• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Modding my desk, what do you think?

T

TSx

Gawd
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
647
Probably going to mod my desk, but not sure how to set the airflow on my comp if I do...The desk drawers come out, and I can put a shelf in at the bottom, which my tower would then fit on, but just barely. The depth of the drawers were about 19" with my mid-tower being about 17". The height is 17.5" and my tower is 17". Width is about 15" where as the tower is only 8" there.

Right now the case has an 80mm front intake, 60mm rear outtake, a a pci slot outtake. I had to add two pci slot fans to keep air coming out over my video card when it would overheat if I left games open for ~20-30 hours at a time, which isn't uncommon by any means. My main comp will be up on top where my current one is now, and I was thinking about moving the current one to the lower shelf I would build to hopefully decrease some overall temps of having 3 comps on all the time right here.

How do you think airflow will work on the case? If the back is 2" at most away from the back of the desk, there won't be much room for air to blow out. If I add a side fan or two, I lose pretty much all actual air flow going through.

The first pic here is how my desk was, which is also my other current option. I still have that desktop case which I could use where it was, instead of adding the shelf, but I thought moving one case would decrease some overall temps. The pic was taken about 8 months ago with a friend's digicam, sorry about the quality.

id=165


The second pic here shows more how it is now...the drawers have been removed and you can see where I plan on putting the shelf. The tower on the desk there is the one I would be moving to the shelf, and my new tower would be moved up top.

id=168


I'm not sure if temps would be better using the desktop case, or using the tower in the enclosure. My whole comp desk is in an enclosure we built when building the house, so it tends to get fairly warm.
 
If you end up putting in a shelf, you'll want to put a Blow hole in the back panel near the top, possbiliy 2. That will keep the heat from building up in the shelf/drawer area.

OT: What server do you play on? ;)
 
Originally posted by df12
If you end up putting in a shelf, you'll want to put a Blow hole in the back panel near the top, possbiliy 2. That will keep the heat from building up in the shelf/drawer area.

OT: What server do you play on? ;)
Click to expand...

I totally agree with this. Get an 80mm holesaw and put yourself an EXHAUST (blowing out) fan in there at the top BACK of the shelf. Plus you can use the 80MM holesaw later when you do mods to your case! :)

OK, heres what I would do personally, if I had some time and some money to spend with your desk.

1) cut an ATX motherboard or a little larger sized hole in the DESK TOP right over where your drawers are. Fill this hole with 1/4 Lexan. Gonna be a little pricy, but you need the strength.
2) build a custom box to be mounted under the hole with the motherboard visable and all sorts of goodies like LEDs and CCFL, FANs, Etc. Make the box so that it is no taller than the first drawer. (I cant tell from the pic but make sure you can fit an AGP/PCI card in there standing up.
3)PSU and EXHAUST fans should be built facing OUT the back of the desk by cutting holes for them.
4) Take the FRONT off of the drawer and Mount it to your desk where the drawer should be so that it covers up the custom made CPU case. Before mounting tho, cut a hole for the CDROM/DVD drive but keep the peice you cut out so you can "Stealth" it, OR just mount the CDROM in the hole and paint/dye your CDROM to a nice matching tint to the desk stain. Add a switch somewhere to to turn off and on. (You can mound the HDD activity LED beneath the Lexan on top.)
5)Put you bigger (bottom) drawer back in and use it for holding all your modding supplies.

Just my humble suggestion.

:)

OT: Why are your spacebars (both of them) so dirty in those pics? AND what game is that where your on a horse? I'm a UT2003 ony kinda guy but I think I need to get out more. :)


Edit: I didnt notice your desktop case there in the first pic. It might be pretty easy just to cut off the top of that and mount it under the Lexan in my suggestion. Then do the thing with the drawer front.
 
The spacebars aren't dirty haha, they're a dark grey color. Half the keys are white, half a lighter grey, and the spacebars are real dark grey. I use memorex TS1000 keyboards (now discontinued) since they cost $9.99 and since they moved the delete/end/page down row down one row so they're on the row above the arrow keys, allows me to map more stuff to those keys for easier use when gaming.

id=169


The game on screen in the first pic was Everquest, I used to 2-3box on it when I played (quit a few months ago prior to their second to latest expansion coming out, after having 'beat' the game). It was on my laptop too though you can't see it from the pic.

I hadn't thought of putting a desktop basically in the place of the desk, and I think that would probably be too hard and expensive to do right now, but definitely a possible future option. I had thought about putting a shuttle where the bottom drawer was, but didn't want to spend the extra money on the shuttle case and stuff.

I guess it's sort of hard to tell from the pictures, but the back of the desk is only about 9" from the wall, not leaving a lot of room for exhause out the back. The tower that's on the desk on the right side now only has about 6-8" from the end of it to the wall, which there isn't really much I can do about.

My initial idea was to add one or two 80mm fans to the side(s) of the case, but I still didn't have any idea for airflow. A friend suggested maybe get some cardboard or something and angle the air coming out the back around one side, with fans blowing in from the other, with the rear outtake fans doing most of the work...just not sure that would work well.
 
If you have 9 inches of clearance behind your desk then blowing the air out the back will be no problem. My PC (seen in the "My First Mod!!!" thread only has 2 inches behind it when all the way under that desk you see it by. My temps are 45C load and 31C idle.
 
It would have about 2" from the end of the comp to the end of the desk. I had been planning to put the hole for the cords in the side of the shelf and bring them up from under, but hadn't really considered putting a hole in the desk itself. The 2" yours has between the back of the case and the wall is more open than would be on my shelf though, right?

I honestly have no idea of temps on my comp right now, I'd like to find that out but unless buying a $0.99 thermometer and taping it to the side of the case gave an accurate reading, I don't think I'll find out.
 
Here's my humble suggestion: cut a 120mm hole in the back top area of the drawer. Mount a low-noise 120mm fan there that will still push a lot of air out of the drawer area. It will keep the noise down to a minimum.

Better yet, cut two 120mm holes, one in front, one in the bottom "floor" of the drawer. Run two fans, and then line the inside of the enclosure with dynamat or foam to muffle the noise even more. The two fans should circulate enough air to give you a very quiet yet acceptably cool computer.
 
Man, nobody has mentioned the $10k desk yet?

Hey, I have the same Altec Lansing 221 speakers. I got em on ebay for $12, when the box arrived it said it had cost $20 to ship. :eek:

Good luck with modding the desk, the plans sound good.
 
$10k desk?

whats up with this?

linky?

i would ask for it in web linkage, but tis' no more.
 
damn dood those pcs/mons look like they are straight outta 1992 :p
 
Haha, the digicam I used in the first pic (before I got my canon) was an old one I borrowed from a friend, it makes all pics look 'aged'. The right monitor is a fairly new kds 19" and the left is an NEC 15" that's probably ~4 or 5 years old. The desktop case I ganked from an old pc my parents had since I couldn't use two towers on my desk. The tower is a Casedge middle tower, probably about 5-7 years old, standard ol' baige box.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top