I took a PC to a LAN and had to fly upto customs. My friends took towers and they went via cargo, no problems from the airports staff point of view but we did witness one of the cases being handled roughtly so i would totally recomend taking the HSF off as well as taking the Hard drive out, rapping it in bubble rap and taking that as hand lugage. Me however.... I built a PC into a case small enough to stuff in a bag and take on as hand lugage. you should have seen the look on the X-ray scanners face! was classic, he couldnt beleive what he was seing. no problems though - he realised what it was and let it through. on the way back they searched the bag but no problems. This was nearly a year ago as well when threat levels were higher and checks more rigerous than they are now.
hahaha... i can imagine the look on that guys face. when he saw the computer pass by on the screen..... hahaha
The case is small enough to be a carry on item. Cds don’t melt inside a x-ray machine unless my cd holder shields them… I’m still not worried about the HSF as I wont be flying with this for a while and the heat sink will be replaced with something stronger. The hard drive I cant decide if I want a shock absorber on it or not. I did try to cut some Lucite for that drive cage but it is not perfect enough to be glued, so I will try a recut in the next few days.. Yesterday I received a package from rackmountnet.com Time to replace that 52x full-sized cdrom with a slim one, although now I need one more floppy Molex for power. There was not enough time for me to get measurements of the slim cdrom so I don’t know how it will fit yet with my Truespace model. That pci riser card is an extended capability upgrade for my router.
for some reason this mod reminds of zap's lan pc. i guess since both the cases are used horizontal instead on of vertical.... anyway i luv custom horizontal pc mods... keep up the goodwork i plan on building a horizontal pc for a lan pc as well
I need a spacer on the back and bottom I need something to attach the hard drive and power supply to. The pieces were cut to 8.25" in length to fit between the wheels. For the past week I have been experimenting with how to attach Lucite to this case. Before these were glued down I set a test piece inside of the lid, this was holding nicely so I decided to glue the other pieces down. Just after I had finished gluing the other pieces down I broke the test piece off with out much force.... The large granite block is being used to clamp that piece down. The next day, after letting the piece cure over night, I pulled up the bottom piece very easily and started to chip the epoxy off. The back panel was still holding so I decided to let this stay. During this I glued another test piece to the case after scratching up where I wanted the piece to be glued. The reglued test piece was too broke off because I wanted to know how much force would be needed to break it. After sanding the surfaces to be glued again I reglued the bottom piece again. 24 hours later this is what I have. The blue writing is on the protective film on the Lucite. The power supply will sit like this in the case. I need a way to hold the power supply and hard drive in place while leaving a gap in-between each. This is what I came up with. These will stand on edge to keep the power supply and hard drive in place with out too much movement. I should be getting my monitor in for this project today. The benq that I have been looking at on newegg has been out of stock for a month now and there is no ETA for it to be I decided to try somewhere else.
Only just seen this log.... how did I miss it before ?!?!?!? Very intereting project, and i'll be following this closely to see how it turns out. The concept is excellent - a fully portable PC, with no compromise on specs... should make a good gamer. Wish you all the best with this project, can't wait for the next update Darkside.
The Monitor a Solarism lm1530b. The bottom of the legs have slots for wall-mounting. This is a bit too thick to fit in the lid of my box so it will need modification. I can encapsulate the lcd module or add bolts to the back side of the housing, withe the legs removed, to attach this. This monitor has a loose connection on the inside between the lcd and the controller that hopefully can be fixed with a drop or two of hot glue. This morning I started to fit the columns for mounting the hard drive and power supply. I am not really happy with how this is going to look and it will probably break easily. So I took a break for a few hours and realized that the hard drive and power supply are the same width which means that the power supply will fit in a standard 3.5" drive cage. I have a few cases here that are not doing much. (one had a bad power supply and killed a hard drive, the other was the old router case.) I have a few to cannibalize parts off of. I also found a few parts that may be useful for this project and the router. The one cage that was removable fits in the space I need and is open at both ends although it will need a few parts cut off the ends for a better fit. This will also give me something more solid to mount the cd drive to. Using this the bottom plate and the spacer i have will most likely be removed. Would this be a better solution? edit: I changed the location of these pics so if there are any red Xs please email me what file was missed.
More from this weekend. A side view. Back view of the wall mounting I need to see what I have to work with. (Every pic on the inside was taken while it was being put back together =) ) hey it still works!!! A test of what it will look like. (The box is tilted on the lid so the monitor will stay in for the pic ) Damn it is a little too thick so the legs will need to be removed for final placement. Saturday morning modding..... How it would look like. The base and probably some over use of epoxy. Duct tape holds things temporally for marking. It does not look good and will probably break. =========Intermission!!!================== Power supply size is the key. Less cutting more unbolting. A lot of disassembly and lots of dremel. I was wondering where those parts in the bottom of that case went too. A test fit it is a little tight but a few minutes under a dremel will make it fit Kill O Watt! I need to know how much power the pc and monitor combined will pull from the socket. Full setup Not very idle 1.62A! Well under the 10A I can pull from the power supply's socket. More on this later 128W!!! Ok the power supply can put out about 12A on the 12v line. the monitor's power supply can produce 3.3A @12v I don’t think I will be able to run the monitor directly off the power supply so this info will give me insight to where I need to go with the power relocation.
Hawk, I am using a POWMAX uATX 230W supply to power my LCD and MB. So far, I have had no problems. I am running a Kogi 14" LCD, a Seagate 40G HD, 2 120mm fans, and a MSI KT3 Ultra MB from the 12V-7A line. I would assume a server style PS would work even better. Is there an easy way for you to tell how much you are pulling from the 12V line with everything connected? Maybe take a current probe and group all the 12V wires?! POWMAX specs Overall, Looking good! (no smilie with epoxy, so the dremel will have to do )
LCD plans My lcd is too thick to fit inside the lid so I need some way to make it thinner. I could take off the legs but I would still need some way to attach this to the inside of the case. Another option would be to mod the lcd inside a new housing. The display is 12-13/16" x 9-13/16" x 1/2" The screen area is 9-1/8" x 12-1/8 and the plastic frame used in the monitor only gives 9" x 12" The controller I am guessing to be 5" x 5" with a keep out of 1" The inverter I am also guessing is about 8" x 1~2" x 1" My idea is to frame a holder out of angle aluminum and pad it with something soft. Yesterday a trip to home depot gave me 1/2" x 3/4" angle bar and 3/4" x 3/4" angle bar. This is what I am looking for. The backside. I don’t have exact measurements of the controller board or for the inverter, so I cant plan out what will hold these in place yet. The frame that will be built. Although the corner pieces may be longer to give me something to mount this too. The frame will be either bolted together or pop riveted together. Depending on how this looks I may incase it in a few layers of Lucite stacking the layers like what has been done here and here but without the wood. (I like the layered look)
I have more exact measurements the controller is 4-1/4" x 4-1/4 with a 1" keep out The inverter is 7-7/8" x 1" x 1/2" I have extended the frame to 2" and added some mounting points. The final dimensions are 14.5" x 11.5" x 2" The location of the inverter and controller can be placed anywhere inside. Looking at the controller board I may need to rotate it 90° to let the ribbon cable run straight to the lcd. This week I will try powering the lcd straight from the power supply fully loaded I just need to get a barrel plug that is the same size for the lcd. Depending on how much daylight I have when I get home I may do a little cutting on my aluminum bar. I should also be able to start looking at mounting points for the faceplate too...
Metal work The upright pieces were cut with a Dremel and a cut off wheel this did not work too well so I used a hacksaw on everything else. Using the hacksaw was much faster, easier and produced nicer looking cuts. All pieces cut will need clean up on the edges and maybe some polish before final assembly. As for assembly I need to decide on either bolts of pop rivets. I should have approximately 3/32” on all sides. I will have the house to my self for most of this weekend so I should get a lot done come Monday.
Looking good. The only thing I might recommend is adding some kind of rubber grommets/washers inbetween the motherboard and the standoffs to reduce some of the vibrations. I woudn't worry about the HS if you're going to be mounting it directly to the board via the moutning holes, but I would worry about board flex and other cards and bits vibrating loose. It would suck to have to reattatch everything every time you went some where. Hardware stores typically have a pretty good selection of sizes and shapes. Just an idea.
