Project Sleeper PC

[glitchmaster0001]

Hi so my dad finally decided to get rid of this ancient HP Pavilion PC from 2005 and i decided that the case would make a great project case for a sleeper PC to bring to my school's gamer club, and also to be able to bring to LAN parties or conventions without raising unwanted attention or potential theft. The HP case that im using is a HP Pavilion a1747c. it was originally running windows xp but when my dad bought it back in 2007 it was reoutfitted to run windows vista 32 bit with no dedicated video card. fast forward to 2016 and now that rig is too slow to do even simple web browsing without lagging. hell it cant even run minecraft on lowest settings. i will post follow ups on the status of this build in the comment section so feel free to follow this post for that, so far on this forum i have only seen 1 or 2 sleeper PC projects posts out there. for those of you that dont know what a sleeper PC is, its based of the sleeper car concept in the automotive world.

 

I will post updates on how this build is going if you guys want to know. 

[Zodiark1593]

Personally, I'd go black myself, but overall I like the case for this purpose. Neither so new, nor so old as to draw attention.

[glitchmaster0001]

UPDATE: I have gutted the old HP machine of its internal components. As of now it has nothing except for the front USB 2.0 headers and the 92mm rear exhaust fan. i also cleaned out the machine so everything looks new and pristine. while doing this i saw the QC stamp on it and it was dated to November 2005 lol this machine apparantly used to have a AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ CPU. 

[glitchmaster0001]

5 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Personally, I'd go black myself, but overall I like the case for this purpose. Neither so new, nor so old as to draw attention.

i think black would draw attention still. grey looks old enough plus this thing sat in the attic of my house for almost 8 years since it died 2 years after my dad bought it due to PSU failure. luckily he still kept it sitting up in the attic all these years. since it was in the attic all these years the plastic front bezel of the machine turned yellow dude to weatherization. lucky for me also the case layout is ATX and isnt proprietary. the only thing that is proprietary is the power switch but that can be easily swapped for a standard one. motherboard layout is mATX so im limited in therms of board size but mATX boards are cheaper either way. 

[glitchmaster0001]

UPDATE: I have successfully modified the proprietary front panel connectors and swapped them with aftermarket standard ones. the power button, HDD led, and power LED still look like they are stock on the front, but they can work on any mATX motherboard now. that was the biggest problem with building with this HP tower but going to my local frys electronics and buying the front panel wiring harness for $5 fixed this problem and it still looks like a stock HP tower too. Bonus points for that  

[Vamprie]

here is my hp sleeper

[TheCamba]

Nice upcycle.  Frankly, if a case can fit everything you need and have decent airflow, why pay $200+ on bells and whistles.

[iHardware Shelden]

Sweet, can't wait to see the rest

[Omon_Ra]

Glad you kept some stickers on the front of the case.  Kyle from Awesomesauce Network did something like this a little while ago for some LAN/event he was traveling to (CES?/PDX LAN? I can't remember). I have an old case I want to do a build in, but it's one of those half-height, skinny ones from the early 2000's that uses a FlexATX power supply.

[TheCamba]

4 minutes ago, Omon_Ra said:

Glad you kept some stickers on the front of the case.  Kyle from Awesomesauce Network did something like this a little while ago for some LAN/event he was traveling to (CES?/PDX LAN? I can't remember). I have an old case I want to do a build in, but it's one of those half-height, skinny ones from the early 2000's that uses a FlexATX power supply.

Sounds like a good challenge.

[flibberdipper]

Sleeper PCs are great. Mine has a Q6600 and 7950.

[glitchmaster0001]

14 hours ago, Vamprie said:

Snip

nice hp sleeper. did you have to modify the power button to get it to work with that motherboard? also how did you fit a hyper 212 evo cooler in that tower? 

[glitchmaster0001]

1 hour ago, Omon_Ra said:

Glad you kept some stickers on the front of the case.  Kyle from Awesomesauce Network did something like this a little while ago for some LAN/event he was traveling to (CES?/PDX LAN? I can't remember). I have an old case I want to do a build in, but it's one of those half-height, skinny ones from the early 2000's that uses a FlexATX power supply.

lol it still has all the original stickers from when we bought it a costco back in 2007. my dad never liked taking the stickers off the computer and wanted it to look as OEM as possible. thats how it has a 1024mb ram sticker and a 250gb hdd sticker too lol. 

[glitchmaster0001]

UPDATE: As of now im short on funds for building this system so i think this might be as far as i can go for now until summer when i can get a job and get enough funds to buy a kaby lake i7 and a gtx 1080 or 1070. i dont know if i can fit a power supply bigger than 600w because of the size limitations of the case. can anyone recommend me good budget friendly modular PSU that would fit in this case? 

[Vamprie]

9 hours ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

nice hp sleeper. did you have to modify the power button to get it to work with that motherboard? also how did you fit a hyper 212 evo cooler in that tower? 

Thanks! No I did not have to modify it, but my power led and hdd led don't work Haha actually it is a hyper tx3, they are abit shorter so they fit nicely

[OPSJono]

16 hours ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

UPDATE: As of now im short on funds for building this system so i think this might be as far as i can go for now until summer when i can get a job and get enough funds to buy a kaby lake i7 and a gtx 1080 or 1070. i dont know if i can fit a power supply bigger than 600w because of the size limitations of the case. can anyone recommend me good budget friendly modular PSU that would fit in this case? 

 

600W PSU should be more than enough, unless you end up going with 2x GTX 1080's or something then you might need an 800w.

 

Something like this should be a good bet: https://www.amazon.co.uk/XFX-Bronze-Semi-Modular-Power-Supply/dp/B008O50WKG?ie=UTF8&tag=pcp0f-21

[glitchmaster0001]

UPDATE: I finished building the sleeper PC. The specs are fx 8350 Gtx 760 2gb 1tb HDD antec ea 650w PSU gigabyte 970 micro ATX motherboard 8gb ddr3. I decided to to AMD for the build because of workstation/gaming purposes. The only problem with this build is the stock amd cooler and little airflow in the tower. The cooler is loud as fuck and it spins up to insane ass RPMs. The highest I saw it go was 6,000 rpm and it sounds like a jet engine. I bought a cryorig m9a cooler from newegg and I'm going to install it when it comes home. I also ghetto mounted a stock AMD fan off an old AMD heatsink to cool down my hard drive since there is no air cooling that drive down and without the fan it would hit 40c on my hard drive. I also replaced that black fan you see in the picture with a antec tri cool 92mm. The stock black one sounds like a server box fan and it would always run at full speed. Now all that's left is to wait till the CPU cooler comes then I'll post the picture of the completed build. 

[glitchmaster0001]

UPDATE: the CPU cooler finally arrived!!! I installed it into the system and it's finally done! Maybe later on in the far future I'll do an Intel platform with this same chassis. As of now this meets my needs and I like it which is what counts. 

[Vamprie]

5 hours ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

UPDATE: the CPU cooler finally arrived!!! I installed it into the system and it's finally done! Maybe later on in the far future I'll do an Intel platform with this same chassis. As of now this meets my needs and I like it which is what counts. 

Very nice!