So, not too long ago I got myself a Ryzen system. This freed up a number of components - enough to put together another decent enough gaming system. Now, according to the wife I have enough computers running in the house now, and that there was a practical limit to how many I am able to use simultaneously at any given time (clearly she doesn't know me quite as well as she thinks). So she presented the argument that I should sell the stuff left over from my recent build. So I thought about what this system would be good for. It's not the most powerful on the planet, so I decided it should be a simple and easy to move system that would be perfect for lugging along to a friends LAN-night or something like that. Then I made a quick design in Sketchup, and went to work. The components going into this system would be: Asus Sabertooth 990fx AMD FX8150 16GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance 1866Mhz RAM Asus ROG GTX780 Poseidon Creative SoundBlaster X-fi 2x OCZ 120GB SSD (configured in RAID-0) Corsair CX600 V2 And that's it. That's really all you need. First I found a flat piece of pinewood and cut it to the shape I wanted. Then I chamfered the edges and routed out a section to make a handle. Simple enough, right? This will be the support for all the components. Next, I needed some feet. I decided to make these out of teak, and I just happened to have plenty left over from my PS3 project a few years ago. So I set about shaping these as well, which is rather easily done when working with teak. Then I set about fitting the feet to the main panel. I cut two sections from the bottom of the panel, and then I slipped the feet on. It's a tight fit, and now it stands! And from the back: That looked good to me, so I fastened them with two brass wood screws. So now I needed to start laying out the mounting positions for all the components - starting with my trusty old DFI standin motherboard. I also made a set of round teak motherboard standoffs by roughly cutting them out, drilling a hole, sticking a screw through them all and tightening them down with a nut. Then I stuck the screw into my drill-press and used a wood rasp, files and sandpaper to get them rounded. So now I had the mounting position for the motherboard. Next I routed out some holes to guide cables through. And then set about mounting the PSU. This would be mounted on the back, and the lack of a mounting bracket led me to take it apart, drill four holes in the bottom of it and simply screw it down with brass wood screws. I also cut the wires I wouldn't need. And with the covers back on (here I have also drilled the mounting holes for the SSDs): Now the thing was pretty much finished, but I needed to stain the wood. I stumbled upon some lovely stain by chance one day, and I used this stuff to stain the pine after sanding all the wood smooth.
So now the pine panel had been stained, and I started putting pieces back on. I had cut all the wires I wouldn't need from the PSU, and remounted it. Next I made a small bracket to hold the power switch, as well as an expansion card bracket - both were made from teak. As always, I used brass screws to secure the last of the teak bits. Then I drilled some holes for a couple of status LEDs and the power switch and tested the fit. Starting to come together now, but still with the old standin DFI board. Nothing more to be done in the workshed, so I took the DFI board off and brought the thing inside. It was time to start mounting the proper hardware, and to start sleeving all the wires - starting with the ATX-bundle. Several hours later, with National Geographic and Discovery science as background noise, I had finished sleeving the ATX wires. Now came the time to tidy it up a bit by stiching them together, and I opted to use brass thread for this. Damnit, forgot to rotate the pics. Hang on...
Continuing the process I also sleeved the rest of the wires. And once that was done I installed the rest of the hardware, and then the build was finished.
So there you have it; a quick and easy project that I chose to name "Reductio". Next was just a manner of putting an OS on it and make it ready to sell. Here's to hoping someone takes it...
looks good! - and eerily similar to something i have been wanting to do for a while now - nice to see the idea i viable! from the looks of things, i would be surprised if you have a hard time selling it. it's unique which is often a great selling point...
Looking super good! I'm sure it'll sell fairly easily. As a side note: I expect that DFI to be properly cleaned and turned into a clock by the end of the week.
