Drawer PC (PC inside a closed drawer)

[Zeze21]

So... to start of I should tell you a little bit about our situation:

We had a PC for a party room which was just sitting inside a storage shelf. This had a couple of disadvantages such as the airflow was horrible (since the storage shelf was just open to the front) and connecting cables was just abysmal.

So our Idea was to create a drawer inside the storage shelf which had all the components inside and 3 large fans which would create a continuous airflow (suck the air in on one side and blow it out on the other side.

This was our plan

(sorry but as we are german we kept our plans in german)

As you can imagine we ran into some difficulties along the way. But let’s start:

First of all we got all the hardware we needed from old computers and friends who gave us a sdd (thanks for that!) for free. Also we bought a PSU of ebay for 15€ (82+ certified which we thought was a pretty good deal).

So first of all we got the hardware up an running configured windows as we would need it later on.

(this is not the final form as we used a different cooler for the cpu)

We also ran into the problem of the GPU just being passively cooled (and it ran up to 50° Celcius)

So we decided to add a fan to it:

With this attached it runs (even under heavy load) just up to 45° Celcicus max. Yes we know it looks a bit funny but it works like a charm.

Next to get an idea about how we would have to place the compartments inside the storage shelf we placed the inside:

(this is just to get a general idea of how thing would be put into place)

 

This is more like it.

So next was creating the drawer. We used some plywood we got lying around as well as to pull outs (sorry if that’s not the correct technical term but we hope you get the idea)

After cutting we had a fully function drawer – and yay it fit!

Next we tried arranging the components and marking where everything needs to go.

 

After that we build the middle “devider” which ensured that the air would not just build up but would be rather be pushed through.

We also cut some small holes to push the cables through as on one side we have just the mainboard and one fan and on the other side the drives and the PSU.

We also created our very own disc cages:

First placement of the middle devider:

Here you can see the front and the middle devider put into place as it would be in the end. On the front you can see in the upper left corner the on switch and down on the bottom a hole where a usb hub would later go for easy connection of usb drives etc.

Setup of the PSU insiude the drawer (in the back you can see one of our disc cages)

More and more components being put into place:

The right compartment with the PSU and the hard disks:

Putting everything in there was a bitch but we managed it.

Actually the CPU Cooler now has a dell fan which… is a bit hardcore (we found it in a dumpster) but has around 200m³ output – and guess what our cpu stays at 40° Celcius at most!

The Front we covered with a cut up pantyhose (to prevent stuff being sucked into the computer)