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Project Part I: Desk Conversion

OneMoar

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o_O motherboard resting on a sheet of metal o_O
make sure you get some stand off's under neath that good ones to also I would build a frame to hold the edge of the board
 
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There are pegs screwed into the metal, and the mobo will be screwed into the pegs.
 
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Received my stuff today.

16"x16" smoked acrylic
Multiple sized orange sleeving and heatshrink for cables that will be exposed.
Molex removal tool
Silverstone FP36 - USB 3.0 courtesy of copenhagen69.
Bulgin power switch with PWR cables.






Figured I'd throw in the mess I have been creating in the dining room over the past few weeks.
 
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Pfff, you call that a mess?

Anyway, how are you planning to cut the acrylic? I find it best to score it with a knife and then snap it, rather than trying to use power tools (they make it melt).
 
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Well I have two options, try to cut it myself, or my buddy works at a machine shop and can use an auto-cad program like Solid Works to design what I want and than program his machine to make the cuts for me. That would be the ideal solution since it makes perfectly clean smooth cuts.

Ya I used a dremel on the cheaper acrylic I had to mess around with and it melted it bad.
 
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Well, if you can get it done at the shop, then definitely do that. Otherwise, practice scoring/snapping with the cheaper acrylic you just mentioned.
 
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Time for an update.

I started painting the three main pieces, the frame of the desk still needs another 2 coats, maybe 3 depending on how it looks, the other two need 1 more thin coat. I also cut a wide hole in the back so I can run the monitor cables through, added another slot next to where the fan controller will go for the two USB 3.0 ports, and bored out the hole for the new power button I got since it's a little bigger.

I also re-wrapped the sheet metal in mylar, rotated the heatsink so the dual Delta fans will pull air right off the CPU/GPU, and cleaned/reapplied MX-5 paste of course. I cut the two pieces of acrylic, one for the PSU which looks great, and the other for the two fans which came out alright but at least I'll be able to hand a mock up of what I need my buddy to cut for me at his machine shop and get a real nice clean looking piece. Once everything is dry I'll be able to lay it out and see which cables I need to wrap in that orange heatwrap/sleeving I ordered.

Hope I didn't forget anything, I'll be updating this a few more times over the next couple of days. Thanks for reading. :cool:









 
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Time for an update. Been busy doing detail shit such as sleeving the wires, getting a design worked out for the acrylic to be cut for the fans. Right now I'm waiting for some stuff from FrozenCPU.com come in; more sleeving, black mobo screws, black fan screws, the Bitspower X-Station Power Extension I had a picture of in a previous post, 3 more UV cathode tube (plan is to square off the mobo with the UV tubes, don't plan on using LED's anymore), and I wired up the bulgin power button.

I'm not done sleeving as I said, I ran out so I should be getting more by Wed/Thurs to finish that off. Also need to resleeve a couple things. Anyway, heres some pics.













Thanks for reading.
 
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Looking good so far :)
 
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Put the front on w/ the fan controller, USB, power button, optical drive, and SD reader.

The fan controller doesn't have power yet, waiting for the Bitspower Xstation and 4-pin extension cable.

In the second picture you'll see I put on a front piece to cover the places where the wood frame connects. Parts of the desk need some touchup paint from gluing/sanding. Cables are all over the place, I was making sure both USB ports were working, and need to sleeve SATA cables and fan wires. Also waiting for some 1/4" thick rubber to come in to use on the corners to hold the glass. Those stoppers are just a temporary solution so I can continue working.

Overall I'm pleased with the progress so far.





 

OneMoar

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holy hatrick. may the gods of cable management help you
you are going to run those underneath right ?
shame to spoil the effort thus far with the evil cable monster
 
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Mess? Pfft, that's normal to me. :laugh:

It's definitely coming along nicely though. I think it would look great if you ghosted that DVD drive.
 
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holy hatrick. may the gods of cable management help you
you are going to run those underneath right ?
shame to spoil the effort thus far with the evil cable monster

Haha, yes most of the cables will be run underneath the mobo, I'm gonna try to use some for accenting since the UV tubes will be in there, if I can make it look good I think it will be pretty cool. Some cables need to be shortened, some need to be re-sleeved; I ran out of sleeving so it should be here tomorrow. I wanted to get the desk together so I could do some heat tests and layout cable management for the power cables/usb cables.



I will be getting a few other things as well:

3/8" Nylon Cable Sleeve - UV Superhero
1/2" Orange Heatshrink
Customizable Standard 4 Pin Extention Cable 18"
Lian Li Motherboard Thumb Screw Kit - Black - 12 Pack
Brass Stud Coarse Thread Standoff
Blow Off Contact Cleaner
Bitspower X-Station Power Extension I - Orange LED
1/4" Nylon Cable Sleeve - Orange
Standard 4-pin Female Connector - UV Bright Orange
Standard 4-pin Male Connector - UV Bright Orange
12" Cold Cathode Kit (Dual Ready) - Ultra Bright UV
2 x 15" Deluxe Sound Activate Cold Cathode Kit - UV
Logisys Inverter Harness Cable w/ Rocker Switch
Lamptron 4 Channel High Output Aluminum Cathode Inverter - 4 Tubes Off One Inverter
Fan Screw - Black
1/4" thick piece of 12"x12" rubber so I can remove those ugly stands that are holding the glass.

Thanks to Ultimate Desk for sending this over to me, will now be able to securely attach my PSU to the acrylic on the side:



Mess? Pfft, that's normal to me. :laugh:

It's definitely coming along nicely though. I think it would look great if you ghosted that DVD drive.

What do you mean ghosted? Thanks for the kind words along the way duder :)

Today my buddy is attempting to make this awesome fan cutout on the piece of acrylic I gave him, so if it doesn't crack in the machine it should look awesome. Even if it does I'll be ordering UV Orange acrylic down the road and leeching an idea from l3p by having my mousepad glow and putting it under a cup holder, so he can try again. Looked really good on his build and since I'll have 4 UV tubes in this desk it should make it glow nicely.

---------------------

For reading all that you get some pics, enjoy!



 
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Ghosting a drive is where you recess the drive and then attach a panel to the front of the tray, so when it is closed you don't see the drive. Normally the panel is the drive-bay cover on a regular case. Also, it is standard to make it so that when you press on the panel, it pushes the eject button.

Anyway, you'll have to take a vid of those sound-reactive cathodes for me, I've always wondered how well they work lol
 
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Ya I wanna throw up a video of the fans running off the controller and I'll do one of the UV tubes for ya. I didn't realize the 15" ones did that until after I ordered them, kinda cool though.
 
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The files are large and I didn't feel like resizing them at the moment. I think if I upload a huge image file here it doesn't autoresize.

I'll be getting a virtual server at my work in the next few days and will just host the images myself.
 
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I am too impatient to wait for Photobucket so I hosted the updated pictures on my site: http://chronic7.com/pc_build/
lol Photobucket bandwidth exceeded :p
These pics look really cool though, I like the way the lights make the cables glow.
why didn't you just host them here?
I assume you mean techpowerup.org :p
File-size limit of 2mb. No bulk upload option that I'm aware of. No easy way to manage all your uploads.
Those are my main reasons for not always using it.
The files are large and I didn't feel like resizing them at the moment. I think if I upload a huge image file here it doesn't autoresize.
Yeah, if the file is over 2mb it just gives you an error.
I'll be getting a virtual server at my work in the next few days and will just host the images myself.
That will be nice I bet.
 
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Thanks man, I like the way the cathodes look too, not bright and obnoxious like LEDs would be, gives off a nice glow. I went with two different sleeving's as you can see; orange and UV superman from FrozenCPU. I wish I had a better camera, it looks way cooler in person, the camera just doesn't capture the full color =P

I've still gotta do some more painting, wire management, and I wanna get some UV acrylic to outline the mouse pad and maybe the base of the monitors. My ashtray looks hilariously awesome. I'll take a pic of it later.

Thanks for reading. This was a pretty simple build, if this is something that looks like you would like it's not too difficult if you take your time and think things out. I've never built a piece of furniture in my life before this, so ya :-D
 

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i cant see photobucket pix! its saying bandwidth exceeded and wants me to upgrade to pro. please use TPUs own image hosting.
 
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i cant see photobucket pix! its saying bandwidth exceeded and wants me to upgrade to pro. please use TPUs own image hosting.
How 'bout you read the recent posts?
 
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i cant see photobucket pix! its saying bandwidth exceeded and wants me to upgrade to pro. please use TPUs own image hosting.

I am too impatient to wait for Photobucket so I hosted the updated pictures on my site: http://chronic7.com/pc_build/

It wants me to upgrade to pro since I uploaded too many pictures, they should all be working again tomorrow though. I don't know anything about TPU's image hosting, all I know is the pictures file size is large and I haven't resized any of them. I'll check into doing this later on though.

You can go to that link above for the latest pics, I am just hosting them in a temp directory under my old CS 1.6 website, lol.
 
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