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Scratch Build – In Progress The Ultimate Computer Desk - 2 Integrated Desktops (September 1)

Discussion in 'Project Logs' started by ultimatedesk, 29 Nov 2010.

  1. Goo5e

    Goo5e What's a Dremel?

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    Proper job mate. Not much more to say? Kind of inlove with your table man =)
     
  2. (FIH) The Don

    (FIH) The Don What's a Dremel?

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    if Al Capone had a computer desk this would be it :D
     
  3. BOBDBONE

    BOBDBONE Owner at BS Mods

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    Looking great. That's a really nice color of stain too.

    Good luck to you for MOTM. :thumb:
     
  4. stefan442

    stefan442 Minimodder

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    Beautiful.... hope the pc parts blend in well with the desk!! Interesting that your going for a nice sleek look rather than an industrial metal desk. Good luck with MOTM looks like you've put in the hard work :D
     
  5. DarthBane

    DarthBane What's a Dremel?

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    Fantastic joinery work, I wish I had that level of skill :sigh:
     
  6. ultimatedesk

    ultimatedesk What's a Dremel?

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    All Setup

    Thanks jocke92!

    Thanks Goo5e!

    Hmm.. New business opportunity? Mob Desks. Custom Made. Heh

    Thanks BOBDBONE!

    Thanks stefan442, I hope everything works out too! The components are the next part of the journey ;)

    Thanks DarthBane - this is my first major carpentry piece, so don't be discouraged! You would be surprised what you're capable of when you just take your time and put a little passion into what you're doing! ;)

    So - I finally had some time this weekend to do a bit of work on The Ultimate Computer Desk.

    Here's a little shot of the desk as it sits now. Note that the drawers aren't installed, there's clutter everywhere, the two cabinets are not lined up in any particular fashion, and of course, no hardware has yet been installed.

    [​IMG]

    If you didn't notice, I finally said to myself "Ok Mr. You've been working on this desk for 8 months - time for a present". I ~finally~ ditched my old CRT monitor (Which was nice, at 1600x1200 resolution) and purchased myself a brand new 27" Asus. Sweet!

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    That was my first new computer component in ages!


    I moved on to the next part of the project, which was installing the drawers, so I got to work. Sorry about the pictures, I think I accidentally turned the auto focus off!

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    Imagine my surprise when I went to go and slide the drawer in. The drawer was too wide! I accomodated for 0.25" on each side of the drawer, for the width of the drawer slides. Unfortunately, these particular drawer slides were 3/16's of an inch wider than I accounted for... Here's a wonderfully in focus shot:

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    So my options were:
    1. Redo the drawers completely, making them a total of 6/16's (3/8's) skinnier, or
    2. Shave off 3/16's" from each side, about 1.5" tall, along the length of both sides, of each of the drawers.

    What a bummer! I thought oh well, it'll actually look pretty tidy with the sides shaved anyways, and also give additional support, so here goes!

    Time to tape up my poor drawers. They're about to get scratched up pretty bad!

    [​IMG]

    Setting up the tablesaw for some "guidelines" - 3/16's of an inch deep, set the fence at 2" and then 3.5" if I remember correctly.

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    And there you go, some proper guidelines for the material that will need to be removed.

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    This was a pretty big surprise, but not too major, and nothing that cannot be done well.
     
  7. timmmay

    timmmay What's a Dremel?

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    That's my motto: measure twice, cut once, cuss, scratch head, measure again, cut again.
     
  8. ultimatedesk

    ultimatedesk What's a Dremel?

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    Fixing the Drawers

    Lol - love it!

    So, after I used the table saw to make my reference cuts, I grabbed the router with a 1/2" flush cut bit, set it at the appropriate depth and went to town. Making the reference cuts made the rest of this usually tedious job easy.

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    When I went to do the reference cuts on the shorter drawers, I realized... there were a bunch of screws in the way. Ooops! Good thing I noticed so quickly!

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    I had to go and remove all woodfiller and the screws that were in the way of the 3/16's inch material removal. This meant all the screws along the bottom, and 1 or 2 at the front and back of the drawer. What a pain!

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    After getting all of the extra material removed, I drilled some new counter-sink holes (Since the old ones were taken off with the router), re-inserted the screws, and gave all the dressers a light sanding, since I would have to redo the polyurethane coat anyways (They got pretty scratched up). In this pic, I had already re-stained the portion where I removed the extra material.

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    So. Next - polyurethaning the drawers... AGAIN!
     
  9. timmmay

    timmmay What's a Dremel?

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    That's my other motto: If I'm going to mess it up, mess it up in a way that causes the most re-work possible.
     
  10. Tokari

    Tokari What's a Dremel?

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    I agree. There is something about seeing a build come together made from wood that makes it somehow more personal.
     
  11. ultimatedesk

    ultimatedesk What's a Dremel?

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    Installing the Drawers

    lol, love it timmmay - you must be fun to work with in the shop! ;)

    Yes - thanks Tokari!


    While getting ready to re-polyurethane the drawers, I also took the time to stain and poly the right-hand cabinet door, as well as the two pieces that will be above each of the cubby holes on the top of the desk

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    Re-polyurethaning the drawers went really well - they look fantastic

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    Things have been pretty busy in the shop - have been re-glassing a war-horse of a canoe at the same time!

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    Here are the first couple drawers installed. They fit perfectly - the slides fit right into the grooves that I cut out. This photo turned out a little redder than reality

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    Getting the actual slides lined up and screwed in straight took a bit of patience, but well worth the effort

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    Ahh, nice and messy, but finally got the drawers in.

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    Some of the things I'll need to be working on shortly:

    - Front Panel (Fan controls, LED's, Power/Reset switches, USB, Audio Jacks)
    - Fan Installation (Foam surrounds, filter fitting)
    - Hardware selection

    After the hardware is selected and installed, I will be able to focus on cable routing and placement of the drives.
     
  12. Yaka

    Yaka Multimodder

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    loving the finish you got on the desk. top job
     
  13. techy0409

    techy0409 What's a Dremel?

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    this is definitely an awesome desk. makes me want to build one of my own. can't wait to see the computer components installed. watching this.

    techy0409.
     
  14. ultimatedesk

    ultimatedesk What's a Dremel?

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    Up and Coming Preview

    Thanks Yaka!

    Thanks techy0409 - component stuff is starting soon! Very exciting!

    Sorry for the delay in updates everyone - I've been enjoying the beautiful summer weather we've been getting lately and haven't been putting a tremendous effort into getting the desk finished.

    Surprise though - I did manage to get quite a bit done, and I've had some good fortune lately as well. I expect to post several updates this week, so just to get you back into the spirit of things, here's this weeks preview!

    4x Scythe Ultra Kaze 120mm x 38mm 3000RPM
    4x Scythe Slipstream 120mm x 25mm 1900RPM
    [​IMG]

    Lots of foam cutting and trimming, and a sweet, sweet ruler from the Moddders Inc Featured Rig of the Month Contest(Thanks! I'm honored!)
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    Hmm, what's this?
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    Holy moly cool prize pack Modders Inc! I still can't believe I won this - perfect stuff for The Ultimate Computer Desk!
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    Finally removed the protective cover from these babies - they look soo nice!
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    Hmm? Another surprise?...
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    Oh good lord! What kind of super monster is that!!?
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    Bwahahaha
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    Ok, so maybe a lot's happened in the past couple weeks. I haven't been posting any updates because I've been tinkering around with hardware AND enjoying some good outdoor times. I'm thinking that the next round of updates in the following month or so will be ultra exciting - things are starting to wrap up!

    Seeya soon!
     
  15. thetrashcanman

    thetrashcanman Angel headed hipsters

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    I've just read through this entire work log, and I must say dude this bloody amazing, hat's off to you I say, and brilliant job *subbed* and I'm looking forward to more updates now :D
     
  16. RedManc

    RedManc What's a Dremel?

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    It looks fantastic!

    This desk and L3P D3SK inspired me to make my desk build for my new house, then looking at case mods I thought that looks a little easier for my first project .. you might have just convinced me to stick to the desk build idea again, looking forward to seeing some more.
     
  17. xMathiasD

    xMathiasD What's a Dremel?

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    i want that desk! and the kittens too! it must be time for another picture of 'em! :D
     
  18. ultimatedesk

    ultimatedesk What's a Dremel?

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    Fan Setup

    Thanks, thetrashcanman, I appreciate the comments! Lots more to come soon, I promise!

    Hehe, awesome - you know, no matter what, things never seem to be perfect the first time anyways (I'm already thinking of version 2 of the desk and I'm not even done version 1 yet!) so go for it!

    Hehe, thanks! I keep forgetting to take pics of the kittens!


    After gluing a few blocks of foam together with a spray adhesive, I trimmed the block down to the appropriate size using a bandsaw.

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    Unfortunately, it wouldn't fit in order to do the vertical cut...

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    So I took out the trusty hand saw!

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    Here's the plan for the fan layout

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    At first I tried cutting the holes with a good quality knife, but the cuts were not very consistent and it took a long time. I ended up using an old drywall saw, which worked perfectly.

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    Test fit

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    Cut some more holes

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    Awesome!

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    Let's see how it looks in the right-hand cabinet

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    LOL - hilarious. It shouldn't fit like that. At least, it didn't during my initial measurements! I'll have to tweak that a bit later!

    On to the crazy fans. I decided to go with 3 instead of 4. There just wasn't enough room for foam between each of the fans, and I figured there would be a lot of vibrational noise if they were touching. I could always go to 4 in the future if this proves to be insufficient.

    [​IMG]

    Lookin good

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    Stay tuned! More stuff tomorrow!
     
  19. ultimatedesk

    ultimatedesk What's a Dremel?

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    I was in an extremely fortunate position recently. A friend of mine's work was moving from a large location to a much smaller location, and he had asked me if I wanted to come scope out the old office for any old bits of computer stuff that might be useful to me. To my shock and amazement, I was indeed able to pick up some pretty fancy hardware that I would have never dreamed of owning. They must have done some pretty big upgrades to leave stuff like this behind!

    I was able to get a hold of a handful of Socket 775 motherboards with Core 2 Duo processors, a bunch of DDR RAM, a box full of Hard Drives, and some relatively decent (lower powered) power supplies. The real treasure though, was a pair of servers. You can see that I had already disassembled one of them:

    [​IMG]

    2 Full 4U Antec Rackmount cases, each of them containing a Dual-Xeon motherboard + Processors. Both with FB-DIMM RAM sticks as well.

    This particular one contained a pair of Xeon E5410's, with 16GB of DDR2 FB-DIMM's, 4 1TB Western Digital Blacks (SATA), and the motherboard is an Asus DSBF-DE.

    [​IMG]

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    The other one contained a pair of Xeon E5335's, with 4GB of DDR2 FB-DIMM's, 5 1TB Hitachi Deskstas (SATA), and the motherboard is an Asus DSGC-DW.

    Now - before we go on - someone had queried earlier about the PCI Express slot on the board pictured, and I had said something along the lines of "Ya ya, it's there, don't worry about it". I of course, actually looked at the pictures, and no, it's not. It is indeed a PCI Express 16x slot, but on this particular motherboard, it only runs at PCI8. Now, the other motherboard, the Asus DSGC-DW DOES have a PCIX16 slot. When it was released, it did not support the 54xx series of Xeon processors, but I checked the website and there is a BIOS update to add this functionality. I will have to do a test setup with that board to update the BIOS, and then it will be swapped into the desk with a full video card, both the E5410's, as well as the 16GB of RAM, so keep that in mind when looking at the rest of this update. No, unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the other motherboard.

    Cool stuff either way. Never, ever thought I'd have a dual processor motherboard. What an amazing find!

    These dual Xeon heatsinks mount directly into the motherboard tray, so unfortunately, I couldn't use those spiffy motherboard trays from Danger Den. Also, since they are of size "SSI", there's no way it would mount on a regular ATX motherboard tray anyways. Time to drill out a tray!

    [​IMG]

    It actually came out pretty nice and clean

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    This is a bit of a shame, since I took the time to clean the processors, put new thermal compound and remount everything. I'm just going to have to disassemble it again anyways when I put in the different motherboard. Ah well.

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    This is a bit of a hack job getting the tray mounted... Since the processors are mounted to the tray, I had mounted it outside of the desk, so when I went to fasten the tray to the desk, I was *gasp* actually lazy and didn't want to dismount the motherboard again... so umm.. I'm going to replace those odd-angled screws when I switch motherboards..

    [​IMG]

    The power supply looks pretty good there. It's an Antec 650W - an Earthwatts maybe? I forget. I may consider replacing it with a unit that has a 120-140mm fan just to exhaust the air a bit better. The board has a requirement for a 24pin, an 8pin, as well as a 4pin, so I can't just use any power supply unfortunately.

    [​IMG]

    The cables, of course, are not nearly long enough to reach the connectors on the board. I've already ordered the extensions and hopefully I'll get them at the beginning of next week. Oh, you'll see that I've straightened out the fans as well.

    [​IMG]

    The cooling solution looks good. There will be two fans directly in front of the CPU's. I may consider putting an additional hole in the door to allow the CPU's and RAM to exhaust directly.

    [​IMG]

    There is one major issue with the right-hand cabinet setup. The original specifications called for an ATX board, which is significantly smaller, so umm.. I have no idea where the hard-drives are going to fit. lol! Fun times.

    Hope you're enjoying this flurry of updates. I may or may not be able to post an update tomorrow, as I'm going camping for the weekend! At the latest, I'll be posting again early next week!
     
  20. Mosquito

    Mosquito Just 'Plane' Crazy

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    Awesome score! Looks like you're getting very near completion! This excites me...
     

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