Out of interest, why didn't you choose to use mitred joints for the wood? You would have had a more pleasing top panel then. Additionally, aren't 80mm fans usually a pain to keep quiet? Elegant build, quite like the use of a riser card to keep everything nice and slim. The height of the build probably helps with a stack effect for cooling, no? The fans set on lowest combined with being able to draw air from near the ground and exhausting it much higher should make cooling it nice and easy. Temps and noise would be nice to know. Really fond of the simple style, it's not a common one in the modding community.
I am fairly confident in the fact that I couldn't afford it, but what pricing would you be thinking for custom builds?
Thank you. I moved to a new house recently as well and can't wait till living room is finished so I can put it there Thanks man! ...and thanks for sharing why not mitred joins... first, I felt like I would have to do the the same with aluminium half, and that is for practical reasons not possible. also, I wanted to achieve this ''monolithic'' look on sides/front, but I wanted to break it a little bit on the top, to make it little bit interesting. current version is actually the simplest one. So, I will stick with this fragmented, honest look on the top but will fill gaps between wooden parts, as it really doesn't look that good. noise levels depend on chosen hw obviously. and yes 80mm fans can be a pain the ear. My testing setup uses 1400rpm, 16 CFM, 11dBA fans from Fractal, and they are... OK, but I think I can find lower dBA per CFM. for CPU I'm using Akasa low profile cooler and that is just unacceptably noisy and I will have to test other coolers and pick the best one. GPU is single slot cooler and it's not too bad but I believe that double slot cooler like one on GTX 650, will be better. Worth mentioning is PSU. I'm using 350W from BeQuiet and that thing is just noiseless. I actually had to have a look if fan is spinning to make sure it's on when I was testing it Simple, minimalistic design is tricky territory, it can look great, but can go very wrong as well. aiming for around 600-1000 GBP for whole system, depending on hardware configuration of course. Thanks. I will extend this worklog for an audio version with speakers later, I promise Thank you! Sure it was, as always
This is quite possibly my favorite PC ever. As an architecture student, it really does appeal to me. The subtle design features look incredibly simple, but I know how difficult they can be to get just right on such a minimalist design. The gap between the walnut and alu really finishes the design, and incorporating the slot-load optical drive in this gap is perfect. £600-1000 sounds very reasonable indeed for such a unique design. I'm sure you could sell plenty of them for much, much more to the kind of people who also spend a lot on high-end audio. Would it be worth offering custom height and wood finish options (although black and walnut is the best combination for sure), so people could tie this system in with their specific set of floorstanding speakers. I know I'd be anal enough to want something like this to match the height of my speakers that I'd place it next to. Teaming up with an acoustic expert to produce high quality, matching floorstanding speakers would be even better. Any plans to approach high-end audio stores. Some might be willing to advertise/stock this system? Edit. One final thing. A matching storage add-on could be an interesting idea. Most people could use this as a media PC I'm guessing, and with HD content, storage is important. 2 hard drives might not be enough for some. Having a matching unit that I could fill with hard drives (and a PSU) would be of interest to me.
Thaaaaaaaannnnkk youuuuu! Yes, my GF is architecture student and we sometimes discuss, how similar can designing a building and computer get. How many times you imagine/sketch a great looking building/PC, but you just can't get it right inside As I mentioned before, I'm going to build one more audio orientated version with matching speakers, but no I didn't think about approaching any audio store or any other retailer. This would probably need a regular manufacturing process, which would require much bigger investment a me to quit my fairly easy and fairly well paid job. and probably to get someone else on board. With chassis for another product sitting on my desk right now and a couple more on paper, I'm already completely out of fee time... When it comes to storage I hoped that a couple of TB of space will do. also it can be easily modified to take two 3.5" HDD AND two SSDs. I will do some research on that, thanks for advice
45 degree cuts along the non-aluminium facing pieces of wood would leave you with a smooth join on all parts as well as a nice monolithic look. It is, admittedly, a rather weak joint, but since it's not under load that's not really such a problem. Either way, I guess it's your preference. For the CPU cooler you might want to look at the Scythe Kozuti SCKZT-1000. 40mm tall, 31dB on low speed though certainly not going to win any prizes for temps. The Silverstone NT07-775 is also apparently quite quiet, but Frostytech don't seem to have their test results for it on their site.
to Finland? 30 GBP 3-5 day standard via UPS or Express for much more Scyte Kozuti is recommended only up to 65W TDP I think, But I want to try Shurikens, both low enough to fit and Zalman CNPS8000B is also a candidate.