Long time, no mod, folks! It's nice to be back. I didn't really 'advertise' my last 2 mods but I'm wanting to catch up with friends here, old and new ... So this thing will be an SFF workstation scratch built out of cardboard. Now you may all be laughing right now, but I studied architecture and I know what cardboard can do. I will liberate it from land-fills and thrust it into the modding limelight. Well, not quite - Aims are smallest possible footprint, widest possible graphics card support and shortest possible construction time and cost (hence cardboard..) Oh, and one more thing - if my posts seem kind of enigmatic, they're not - I'm just too lazy to write. So, without further ado, I present - some sketches*! *Please do not confuse the word 'sketch' with 'Sketchup' - I dislike that piece of software with a passion. These were modelled and rendered in Blender. Nothing is set in stone (or carboard, for that matter) yet but I have a rough idea of where I'm going and it is not elucidated properly in any of the above images.. they are only sketches. muahahahaa...
Updates.. It is half-SSI. SSI is basically E-ATX size, with a few more holes. So motherboard dimensions are about 150x340mm. This is the board - http://www.rioworks.com/server/Product/ViewProduct.asp?View=NK12X OK, so the design is starting to take shape - I'm thinking a 1.5mm aluminium motherboard tray that also acts to add structural integrity and doubles (or should that be 'triples'?) as a PCIe bracket holder, like so:
Oh yeah, this is looking promising. Never seen that kind of motherboard before, it enables for some nice shapes. Will the case be a open frame, like in the pics, or are you going for some kind of outer shell aswell.Will keep an eye on this one
I've been thinking about that. Not sure yet, I'd certainly like some kind of protection for travel (note the carrying handle), but simplicity is key with this one. Got any ideas? Half-SSI is designed for a 2-board-in-1u-rack configuration, and blade servers. But I think it works perfectly for SFF - it's narrower than Mini-ITX and the additional length is a moot point if your using long graphics cards, as many people are in ITX builds nowadays. And using server hardware has other advantages too - ECC, dual gigabit LAN, IPMI, etc.. The only thing that stops it being viable is cost - I managed to pick this board up on eBay but there's no way I'd have been able to afford it otherwise. I'd love to buy something like the following - http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3556#sp and http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec.aspx?ProductType=MB&pid=678&SKU=600000191 - but I think I'll have to confine my 2CPU systems to ATX/E-ATX form factors for the time being
Project Log rules state that the thread needs to show work in progress. So for now this thread is moved to Modding.
Using 3d to mock up a cardboard mod! It's an interesting board format, but the collision of the cpu and gpu areas tells me why it's not common. Don't let that stop you, though. I lovez ze cardboard too.
