Roadside Junk in a Box

[Higgl3]

Junk in a box

 

 

 

 

Back Story, Parts and Planning

 

So, I was walking around Melbourne one afternoon and it happened to be hard rubbish day. I spied what looked to be a PC in one pile of junk and went over to have a look. I opened it up, thinking it's probably just trash and find to my suprise a build with an intel core i5 2500, 8gigs of 1333mhz ram and a HSI AMD 6790:

(I'd already dismantled it an put it back together for this picture)

 

So I took it home and plugged it up to a screen, thinking "there's no way this is ever going to work" and lo and behold, IT POSTS! 

 

given my current computer is an old netbook and I was just thinking whether or not to build a budget gaming PC, this is like a magical gift from the great lord Gaben himself!

 

But before putting it in my room I definitely wanted to get a better case! something smaller, quieter and preferably very very cheap (I'm just starting at uni and have very little money)

 

So I went and ordered some parts:

 

The Graphics card seemed to be bust, so I bought an R9 270 ($215) and I splurged on a 256 gig Samsung 840 evo ssd ($150). I also purchased a 2Tb Seagate barracuda ($100), 2 of the cheapest 140mm fans I could find (nanoxia deep silence for $9 each) and a Silverstone 2x140mm magnetic fan filter($14). 

 

However upon  plugging this all in and installing Windows (Student copy for $70  ) I plugged in the graphics card to find it still didn't work (yeah I tried changing the display options in the bios and un and reinstalling drivers and stuff). So I figured the PCI-E bus must be dead (which is probably the reason that whoever it was threw out the computer anyway thank Gaben!)

 

SO, back to the internet to order some more parts. I bought a Gigabyte B75-D3H ($90, the price inflated by their lack of availability) and just to be on the safe side I bought a corsair 500 watt, bronze, modular power supply because I DID NOT trust that Ritmo "tri-fan, gamer edition" power supply that was already in there.

 

In the meantime I'd done a few quick scribbles of ideas I had for a case and drawn it all up in Google Sketchup:

I'd decided at this stage to make it out of wood, as I love the look, It's cheap, and something I can easily work with

The Building of the thing

 

So I went out and bought me a 1.8 metre length of 19mm thick, 185mm wide pine (although I measured and it was only 184mm  ) from Bunnings (The most common big hardware store in Australia like your home depot I think?) and I knew we had a bit of plywood lying around at home that I could use if I needed. That set me back $14 and the busfare into town (yes it was awkward to carry on the bus).

 

First thing was to clamp the plank down and route out the hole for the front fan filter

 

(disclaimer, nearly all the photos were taken with a nexus potato 5 the only camera I had access to)

 

 

After that I cut out the hole for the fans themselves to go through:

 

Not a bad fit!

 

 

Next I similarly cut out the rest of the panels with a jigsaw and finger-jointed the corners

 

 

TILT SHIFT FOR THE WIN

 

time to glue it all together

 

I was gluing this at night, so I took a snap of the full moon

 

 

The following morning...

 

 

Yay!

 

next I glued on the front panel

 

 

I was getting pretty excited by this stage so I did a test fit of everything

 

 

I was already beginning to dread the cable management

 

next I cut out the rear panel (again with a jigsaw)

 

 

and then I glued it on

 

 

wE NEED MOAR CLAAAAAAAMPS!!!

 

you can never have too many clamps! 

 

then I cut out and glued in this tiny side panel holder

 

 

 

not bad  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I found a bit of ply in the shed which really didn't look to bad for cheap ply

 

 

and I cut out the 2 side panels ( one would be glued in and the other removable)

 

 

I glued in that badboy in, planed all my edges flat and sanded everything nicely

Time to oil up!

everything's better with oil

 

potato + oil = chips = good

 

turtle + oil = oily turtle = excellent

 

wood + oil = pretty shiny oily wood! = wonderful!

 

 

all the finishing touches

then I removed the front headphone/microphone/usb ports from the old Thermaltake case (with excessive force and a hammer ) and I cut holes for them to go through in the top of the case (in hindsight this would have been a lot easier if I'd done it before glued everything together)

 

 

then I similarly removed the power button from the old case (hammer! ) and made my own button with an offcut of ply

 

 

then I stuck in all the necessary motherboard standoffs, cable management hooks and Higgl3's patent pending, anti-vibration, anti-moneyspending, suspended hard drive mount. it actually works really well.

 

Putting it all together

so first I put in the sneaky beaky poower switch which is routed behind the PSU and Motherboard

 

 

Tape dat up

 

 

then I put in the power supply and storage drives

 

 

then ensued a fearsome battle with the monstrous cable Kraken which lasted many hours. In the end I tamed the mighty beast resulting in...

 

 

then I stuck in the front (top) i/o

 

 

my dank hard drive mount

 

 

I then acquired some tacks

 

 

and popped them in the front in positions corresponding to the magnets on the back of the fan filter so that the fan filter would stick in place

 

 

lastly I stuck in some additional rubber bands which attached to hooks on the back of the side panel to hold it in place

 

 

action shot if the side panel rubber bands

 

 

and all done!

 

YAY!?!!

 

Budget details

 

so the case cost me:

 

pine plank  $14

2 fans        $18

fan filter     $14

Total          $46

 

and the computer components cost me:

 

GPU    ASUS R9 270                   $215

MOBO Gigabyte B75-D3H           $100

SSD     256G Samsung 840 evo  $150

HDD     2Tb Seagate Barracuda  $100

PSU     Corsair cx500m               $100

Total                                            $665

 

Prices suck here in Australia : / but still, I didn't end up paying much for a pretty beastly system. I figure the free CPU and ram are probably worth about $250, so not bad.

 

Final thoughts and pic's

 

it was a fun build! relatively cheap and I've got a super small, super quiet case that looks good and cost me less than any pre-built options.

 

the total size ended up being:

width:  182mm

height: 363mm

depth:  317mm

 

lemme know if you've got any questions and stuff. I'll answer when I can!

 

I'm possibly going to submit it into that build comp thread thing, but I dunno how well it will go. It seems they're full of crazy expensive balls to the walls custom builds with SLI and custom watercooling loops. not budget boxes of junk.

 

Some time in the future when I have money (i.e. when I'm no longer a student) I'll make a similar sized build but better designed and with better components (maybe a full watercooling loop?) and some nicer timber. My current dream build is a super tiny micro atx sli build with 2 of those tiny Gigabyte small form factor 970's and one of those tiny Silverstone power supplies (the one which is exactly the size of a 120mm fan). If I could get me some custom waterblocks for 2 of those tiny 970s that would be EPIC.

 

anyways, Here's some more pics:

with an apple and pencil for scale

 

the i/o and the super secret power button on the right

 

them sweet sweet finger joints

 

voila!

 

[cesrai]

Spoiler please.

 

Those drawings look great.

[QueenDemetria]

"Your case is giving me wood" Nice build OP +1

 

@QuadCore 

[SuperPug]

Ron Swanson would be proud... How are the Temps tho with only PSU as exhaust?

[Dmon]

Nice build.

 

So if the PCIE Bus was.... Busted.. (bumdumtss) What did you do with the 6790?

[lutewan]

not a a nuff thumbs up throw it away its garbage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

its a joke ship it to me

[Higgl3]

Spoiler please.

 

Those drawings look great.

 

How do you do those spoiler things? I've always wondered that. I'll put them in once I figure out how

 

Nice build.

 

So if the PCIE Bus was.... Busted.. (bumdumtss) What did you do with the 6790?

Thanks man!

 

currently the 6790 is just lying around my room, if anyone lives around Melbourne I'd be happy to give it to them! (still not %100 sure if it works or not)

[cesrai]

How do you do those spoiler things? I've always wondered that. I'll put them in once I figure out how

 

Thanks man!

 

currently the 6790 is just lying around my room, if anyone lives around Melbourne I'd be happy to give it to them! (still not %100 sure if it works or not)

[*****] [/*****] replace * with spoiler and don't forget to put / in the second brackets.

[JAKEBAB]

Damn so you got cpu, maybe gpu and memory for free? wtf! that's awesome.

[Higgl3]

Ron Swanson would be proud... How are the Temps tho with only PSU as exhaust?

 

thanks man!

 

I just booted up some battlefield 4 and played it for 10 minutes

 

gpuz clocks my GPU tems at 61 degrees and realtemp says my cpu's running at 55 on the the hottest core.and 49 on the coolest

 

I was running everything on high and getting solid 60 fps, but I probably need to play for quite a bit longer to get some more accurate readings which I'll do when I get a chance.

 

I figure any air that's going into the case has to be going out somewhere else, so just having intakes hasn't really hurt the airflow that much I think. There are plenty of cutouts on the back of the case ( I didn't stick in the motherboard rear i/o shield) and so it's kinda just got a passive exhaust system. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[GhostWindGamer]

Nice work man it looks awesome 

[SuperPug]

I figure any air that's going into the case has to be going out somewhere else, so just having intakes hasn't really hurt the airflow that much I think. There are plenty of cutouts on the back of the case ( I didn't stick in the motherboard rear i/o shield) and so it's kinda just got a passive exhaust system. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Yeah you're probably right... I was just curious because on my old pc i only had an intake fan and no exhausts which lead to air congestion and the temps got really high.

[Higgl3]

[*****] [/*****] replace * with spoiler and don't forget to put / in the second brackets.

thanks for your advice 

[cesrai]

thanks for your advice 

No problem.

[Higgl3]

its a joke ship it to me

 

Thanks! I am actually thinking that I might sell it if I can and use the funds to buy myself a laptop. lots less gamesable but probably a lot more practical for uni.

 

¯\(°_o)/¯

[DJ46]

Shoot, you reminded me to update my own build log in a wooden case. I really need to paint it this weekend.

[SMR]

This is cool.

[Miqle]

Nice!

[ELSknutson]

Nice Find Gratz

[QuadCore]

Yeah nice case

"Your case is giving me wood" Nice build OP +1

 

@QuadCore 

[PetiteBob]

Very nice and original

[EpicGeekonFire]

Nice find and build! Your wood working is great, I wish I could do something like this.

 

Also um doesnt the mobo need to be grounded with like the screws? Or does it ground with the PSU pins?