Hi guys. I've had a dream to build a sever for the family home for quite a while. I started a project log a number of months ago, with a view to build a case from wood, to house the server and a storage solution(i.e quite a few hard drives). Unfortunatly due to finance restrictions, that project has been put away on the shelves for now. Now that brings me onto this one.... Got an old Intel Celeron CPU and mobo lying around, so decided to put it to some use. So i set to work. With a budget of a massive £0. And armed with a craft knife. I came up with this idea. Sorry for the crappy phone pics. What i am wondering though, is AIRFLOW???? I am going to be mountinp psu, hdd, optical drive outside the box. Is the hole iv'e cut above the cpu heatsink and the ones for the I/O backplate enough, or should i add a case fan or two in there??
I'd add a couple of case fans and monitor temperatures carefully. Cardboard, after all, is not normally used for cases because it is capable of catching fire.
There's better free cases you can use than this, i'd really worry about this being too much of a firehazard. Even an ice cream tub would show you its getting hot (melt marks / deforming) before it went up in flames. If you have a TA centre nearby, an ammunition tin makes an interesting one? Always fancied (but never actually done) visiting a car scrapyard and getting the air filter housing off a BMW / Merc / Audi / Jag with the marque written on the airbox, clean up and accentuate the writing with silver paint then PC goes inside. Would cost tho ~£4-£5 so that's out.
I have never seen a computer get above 380F. It would have to get at least that hot to start a fire. I'd still stick another fan in there though. No need to cook the board, cardboard is a good insulator.
Cardboard is flammable, true, but if the computer is hot enough to ignite it, I don't think you technically have a computer any more.
