Cardboard box open air PC build

[Guest]

So I have a lot of spare parts lying about, but not a case. I did have an Amazon delivery box though, and you can guess what happened next. This build is a mishmash of parts from my few short years of PC ownership and repairing, for myself and others.

 

I don't have a keyboard/mouse combo for it permanently, and I kinda don't want to spend money on this build, so I'm going run this headless, as a Linux server I SSH into and sometimes run small web projects on. I hope to expose this to the internet soon, and after patching up on security, see if I can get some NodeJS experience out of it.

 

I would post during-assembly photos, but it was only after assembly I realized that I should probably take pictures, so...

 

 

This is the PC in question. Ketchup and mustard cables, stock cooler, no heatsink on the RAM, a case that's literally a cardboard box...

 

 

A slightly better view of the motherboard, an Intel DH61SA. Those plastic inserts in screw holes at the top of the image (bottom of the board), I have no idea what they are, they were like the clips on the bottom of an Intel stock cooler, and when I put them in they seemed to hold the motherboard in place fairly well. Out of the other four real screws, three have standoffs on the other side of the cardboard, just hanging around, like a nut bolt pair. One of them is just driven into the cardboard and held on by its friction.

 

 

I didn't have an actual on-off switch and shorting pins is a teeny bit too much trouble, so I rigged up a power switch. The end that goes into the motherboard is a connector I cut off a different dead PSU - I think it's called a Berg connector? I was pleasantly surprised to see how nicely it fit, although I can't wire the reset switch now because the connector is a bit too wide.

 

 

The actual button part is extracted from a mouse - this is one of those forward/back buttons on the side of a $5 mouse. The metal housing kinda worried me, cause it might have caused a short, but I put insulating tape all over it so I think it'll be fine.

 

 

The power supply cutout is... not perfect. I actually couldn't figure out from outside where the fourth screw hole was, and I forgot to make a marking for it, so with three screws is how this stays. It's stable enough. The power supply is an iBall 450W unit - I feel like I shouldn't be using it, especially inside a closed cardboard box, but this is the only thing I had on hand, so oh, well.

 

 

So I put a fan here, to maybe help dissipate some heat inside. I wanted to put it as in intake to complement the PSU's exhaust, but it seems that the intake side of the fan doesn't have screw threading. Also, the fan connects via Molex for some reason. The connector was painfully hard to install cause all the pins were somewhat bent. The fan works, though, so there's that. Also featuring the cutout for the 24-pin cable, which came out much nicer than the PSU or fan cutouts.

 

 

Another thing I don't have a hard drive, so this makeshift USB 2.0 drive - made from the chip from a pen drive whose casing broke, along with a USB connector from a cable - is the primary storage device. Certainly more than enough for Arch Linux, and the distro is so lightweight it still boots faster than my laptop booting Windows off a SATA HDD.

 

 

There is a WiFi card here, cause this thing is not going to sit anywhere near the main router, not if my mother has anything to say about it. It works with Linux, which is more than what I can say of most sub-$10 solutions. The extended part of the PCIe slot cover goes into the cardboard and holds the card in place. Also notice the weird positioning of the CMOS battery, which prevented me from installing a GPU and using a USB WiFi card (which I conveniently also have).

 

 

Not really a part of the build, but the GPU I wanted to use - an NVIDIA GeForce G210. I'd originally planned for the machine to have HDMI out so it could serve as a media center box, but the motherboard doesn't have a 16x PCIe slot, and the 1x slot is blocked too.

 

 

In case you were wondering, yes, it works. I somehow managed not to kill it... so far.

 

 

Sadly I can't overclock this thing, cause neither the motherboard nor the CPU support it. Shame - my other candidate for this PC was an LGA775 system with a Core 2 Duo E6300, but the motherboard died and I couldn't bring myself to buy another. That CPU could go to 2.66 GHz no problem... which is fine, I guess, cause this Pentium does that at stock, with better IPC to boot, owing to the Sandy Bridge architecture.

 

So that's it. Future upgrade plans include a cheap 160GB HDD, and a good quality 350W PSU if I can squeeze it in. As it stands, though, this build cost me nothing in new parts - everything is used and discarded from upgrades to the PCs of my various relatives who I fix stuff for. I used nothing but a pencil, a screwdriver, scissors, and insulating tape to assemble this. Specs for those interested:

 

• Pentium G620 2.66 GHz
• 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz (runs at 1066 because CPU)
• 8GB USB 2.0 flash drive (main storage)
• Intel DH61SA motherboard
• iBall 450W PSU
• Random 12V fan

EDIT: I forgot to mention, this PC's name is Tatooine, because it's brown and good for spare parts. Also, the openings are coarse and rough and irritating, just like sand.

[Guest]

Holy mother of ghetto! @iamdarkyoshi would love it

[Delian]

Thats Cool

[VVoltor]

This might be the most ghetto rig I've seen. Dat tape! The terrible cutout! The wrong connector! Love it!

[Guest]

@deXxterlab97 @Delian @VVoltor Thanks a lot!

 

Any feedback?

[VVoltor]

5 minutes ago, namandoesnotpanic said:

@deXxterlab97 @Delian @VVoltor Thanks a lot!

 

Any feedback?

Get another Amazon box and you'll have a full case with a fancy power supply basement! I'm sure you could even fashion a window with scissors and cling film maybe

[Guest]

1 minute ago, VVoltor said:

Get another Amazon box and you'll have a full case with a fancy power supply basement! I'm sure you could even fashion a window with scissors and cling film maybe

Cling film - genius! I'll find a way to incorporate that into this somehow... don't wanna put this in a box because I like the motherboard up on the top... best to keep the CPU outside, see, for more out of the box thinking.  But I'll figure something out. Maybe a window into the box, showcasing the PSU and, well, cables?