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Student Designs Cardboard Computer Case
SpaceGhost writes "The Houston Chronicle has a story on a Grad student at the University of Houston who has designed a cardboard case for a computer. This is not a new concept, but this one is meant to be used in manufacture. The idea is that it will be faster and easier to produce (no fasteners for example) and dramatically easier to recycle."
I bet the case will be all eaten in a year or so.
New Economic Perspectives
why the hell are desktop cases so damn expensive?
I used to have up right computer cases becasue glass monitors were getting so damn big, and thus heavy. Now with LCD monitors, I would think the desktop would come back.
It saves more space then the tiny uprights Dell sell that stand next to the monitor, and makes room on the floor.
Obviously, the people on slashdot that get in and out of there case is probably a higher proportion then most people so I can see why some of you wouldn't want one.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The price of computers coming down is definitely a good thing and making them easier to recycle is great. Unfortunately there is growing trend of waste due to these cheap computers. As a consumer desktop technician I would see people replacing perfectly good hardware due to software issues. They are just so cheap and labor can be be pretty expensive, that it would be stupid to do anything else. The con is that a lot of cheap computers are going to the dump. Things would be perfect if people could learn the basics. Something as basic as backing up files and reinstalling the OS is beyond the scope of most consumers.
Pretty sure a cardboard box with a modern motherboard inside doesn't quite meet the FCC Part 15 class B regulations for unintentional radio emissions needed for residential use. That's why computer cases are usually metal instead of plastic.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
While you are at it, just a remarkably smaller volume and mass for the aluminum of the outside of the case.
This has got to be one of the DUMBEST "self-nuke" ideas to come along here in a long time.
Take a tower PC that's likely going to be mostly encased in metal to begin with.
Take that very trivially recyclable component and then go out of your way to
REPLACE it with something that is probably going to cause more harm to the
environment when you try to recycle it.
Replacing plastic with paper is not the answer.
This is not the grocery store.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Working in a large Data Center, we explicitly prohibit staff and customers from bringing cardboard onto the DC floor because of dust. Not only does cardboard have a habit of carrying dust from the outside, it's a huge contributor of dust as the cardboard breaks down. Hopefully they plan on treating the cardboard to mitigate this decomposition.
I don't think so. Recycling is the LAST of the three. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This will result in MORE resources being spent and LESS reuse of components.
Computer cases are one of the most re-usable elements in a system. My first PC, an 8088 PC, used a Cosmol XT case made of steel, and that case and power supply was the centerpiece of my computer from my XT all the way until my K6-2. Along that time, processor speeds increased by a factor of 100 (4.77MHz to 550MHz), memory size increased by a factor of 50 (256kb to 128MB), storage space increased by a factor of 2000(5MB to 10GB). The important standards for case design didn't change over that period, so there was no good reason to change. Also, the case was totally bad-ass. The computer I built to finally replace the aging beast used a new case, and the standards haven't changed since. I've built Athlon 64s with cases from old Pentium IIs or Athlons.
Making the case of a PC disposable crap is going to result in more waste, not less. Suddenly I won't be able to have the same case for 20 years, I'll have to replace it with every new computer(or more!). Also, it'll lead to less reuse of components. I've built 6 computers this year from parts scavenged from here and there. All of them have found homes. The parts simply wouldn't be able to be scavenged if the machines were made of cardboard. To clean the outsides of the cases, we had to use soap and water that these cases wouldn't stand up to. Some of them were left in the rain and mud for short periods fo time, and wouldn't be functional if not for the fact that they had cases that could withstand the elements.
My current case could last me another 10-20 years easily, depending on what standards do (a PC case you bought in 1999 would have an ATX form factor and could be reused today. I could see power supply standards but not case standards changing again in that time). Under this regimen, I could end up with a new case every 1-2 years or more. As others have pointed out, there will also be greater stress on components from EMI and RFI. Making less durable paper cases may be slightly easier for recycling, but it's stupid from the perspective of reducing waste.
It's been a long time.
There are plenty of computers out there which don't adhere to those standards. Something like the Dell gx270, for instance, which uses an odd ATX-wire-compatible cigar shaped power supply. Vendors seem to love making proprietary, difficult to service cases: seems like every generation of each vendors' products results in a different, difficult to service case design (including different-headed screws).
BTX is a bad design. It's not Athlon 64 or i7 compatible. ATX is. That's part of the reason hobbyists aren't interested. The fact that BTX power supplies and boards aren't as good, inexpensive, or available also has a lot to do with it - it's not the hobbyists who have nixed BTX, it's the producers. Hobbyists will move to whatever works well for the application, at a good price range.
Mini-ITX (which is what I assume you were referring to) does have a fairly broad hobbyist adoption. Why? It isn't a bad case design which limits adoption in multiple applications.
What are the applications for which ATX does not work well? And/or why do they not work well? What about the design sucks? "Clipping it to your belt" isn't exactly a valid (or honest) criticism. There's mini-ATX, as well as a variety of spec diversions - and from what I've seen, they're upwards- and cross- compatible (ie mini-ATX will work in a full-size ATX case). That works well for everything from "small desktop" on up through full-size low-end server.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Proper building is important, e.g. in most cases you will find there are metal blanks behind the plastic blanks on drive bays, theese make up part of the shielding but are often not replaced (or even can't be replaced) when moving drives arround (PC manufacturers don't really care about this, they only care about meeting the interference regulations when the machine leaves the factory).
Remember even a 10GHz (that would about the third harmonic of the clock of a 3GHz CPU) electromagnetic wave has a wavelength of a few centimeters so small slits aren't that much of a problem.
They don't build PC cases out of metal (or occasionally metal lined plastic) for fun or to make them cheap, they do it because they need the shielding to meet interference regulations.
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