Your sketchiest computer setups.

[Worstcaster]

What are some of your most jerry rigged setups and why did you do it that way?

 

This first one is my laptop at work.  I've been trying to lose weight, so I have been walking in the garage while watching youtube (to get my steps in).  Most of the surfaces are covered in a thick greasy dusty film from when the company mechanic worked out of there.  So I set my laptop up on long peg stands on the wall.

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/hDs7cU4E3LeC1HzS9

 

For the next one I bought a 5.25" drawer to put in my Focus G to hold my fitbit charger, thumb drives, etc.  Once it was installed in the case, it would not open past the front cover.  It was so cheap that the return shipping would have been almost as much as the actual item.  So I attached it to my desk with some velcro straps I had.

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mrEaxDT3PqVHBFn8A

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LLnuSCX4FyZzRo2f8

[Triventular]

i bought an nzxt lighting kit cuz i found one for really cheap like so cheap that it was hard to not buy it immediately... despite my computer back then not having a see-through side panel.. so i ended up taking a mesh from an old laptop cooling pad i had lying around and some cardboard to make a ghetto looking side panel all connected together, by you guessed it, zip ties.. so i had this cardboard and hard mesh side panel held together by zip ties.. so now i have the side panel but no way to mount it on the case.. so, you know where this is going, i used more zip ties to attach it to my pc case.. at least now i can see inside my old pc thanks to the lighting kit and ghetto side panel. i also got a cooler pc cuz of it too

[Worstcaster]

6 minutes ago, Triventular said:

i bought an nzxt lighting kit cuz i found one for really cheap like so cheap that it was hard to not buy it immediately... despite my computer back then not having a see-through side panel.. so i ended up taking a mesh from an old laptop cooling pad i had lying around and some cardboard to make a ghetto looking side panel all connected together, by you guessed it, zip ties.. so i had this cardboard and hard mesh side panel held together by zip ties.. so now i have the side panel but no way to mount it on the case.. so, you know where this is going, i used more zip ties to attach it to my pc case.. at least now i can see inside my old pc thanks to the lighting kit and ghetto side panel. i also got a cooler pc cuz of it too

Absolutely.  RGB makes everything cooler.  

[Fasauceome]

 

[Worstcaster]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

 

Amazing what a difference a case can make.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, Worstcaster said:

Amazing what a difference a case can make.

Perhaps my favorite part of that setup was the fact that my CPU retention force from the cooler was solely due to weight until I got a real cooler.

[Worstcaster]

3 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Perhaps my favorite part of that setup was the fact that my CPU retention force from the cooler was solely due to weight until I got a real cooler.

Well, at least that gives the case fan sitting on top of the open setup something to do.  

[kirashi]

53 minutes ago, Worstcaster said:

What are some of your most jerry rigged setups and why did you do it that way?

 

This first one is my laptop at work.  I've been trying to lose weight, so I have been walking in the garage while watching youtube (to get my steps in).  Most of the surfaces are covered in a thick greasy dusty film from when the company mechanic worked out of there.  So I set my laptop up on long peg stands on the wall.

 

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPhPWYgEYRWCjaS-EUw2cBbvpe8YSGOqEHZjsea

 

For the next one I bought a 5.25" drawer to put in my Focus G to hold my fitbit charger, thumb drives, etc.  Once it was installed in the case, it would not open past the front cover.  It was so cheap that the return shipping would have been almost as much as the actual item.  So I attached it to my desk with some velcro straps I had.

 

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOLyftOFSwzHkejcY-RWN8s8XiRxNqieM4U5xcx

 

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipPySFwNloBWU2HT5z1bzPbifr5RbIVnYFGaqY7F

All of those photo links result in Error 404 so you might need to re-generate them. Anywho, I have many sketchy setups that come and go as I actually fix them one by one. The latest was finding a way to temporarily mount / place a fan in my brothers PC because the friend he bought it off of had the fan mounted horizontally upside down blowing air up instead of reading the bleeping manual and mounting it vertically blowing air out the back of the case.

 

This caused the fan bearings to wear out to the point that they squeaked when the fan was mounted vertically so we... um... improvised until our replacement fan came in... and yes, this technically worked fine, even with the heating furnace that is the AMD FX-8350 - kept it around 60 C which is not bad considering this wasn't the most efficient cooling method available...

[Worstcaster]

Thanks for letting me know.  I think I fixed them.

[zassou]

in the past i used shoeboxes as cases. that was a cynical time where i had a stupid idea that assumed all comsumer computer case are scams and the only propper case you should use is server towers, and since i couldnt afford those boxes i settled for shoeboxes.

 

i hollowed out one of the wall to fid a matx board in, some of the board extends outside of the box because it's longer than the container. i used styrofoam to support the graphics card and used agp extension cable to cut down the vertical height. another shoebox were used to house the psu and drives.

i'm still using shoeboxes to store knick knacks, they are cheap, easy to come by, in same sizes and reasonably durable.

[XR6]

I used to have the sketchiest, most unsafe PC rig you could ever think of.

It was a motherboard from an old dell (had a crappy pentium 4) with (i think) a GT210 just thrown inside a cardboard box.

As for cooling I put one of those big pedestal cooling fans over the CPU and just hoped for the best. 

The PSU was just a random OEM PSU I found in a recycling centre for really cheap.

The CPU overheated and it never turned on again. It's the one computer I had which I'm really glad is gone. 

 

[ZachHays]

i tried my hand at custom waterloops on my old pc, it was my first time building a pc so i figured what could go wrong. I had ordered all of the cooling parts from wish and got to work, i had to lap the waterblock because it was bowl shaped, i tried to use a radiator from a brand new cooler master aio, because why not waste $50, and in the process of removing the old plastic tubing i knicked both inlet and outlet on the rad, you can probably see where this is going. I had my reservior inside where i would have drives go, but i didnt have very many drives at the time so it was fine. and the amd am3 motherboard i was using used the old amd style of mounting with the 2 tabs and the rotating lock junk, so it cut a small square of plexi glass, and since i didnt have a drill bit i had to heat the fittings on the block and then push them through the plexi one at a time. then i took apart the stock fan and pulled the retention arm off of it slid it between the fittings and locked it down, that loop worked for about 3 months before i moved all of that into another case and withing a week it leaked all over my motherboard and fried my vrms, i stuck with a tower cooler again until i built the pc i have now

[manikyath]

i got you a stunning entry:

Spoiler

brief run-trough:

- the motherboard is too big for the case, so the power supply isnt screwed in place (since it doesnt fit), so it is suspended from its cables and leaning on the bottom-most PCI slot (in this case, top-most, since it's flipped)

- 4 different memory sticks, primarily for the lulz.

- the rear exhaust fan has a blade missing, which was replaced by tape.. and appareantly yate loon fans are such garbage that it's actually not worse than an intact one.

- there's a random scrapyard switch hanging in the case, thats to *start* the fans, because they're wired into 5 volts, but dont actually start at 5 volts.

- the expansion card you see is the "video" card, which is from 1995, and not actually graphically capable enough to display the bios screen properly.

- the fans are wired in with wago plugs, obviously.

- not visible on this picture, but the power LED is plugged into the activity LED header, so it's actually useful. you'll know it's on from the terrible whine the fans put out.

- some other details i probably forgot.

 

EDIT: bonus 3D printer cooling wiring:

Spoiler

 

[imreloadin]

9 hours ago, ZachHays said:

I had ordered all of the cooling parts from wish

Da fuck?

[cluelessgenius]

 

heres what this is :

mobo on table

tower of boxes left and right of it

keyboard box makes the bridge across

just to connect the gpu via riser cable and have the psu cables still reach it

also psu dangling on the side with cloth under it to get rid of some weird vibration 

2 hdds and a ssd dangling by their cables only

this ran...a long time....before i finally cleaned it up...sort of

 

 

this i have no idea why i did i was in the middle of getting new hardware and had already taken apart the 901 i was gonna do a case mod for

then decided to fuck it and put it all in there as far as it would fit so

rad in the bottom 

psu and rad together support the mobo with some paper towel between them as to not shorten anything out

same thing about the riser cable as before

hdds and ssds still dangling 

and front io sort of hung there just so id have a button to turn it on and off as i was getting tired of shorting the contacts with a screw driver.

 

btw this happens when you plan your case / case mod for to long but need a functioning pc in the mean time

 

[manikyath]

8 hours ago, PrinceNorris said:

@manikyath I like that Sata pretzel

only the best sata pretzels in my builds.

 

actually, in builds where cable management options are an absolute zero, sata pretzels do make things a bit more tidy.

[ewitte]

Wish I could find that computer 10+ years ago that used a window AC unit to chill the water... 

[Emanbaird]

My first build was pretty darn sketchy,

 

Not enough motherboard standoffs, 

 

Had an AIO that was missing one of the screws in the corner for the radiator

 

The HDD's were all >500GB and i had about 3 of them

 

none of them were in caddy's (the free case didn't come with any)

 

The motherboard i had didn't support SLI and so at the time i had to reinstall chipset drivers every day i wanted to use my GTX 295 (I eventually sold it and got a 480)

 

But this was my PC between 2012-2013 and i loved it, it's the 1st PC i actually built from the ground up. pirated windows and everything. didn't have a job then and it was a huge upgrade from my dell d830 with some 256mb quadro card lol 

 

 

 

[TheRandomness]

 

Welcome to my chaotic desk.

If you look hard enough, you'll see my boot drive.

[suchamoneypit]

Board laying on a desk, nothing else, the CPU cooler is an old copper block just resting on top , I couldn't find thermal paste so I used toothpaste. I just pointed a fan at it. It was running with dual RX 480s which were folding for folding month last November. CPU (Athlon II) was kept at 100% load with this cooling solution 24/7 for over around 2 weeks.

[aezakmi]

it's gotta be my rig, I'll use the spoiler tag since pics are too long

Spoiler

 

it had so many mods throughout the years that is already too late to remove everything and start from the beginning so for me it's simply better to keep it this way, wiring is a mess and the nightmare of any cable management fan

It features a dual PSU config, kinda normal except my aux power supply is a bunch of boards and heatsinks inside an old ATX housing, it outputs 48, 24 and 12 volts for different usages

 

48 for a desktop heater for winter

24 for a pair of deltas that fortunately I don't need anymore, a remnant from the FX days

12 for the standard fans, made a separate circuit because I don't want or need to have the fans constantly running when the PC is idling or the ambient temp is low

 

it was absolutely hideous when I first built it but it worked, years passed and everything got a cleaner look, a new housing since the old one wasn't even attached to the case, better wires and connectors, a better exhaust fan, independent switches for each voltage (it only had a main before so it I only wanted to use 48 everything else would also turn on)

 

male connectors both are identical but provide 12 and 24 volts respectively

 

The only useful part of an old TR2 was its housing, there's a fan that holds it to the case, wiring goes through the tube

 

 

unfinished female cable that was never used

 

 

The 48V output uses the same type of connector as the AC input so it's not really interesting

 

 

It could be worse, it was worse tbh but at least now it looks somewhat decent and so far all of my friend asked what "the box on the back of your computer does"

[Pi31415]

My PCI-E slot for my GPU went out so I used a external mini PCI-E meant for gpu mining and put the usb 3 wire through the case slots to the outside, it looked cool have a gtx 280 (That was 2016) the pc also had construction glue instead of thermal paste when my dad told me when it was construction adhesive and he gave me the wrong stuff, when it came to upgrade my CPU was glued to my cooler, boy was that hard to get off. 

[Guest]

Hanging my camera from a string to do a top down video because I don't have a tripod. But now I do.

[ZachHays]

On 2/14/2019 at 6:02 AM, imreloadin said:

Da fuck?

i was 16 and had no budget, now im almost 19 and still have no budget

[Ithanul]

O my, let me see if I still got that old picture of when I smack a OG Titan on a AMD Phenom ii BE duo unlocked to quad on a mATX just chilling on a box.    I got that pic somewhere, just have to find it.

 

The only other nutty thing I done was zip tie a H50 radiator in front of NZXT Apollo case, so the poor thing was just barely mid air floating in the 5.25 bay area of the case with the front cover open to allow air flow.