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brainstorming a multi system enclosure

B

bobcrotch

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 12, 2003
Messages
1,484
I have about 4 systems now that are 2xP3 450, K62-500, and a Celeron 700 that I need to make a single 'enclosure' for. All they are is simple linux machines that I would like to mess arround with for learning purposes. I don't really want to have 4 different towers in my spare room/office area. Plus it would be nice for moving to have them all centraly located.

Anyhow here is a rough idea of what i'm trying to acomplish. Seeing as these items don't produce much heat cooling shouldn't be a huge problem. I think 6x120mms is a bit overkill now that i think about it. Probably cut it down to just 80mms and it would work fine. What i was thinking of making it out of was plexi glass because it's somewhat cheap. I'm primarily going for the coolness factor, also the fact it would be semi less of a pain to move.

Dimensions I'm guessing would be roughly 24"wide by 36" tall by 24" deep? Somewhat of a big arse cube.

Right now i'm starting to question all this that i'm drawing it out. It's going to probably take up more space than 4 normal mini cases. I guess the aspect of having 4 machines in one case is pretty cool though.

Anyhow shitty paint drawings to possibly help envision what i'm going for here.

The rearview

Errr those are the PSUs on the bottom there, like i said rough draft, i wouldn't want them all side to side like that.

tehcrotchb120.JPG


Sideview

tehcrotchside.JPG
 
How about this...

(try to visualize with me)

Have a cube, 18" per edge. Have the four motherboards face each other, one on each vertical wall of the cube. This will leave room for the expansion slots which lie on the adjacent face of the cube to a given motherboard. Still following?

Now this will leave a big open area in the center. This is where you'll put hard drives and power supplies. The hard drives would be mounted vertically in a nice big tower. The power supplies would sit under their respective motherboards, because with an 18" overall height there would be extra space below the motherboards. Below the hard drives on the case floor and blowing upward would be one big axial fan. I'm talking about a fan that is 8 to 12" in diameter, and slow turning. You could easily scavenge one off of a desk fan or window fan. The drives would be mounted vertically so as not to obstruct airflow too much.

As for materials, I'd suggest medium density fiberboard for the support structure. Then, frame the outside with wood and stretch black screen over them, as you would with a set of speakers. The end result would look like a subwoofer perhaps, or maybe a nice ottoman.
 
Wow... see thats why i asked you guys about this stuff cuz I don't really do it. Thats a good idea man, thanks, i'll draw something up for my self.
 
er bump...i didn't know if this was the right forum or not,or if this has been covered.

Now I'm thinking that probably just plexi glass would be the best with an aluminum frame to kinda reinforce it. I'm thinking of putting 2 handles up top to move it arround or something.
 
Wouldnt it have bad air flow? I mean the PSU is pushing out hot air and its being sucked into the back fans.
 
I was kind of thinking that too, possibly mounting the PSUs sideways, as in 2 on each side exhausting out.

I guess now that I think about it there probably isn't much room for input for this eh?
 
This would definently be cool looking, but also consider the posibilites of getting a rack.

I always wanted a rack, but only have 2 working computers in my house that are in one location.

And we all know, racks look down-right awesome =P
They really bring out the geek in you..

Anyways, keep us updated on this project for sure, I am interested on how it turns out..
 
I'm definatly one for not following through on things, but I have some extra money coming in via some data recovery consulting. So maybe this weekend I can pickup some materials to try and piece together the basics of this box. As the pictures were labled it shall be deemd 'tehcrotch' hehe.

Now I'm going to have to go through and test all these boards and procs to figure out what ones worked. Oh damn... hehe

The other part will be figuring out what exactly I'll be doing with these boxen. Not really great for FOH or anything...hmm I suppose I'll setup a file server, intranet and maybe a proxy, perhaps a mail server.
 
Xonik has a badass idea, but I would much rather have the motherboards face away from
each other and then put the drives/psu/cd-roms in the middle.
 
That would work too, but I see two problems with that.

1. The setup couldn't take advantage of one large common fan for overall system cooling.
2. The internal structure would be harder to fabricate, at least in my mind. One would need a structure to hang the drives, another structure to hang the motherboards, and a final skeleton for the exterior panels. In my design, the motherboard trays would also serve as a mounting structure for the exterior panels.
 
Ok I suppose I didn't fully visualize what it was you were trying to tell me there Xonik but now I get it. That would probably be the most efficent way of doing it. To make sure the fan, or fans if I still used 120s I would need casters or some sort of stand for intake clearance.

The only bitch of it that I could see would be cabling, not IDE and power cables but PS/2, VGA and Network. That is partialy why i wanted to go with my design. And even now that I think about it reversing the direction of the airflow in my design. It would probably be easier to exhaust air thats swirling arround in the back of the case. If the intake was in the back then it would suffer from turbulance from the get go.

Plus what I was kind of thinking was mounting the motherboards like this..

| | | |
|---- ----| |---- ----|
|---- ----| |---- ----|
|---- ----| |---- ----|
| | | |

Also I'm trying to think of a wayto make the motherboard 'trays' removable and possibly just mounting the hard drives to the bottom of the motherboard trays somehow.
 
Ya in a way but i'm going more for the cube-o-computers look.

But I gotta admit thats probably the coolest desk setup I've ever seen in my whole life.
 
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