actual HDD trays removed.

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Gave them a nice coat of black spray paint and they mounted them inside the cabinet. I think they look pretty groovy.

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Even groovier loaded up with hard drives.. (Two missing in this pic, 7TB total, however!)

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Now, before we get to the next pic... another boon happened recently - traded some of those Core 2 Duo systems + some cash and picked up a really cool previous generation Core i5!

Here's the power supply - a Corsair 650TX, a very quality unit. All that could be better is some modular action. Ah well!

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And another beautiful Gigabyte motherboard - a GA-P55-USB3 with 4 GB of G.Skill RAM

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Here's the sweet mother. A quad core 2.8Ghz. Wow, talk about moving on up the CPU chain!

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I picked up an older version of the Coolermaster Hyper 212 (Not the Plus version) and mounted a pair of Scythe fans to it

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Oooh, it's getting so close to boot time!

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ultimatedesk
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by ultimatedesk »

Wow, with all those SATA cables there, it sure messes things up, no?

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I went ahead and threw in my current video card (Radeon HD5770, which kicks some pretty decent butt still). I'm sure I'll see an improvement from my P4 3.2!!!

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And here's the magical moment. It looks like it's already been tweaked around a bit. Running at 3.2Ghz instead of 2.8Ghz, RAM speed up to 1600Mhz... Hey - nice temps! That's only a few degrees over ambient! (It's chilly in the basement)

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Only one major problem with this setup... Can you see what it might be? (Well, ok, there's more than one thing not "ideal")

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That might cause an issue. I also don't like the way the heatsink exhausts all of its hot air directly onto the back of the video card, so off to the local computer shop!

This should do the trick:

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Much better. Fits almost like it was meant to be.

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Looks real good there actually. I think the wide fin spacing will be an advantage as well, since there is going to be a lot of general air flow throughout the cabinet.

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Major_A
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Re: Scratch Build: The Ultimate Computer Desk (56k Warning!!

Post by Major_A »

Looks like you need to get crossflow in there. That wood is going to insulate a lot of heat.
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