Project: The Ultimate Computer Desk

This could be useful to your project

PwnFrnzy said:

It's awesome the amount of sponsorships this beast of a project has obtained. I'm sure some other major companies may contribute as well, what major company wouldn't want their tech in there?

Sucks the Dual XEON had to come out, but one must sacrifice to gain, with the ATX you should have more room for the tech to plan to put in there, I also like the idea of the layout of the buttons, LEDs, and USB ports you will be putting in the front there. And good luck on Cable Management, that is always one of the hardest parts of big builds.

Thanks PwnFrnzy, the sponsorship has been a really interesting treat, and I am extremely humbled by the fact that so many companies have signed on a testament to how neat this project is. Cable management.. yes.. it will be very interesting!

ICit2lol said:

Just looking at the fan setup yeah this is where I would be putting those filters (if they are on the outer surface) and seeing it's a reasonably thin sheet it's on - how about some of those silicone "frames" to go between the fan and sheet I know they are not that noisy but given there are a few for the extra few cents - worth it I reckon.

Nearly forgot the tape is called "invisible" out here maybe some different where you are - I'll send a pic - go to dash for the workhouse!!

Those silicone frames may be worthwhile looking in to. I will wait and see how it turns out when I turn it on!

toetag said:

i love this idea! well done.

Thanks toetag!

ICit2lol said:

Hiyya ultimate just been flat out mate with repairing - that pic of the invisible tape I said I'd send. (Errrr sorry re the clutter lol!!)

Oh and I was thinking what someone had said about the heat within the unit - how does a large solid aluminium back to the desk sound - perhaps with a few cooling fins along the length of the unit on the outside and inside. Maybe set some fans into it?

Aha! I think... that would cost a lot lolol!

LTFUbar said:

This could be useful to your project

Yes, some very cool stuff - I am considering the possibilities!

I guess it's been a while eh!

Well, you'll be glad to know, that I'm actually almost done. There've been a few changes to the original plan, etc, etc, but I've still been goign full steam ahead, just not a lot of time to post updates lately.

Here you go, some photo bombardment!

First off, my awful cutting job. Notice how the masking tape ripped off some of the polyurethane? Looks pretty great eh.. (NOT!)



Fitting my original faceplate design



I thought it didn't look too bad, but the USB ports were difficult to secure, and there were no audio jacks, so I went about and redesigned a new face plate



Did some work with the band saw, scroll saw, and some sanding, and voila!





Looks not terrible eh? That's a nice unit from Silverstone that I picked up from my local computer store. Everything fits real nice and tight



Holes for the power switch and LEDs look good



And a quick test fit



Wonderful! I cut the hole for the card reader / usb with a jigsaw, but neglected to take photos...

Anyways - after a couple coats of black spray paint, I think it looks pretty cool.

With the faceplate out of the way, and hopefully, the last of the drilling / sawing / making sawdust portion over, for the right-hand cabinet, it meant I had the all clear to install more hardware.

Here are the two hard-drive trays with the actual HDD trays removed.



Gave them a nice coat of black spray paint and they mounted them inside the cabinet. I think they look pretty groovy.



Even groovier loaded up with hard drives.. (Two missing in this pic, 7TB total, however!)




Now, before we get to the next pic... another boon happened recently - traded some of those Core 2 Duo systems + some cash and picked up a really cool previous generation Core i5!

Here's the power supply - a Corsair 650TX, a very quality unit. All that could be better is some modular action. Ah well!



And another beautiful Gigabyte motherboard - a GA-P55-USB3 with 4 GB of G.Skill RAM





Here's the sweet mother. A quad core 2.8Ghz. Wow, talk about moving on up the CPU chain!



I picked up an older version of the Coolermaster Hyper 212 (Not the Plus version) and mounted a pair of Scythe fans to it



Oooh, it's getting so close to boot time!

Lordbob75 said:

Looking really good. I like the faceplate with the start button and stuff.

~Lordbob

Thanks Lordbob75!

Sub Styler said:

ultimatedesk said:

Anyways - after a couple coats of black spray paint, I think it looks pretty cool.

I must first say, i've been following this thread for some time and I'm really impressed with your work and the ammount of detail going into this!

That really looks good but you could take the facia's off the optical drive and card reader, prime them up and spray them with the same spray used on the surround for a colour match?

Unless you wanted to keep the logo's and lables...

Thanks, that's a cool idea and I may consider that!

ICit2lol said:

Hey ulti getting better and better and looking at the drives looks like my metal back maybe an option. Have you tried costing some checkerplate from say a box trailer manufacturer? I'll go back and have a look at the dimensions and price it out here - that might bring me back to Earth perhaps - any mates in crash repair places that may be able to help you out?

Now I am trying to dream up something to do with a cooling system from an old fridge hmmmmm

Ooh, another great idea! Thanks! I think what you're talking about is a phase change cooling system?

Wow, with all those SATA cables there, it sure messes things up, no?





I went ahead and threw in my current video card (Radeon HD5770, which kicks some pretty decent butt still). I'm sure I'll see an improvement from my P4 3.2!!!



And here's the magical moment. It looks like it's already been tweaked around a bit. Running at 3.2Ghz instead of 2.8Ghz, RAM speed up to 1600Mhz... Hey - nice temps! That's only a few degrees over ambient! (It's chilly in the basement)



Only one major problem with this setup... Can you see what it might be? (Well, ok, there's more than one thing not "ideal")



That might cause an issue. I also don't like the way the heatsink exhausts all of its hot air directly onto the back of the video card, so off to the local computer shop!

This should do the trick:



Much better. Fits almost like it was meant to be.



Looks real good there actually. I think the wide fin spacing will be an advantage as well, since there is going to be a lot of general air flow throughout the cabinet.