Nate Fox
noted that there was a Cool Case contest over at QuakeCon. The
winners included a machine built entirely in a suitcase, one with a glowing skull inside, and of course, one built from PVC pipes. Imitate at your own risk ;) I get nervous putting a Powerpuff Girls sticker on my case. *grin*
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In my neighborhood, you'd get your ass kicked for dissin' the PowerPuff Girls like that. Never underestimate the wrath of 10 year-old girls. ;-)
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Put the power supply off in the corner somewhere, and just run a wire bundle up to the computer.
Cut the power cables, one at a time so you don't confuse them and splice in a nice 8-foot set of wires of at least the same gauge (thickness). As an added advantage, you get the noise of the cooling fan further away.
Whatever you do, never go with an gutless power supply. That will doom you to a flakey computer, especially with today's power-hungry chips. Use at least a 250 watt supply.
My machine is 256 MB, two 7200 rpm hard drives, and CD ROM + CDR. With a 250 watt power supply I had occasional spontaneous reboots, especially if both the CDR and the CD were spinning up at the same time. Upgrading to a 300 watt power supply fixed the problem.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Why are so many people seemingly obsessed with having the biggest/most fans in their boxen?
I've noticed this mentality before on
I know Intel's processors, for example, run a little on the hot side - but surely you'll get to a point when adding another fan is a complete waste of money/space/energy.
For me, boxes that are more efficient, that need less fans, use less power, make less noise, are far more appealing.
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%46%55%43%4B !
How do you avoid the drastically increased magnetic noise that a fan like the one in the PVC case must generate? I would expect that a motor like the one in most of our window fans (about the size of a large sandwich) could probably throw off enough interference to erase your hard drive! Is the fan shielded, or is it a low-noise motor, or what? This would be truly awesome, but I'm hesitant to try it because of the noise issue.
Is it really anything more than a really inconvenient laptop made out of non-miniaturized parts?
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Now that's a proper pissing contest. Forget about over-clocking, how hot can you get your box?
"Well Bruce, I've recently added a three bar electric fire to mine, it now runs at a toasty 90 degrees C. Oh and I've had to underclock the processor by 90%."
Or maybe I've been given some moderators crack by mistake...
wrighty.
The folks doing freezing prep of bio samples run into this. They sometimes use a slush of propane and a little LN2 (-190C); the propane boils high enough (-42C) that it stays liquid when the sample is dumped into it, giving much faster cooling rates. Propane is a poor solvent, nonconductive, and otherwise resonalbel inert, so it would work well unless you got a flame or spark too near. Then the cooling system would sort'a reverse. But that's give you an excuse to do a hardware upgrade.
http://www.virtualhideout.net/ is a good starting point for Case Mod ideas.
The Cool Case Gallery has pictures of 161 mods (to date).
I think we have to give credit to gamers for driving the cool case idea a while ago (like the unreal case) but they've been left behind now by hardware nuts who don't care what runs on the computer, just how fast, how cool and how it looks.
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
http://www.envador.com/Photos/PVCII
Some Q&A is also at the bottom of that page. Thanks for your comments :)
I'm looking for a tiny tiny motherboard (preferably by abit or asus) - maybe MicroATX, Flex ATX or NLX but must also have an AGP slot. Any suggestions? I'm designing PVC Jr. and it's going to focus on size this time.
if you're talking about a regular putty-colored PC case, let me give you some tips. (I painted one for my then sys-admin a couple years ago.)
;-)
1) Rough up the finish first. Sandpaper, rock tumbler grit, etc.
2) Wash it off with water and dry it thoroughly.
3) Spray paint, fabric paint, whatever you use, it needs to dry completely between coats, especially if you're going to be painting over the same area 2 or 3 times.
4) When you're done give it a coat of spray sealant.
5) And for crying out loud, if you paint the front, detatch ALL the buttons and lights first. (Boy what a mess I made...)
Have fun!
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
you knew someone was gonna say it
it's a computer...
AND a 6 foot electric bong.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Something similar has already been done here, albeit with a rather expensive non-conducting liquid and liquid nitrogen for a heat pump :)
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Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.