Scratch Build – In Progress Water Cooled Desk

After seeing a few custom built desk PC's floating around the web I fell in love with the idea and couldn't resist having a crack at it myself. I've built PC's before but nothing on this scale.

So for the past 3 months I've been in CAD and came up with a few idea's before settling for my favorite and really going to town on it.

My idea was to have a wooden desk with 2 viewing area's in it for the m/board and for the HDD's. I would have a cabinet on one side which would house the radiator, PSU and cabling to make it as neat as possible. After mulling the idea over for a while I decided it would be a great idea to house the monitors in the desk as-well, sort of have them pop up when i wanted them and hide them away when I didn't.

Anyways it all looked good in theory but the idea was just in my head and in 2D drawings until that is I found Sketchup (No idea how I've missed it before), now I have a 3D model of it and though it looked good so thought why not post it on the forums and get other modders views on it.

So here are the picture so far







I'm really please with the results so decided to go ahead and get a prototype built. I'm not a woodworker and don't really have the space to do woodwork as I live in a flat, therefore i'm going to get the pieces cut on a CNC machine and assemble it elsewhere.

Luckily my mum works for a company with a wood CNC machine and they have agreed to cut the pieces for me for free out of scrap wood they have. EGGSCELLENT!!!

I sent the drawings off early last week and had hoped to have some wood by the weekend but unfortunately they've been quite busy so haven't got round to it. Since i'm getting this bit done for free it feels very rude to chase them I have however dropped a couple of hints i'd love to have it by the end of January.

In the meantime i'm going to work on designing my control panel to go on the cabinet front. This will house the anti-vandal push buttons for power, reset and up/down for the monitors. It will also house the optical drive, a blanking plate and pretty much anything else I can fit on it that I might need.

 

This will be interesting I will subscribe

 

I certainly hope so, I just wish I had a garage or something so that I could do the work myself rather than rely on other companies. Until I get the wood cut there isn't much I can do with it :-(

 

I understand you completely I do all my modding in my bedroom or out on the porch in the summers... It would be so nice to have access to some garage

 

I'm in a 2 bed flat so nearly impossible, I'll be clearing the 2nd bedroom (currently my office) to get it assembled and then do all the smaller bits. Fun times ahead

 

Wasn't sure how interested people would be in seeing the CAD drawings but thought i'd at least upload it for those who might want to see it.

Below is the layout I've sent to be cut. There are 6 sheets of 2440mm x 1220mm, 3 at 15mm deep, 1 at 18mm and 2 at 3mm. Each sheet has several of the pieces nested onto it to try and save as much wood as possible but as you can see there is loads of wood there .



I've not really played with CAD much but I had so much fun doing this. When it came to doing it in Sketchup having the CAD drawing done it was actually a really good exercise to make sure all the pieces fitted. I had to make a couple of minor adjustments but everything was pretty much spot on.

 

I'm building a desk PC too at the moment, so I'll be watching this one with interest.

 

Loving the concept, looking forward to some pictures

 

Update

Sorry guys it's been ages since I put an update on but the company cutting the wood for free were very busy and only got round to it last week.

So anyway I finally got all the parts delivered on Friday and spent Sunday drilling holes and assembling as much as I could.

Here are a few pics that I took.

Just some of the wood lying around, In this pic i've already manually routed length ways ready for my sliding doors.

Holes drilled for cam locks and dowels for all my side panels.

My Shelving and cabinet bases ready to be routed for the cam locks.


Assembly time!!!!

Right cabinet assembled and mounted



I got a bit too into the assembly at this point and and forgot to take more pictures lol but here is the main frame fully assembled. The long thin panel that sticks out at the back was too tight a fit so i'm going to shave 1mm off all around the edge to help it slot into place.

Left cabinet where the main components will be and the m/board will sit in the top bay.

Holes for the fans where my cooling will be.

Here you can see my sliding rear panels in action, ignore the hole going all the way through, i didn't put the smaller panel in place as i was running out of time.


Finally the left view with a fan hole for taking air out.


There still loads of work to do but I'm really pleased with it so far and extremely happy that other than a couple of small ajustments the whole thing went together easily.

Oh btw the glass you can see is on the desk at the moment is just some spare stuff my dad had in his gareg that roughyl fitted the slot so just put it there to get a rough idea of the end result.

Next I need to build the monitor housing and buy myself an actuator to lift it, should be fun so will update you when doing that.

 

Just a quick update to say I’ve got my actuator and linear rails ordered to raise the monitor housing

I've ordered a heavy duty 500mm Stroke actuator with manual controller (Which will be modified).



The rails I've ordered are also 500MM and will just guide the monitor housing when it's being raised/lowered.



Once it arrives in a few days I’ll create a little video of the actuator working.

 

Looks good so far, but it's a shame you didn't use MDF instead of the particleboard.

 

This is only a prototype that was cut from scrap by my the company my Mum works for. Once I know where every single hole is going to go and any amendments made i'm going to get it cut from veneered MDF sheets.

 

Not exactly the most ressourceful way of doing things, but it sure works

 

Haha when somebody offers to do it for free you take them up on it lol

 

Project on hold - Sorry

 

I am kind of curious, how do you plan on setting up your liquid cooling loop?

 

Hi Metalglasses

I started writing a long explanation but decided an image may work best. This is going to be 1st ever watercooling project but I envisaged it working something like this.



1 - 1 X 240x120 radiator to cool the fluid and a pump to start the process
2 - CPU, GPU and RAM cooling on show
3 - Reservoir purely for show next to some other components like my SSD's and HDD's
4 - Pump to assist the flow back to the radiator.

The fluid will travel from the LHS to the RHS through some hidden tubing in a recess under the worktop which you can see in the image below.



This was just the idea but I haven't reached that far yet and now I've had to put the project on hold due to work, funds and not to mention I might be moving properties soon and won't have the space for such a large desk.

 

Interesting desk mate.
Quite a few going on at the moment.

 

Shame! Having the monitors pop out from the desk would be pretty awesome, very 80s spy film

 

Nice how you integrated the monitors in the desk.

For the love of the modding god, please resize your pics!