Post your Good Ghetto mods

[AHaskin14]

I "elegantly" zip tied a fan horizontally to the side of my hard drive case so that I could cool the vrm on my gpu which has an aio zip tied to it.

[lazypc]

My Dad asked me to build him a computer for him to use for some illustrator and audition work, for the absolute lowest penny possible. Said, you can use my old computer if you want. I said sure, I'll use it as a case, remove all the old stuff and put new stuff inside.

Old machine was a Pentium II machine he had bought out of a newspaper ad, and still had the newspaper ad tapped on the back.

So rebuild it I did, modified the case for proper airflow while maintaining the same look, painted the new optical drive to match the case. All in all it turned out very well, I'll take pics of the finished product tomorrow when I head over there, but here is the old parts and newspaper ad.

I took the processor, removed the heatsink and mounted it onto a base as a desk ornament/paperweight, with the original newspaper ad on the back.

[FuzzyYellow]

I used toothpaste as thermal compound for my old P4 computer. when i tried to remove the heatsink a few weeks later, it ripped the CPU right out of the socket. it lived though...

[The Official Czex]

I was concerned about printing a banner to be used as a store menu, just wasn't something I had never done... So I decided to print it at 100% on regular letter size paper and tape it together to check readability and such.

Gave it to the client as a proof, they hung it up in their restaurant, it's been there ever since, they never had the banner produced. I saw it again yesterday and the paper has since yellowed except where the tape is.

 

If I'm ever in Cali, I'll stop by for some BBQ.

[carguy86]

my pc overheated so i bougth some loong sata cables, a second psu, a 24 pin jumper, several gallons of mineral oil and a plastic tub. (that old dell got dunked in oil and then the odd and hdd got moved and plugged in to my second psu, it did fix the heating problem until i had to move. (at that point the hardware was obsolete so i drained the oil and chuked the computer in the trash, i delivered the oil to a chemical recycling plant))

[lazypc]

Ever move all of your furniture before you actually move and need a temporary desk?

 

Well I hope you saved all of your boxes, because they make warranty returns much easier, and can also serve as a temporary desk in a time of need...

 

This was a few years back, although this rig did me well, especially for what I paid for it, seeing it again makes me grateful for the things I have today.

 

[mikat]

eh hem... it's spelt ghetto

geto is a ghetto way of saying ghetto, think about that..

[lazypc]

I used to think it was a great idea to buy used routers at the flea market.... Some things are just not worth the hassle, because when they are all burned up sometimes you resort to extreme measures just to get an ounce of decent internet speed.

 

Old DD-WRT builds FTW

[cragger89]

I made an RGB/audio wired scart socket to BNC cable for my Sony PVM monitor last year.

 

I'll do a ghetto case for the socket tomorrow as it's still exposed down the side of the hifi stand. Haha.

[lazypc]

Perhaps I have no shame, and I should have stopped already. But maybe I just feel like you guys will understand the Ghettoness/getoness of being a tech sometimes, and have waited years to share this all with you...

 

This was my desk while I was coming out of college, I was an early adopter of multi-monitor setups, even if it meant strapping 2 old CRT monitors together.

 

I know that looks awkward, I used to build flash websites for athletes "fan clubs" and that was a MMA fighter. Back when we thought flash websites were a good idea. This was also the time that I came to realize I did not want to work for someone else and appreciated interacting with my clients.

 

[Sors]

- Hot glued a fan to a motherboard so I could OC a SDRAM module from 66 MHz to 100 Mhz, back in the Pentium III days, and the thing actually worked for a long time.

 

- My first VGA monitor was a handout from a friend of my dad, the monitor had been damaged in shipping so he was going to get rid of it, when I open the monitor the circuit board was broken, I rebuild the board soldering over the veins to join them together and I got it working, but the Transistor that drive the flyback converter was also damaged, and I could not find an exact replacement, so I used the closest substitute that I was able to find, but the transistor keep blowing after 10 minutes of use, so I put a fan inside the monitor to help cool the transistor, and 20 years later up to this day that monitor is still working.

 

- Using zip ties to hold a fan on a heatsink.

 

- Splitting a LAN cable to connect 2 computers, using only 4 wires for each PC.  (Not recommended to try now, since the connection would only run at 10 Mb, but that was 15 years ago. )

[Hero7750]

I didn't have a long enough sata cable for the 3rd HDD so i just zip tied it to the side of the 3.5'' HDD bay.

[ManWithBeard1990]

I've booted a pc from a USB to IDE adapter and a 20GB hdd not long ago. Couldn't find anything else at the time.

[Gikero]

Ever move all of your furniture before you actually move and need a temporary desk?

 

Well I hope you saved all of your boxes, because they make warranty returns much easier, and can also serve as a temporary desk in a time of need...

 

This was a few years back, although this rig did me well, especially for what I paid for it, seeing it again makes me grateful for the things I have today.

 

If the monitors were CRT, that would be the most ghetto thing PC setup I'd ever seen. Glad that is all temp.

[leelaa14]

I had a ibm thinkpad, accidentally stud on the screen when getting out of bed.

I snapped the top part off and removed the two wifi antennas 
Got an old crt monitor and taped the antennas to the side of it, was left with a laptop base with keyboard on the bottom with the dvd drive built in etc, and the crt and wifi together on top, desktop style.
I was only 14 back then and never new much about computers etc, but it worked flawlessly lol

Edit, added a gheto drawing to demonstrate what my beast looked like.

[Briggsy]

I once had a coolermaster PSU fan die on me, so I physically removed the fan and wedged a regular case fan inside, plugged into a motherboard fan header. Used it like that for a year before replacing it.

[AlwaysFSX]

Wire hanger speaker wire.

[Luckylock]

hmm years ago I had this super old computer, and one day I accidentally broke the plastic thing that held the power button, so I pulled the front pannel power wires out of the case and manually made them connect every time I wanted to start the computer.

[xc3ll]

Here a few things, I've done (...that you shoudn't):

- Mounted a PSU with 2 Zipties

- Cut a hole in a case to fit a larger gpu

- Stuffed fan-cables in a Molex (You never find an adapter, if you need one)

[Zeruel]

I used super glue to seal leaks in my reservoir.

[potatoproduction]

This are all kool ideas

[Nitroblast]

 

le hp 780ti sticky tape ssd contraption thing

[lazypc]

Wire hanger speaker wire.

Did you use two hangers? Would love to see a pic if it's still around

[AlwaysFSX]

Did you use two hangers? Would love to see a pic if it's still around

This was like 12 years ago, no pictures. One hanger was enough wire because the two speakers weren't far apart.

[Crozacx]

my dual monitor testing

first day of my gaming PC