Post your "Ghetto Mod" pics

  • Thread starter Deleted member 96510
  • Start date
My bad! Forgot about the pics being viewable only by registered users.

Here you are!

I was given a 2.0ghz Macbook (V1.1) which after coming across plex decided to make a media server out of. I loved Plex but couldn't stand the thermal capacity of this thing and had to do something about the 80C @ 6500rpm. Since I wouldn't be using it as a laptop and will be hidden in a cabinet of sorts I decided to make it ugly and get some performance out of the cooling. I removed the keyboard top and super glued an old Pentium 4 heatsink I had in my parts bin to the heat pipe on the macbook. Lo and behold, quietness even when crunching a high bitrate 1080p movie or 1080p flash on youtube. Highest I've seen the temps are 55C @ 3500rpm.

I know it's not pretty, but......
1.jpg


2.jpg


4.jpg


UPDATE---I've updated my modbook since the last posting.

I've removed the screen and keyboard (hooking the keyboard up only to power on), and mounted it in a tray built from an IKEA box.

I also added a larger cooler held on by zipties.

My temps during a 1080p movie are 50c @ 1800rpm and watching 1080p flash on Youtube i see 52-53c @ 23-2500rpm. So basically completely silent.

You can see in the last picture that it fits right into the furniture the TV is on.

If you must know, the tinfoil acts as a reflector for the IR beam. Now I can be almost anywhere in the room and the Apple remote works great:)

5.jpg


6.jpg


7.jpg


8.jpg
 
My ghetto laptop/desk area.

I got sick of 100C + GPU temps so this came about:

At first I just used the fan from a dead xbox 360 wired to USB and a USB stand with a fan and dusting it out.
DSC_0053-1.jpg


Helped a bit but I realized the fan profile Asus has made up is idiotic, it won't kick in 100% unless the gpu gets upwards of 85C. So I decided to force feed it with a 120mm and a 80mm fan (both on 12 volts to suck away from the heatsink. Using the x360 fan to help feed the 120mm.
DSC_0054.jpg


Since I don't often move my laptop I left the bottom panel off.
DSC_0055.jpg


Ghetto vertical monitor, this is a bad angle, it looks like the monitor is too low but it isn't. And the silver picture frame is to keep my hand from freezing to death and keep most of the air on the components.
DSC_0057.jpg


held up by some one by and a chemistry book.
DSC_0056.jpg
 
I lost the trackpoint cap for my Dell Latitude E6410. Since I'm fairly averse to paying $3 for 5 cents of plastic for a replacement cap, I decided to fabricate my own from some straw and hot glue.


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I basically took a straw that happened to fit the trackpoint post perfectly and piled and molded hot glue around it. It has little dots on it (can't see) like a Thinkpad soft dome cap (which I obtained by molding the hot glue around the speaker grilles), and it's a lot less slippery than the default blue and black cap.
 
Bought a Core i5 750/ 4GB DDR3/ Radeon 5770 complete system. Heat sink fan arrived dislodged :/
xojyg5.jpg


Decided I wasn't happy with the included 350 W No name power supply so I ordered a 600W modular...
nl1uki.jpg

PSU didn't fit in the Cooler Master Elite 360 Case. I only had one case around that would fit it:
ohn3oi.jpg

Pulled out my father's old Pentium 4 board and ordered up a bunch of massflow $2 80mm fans:
jl00ud.jpg


Everything installed:
2rdvwwh.jpg


Only had about $500 in the system at this point, talk about a good budget rig!

I wanted TV capture with S-Video in and bought a card from a forum member for $10. Neglected to tell me it was low profile only, so I had to fabricate my own ghetto bracket:
aw3wuu.jpg

20hoegh.jpg

2po83nn.jpg


This is where the bug bit me. The MSI motherboard let go, and I felt that was a good sign to rebuild the whole system. Got an Asus P55 mobo with 14 Phase power, Cooler Master Hyper 212+, 2x 1TB WD Caviar Blues, a fan controller, and decided to remake the case black:
25iayop.jpg

dd019j.jpg

5bqyz4.jpg

1zwdw5x.jpg


Note the liberal use of duct tape. Also used a sharpie to color in where I wasn't able to spray paint :p System was rock solid @ 3.8 GHz. Still had less than $1k USD in the build by the end, so not bad overall I'd say.

Now the rig is dismantled as I'm beginning to design a slim SFF enclosure for miniITX boards with a dual slot graphics card. I'm not sure if I'll leave the parts in the miniITX case when it's done or put them back in the Antec.

The parts are somewhat ghetto in it's current revision (my testbed hacked up from a donor case:

2yphv7o.jpg


But the enclosure will be a very nice CAD designed, CNC machined final product in the end :D
 
Well, IDK what it is either, the contractors that built this house decided that is was the best material to cover ALL the walls in the storage room.

More, hot glued heatsink on the dd-wrt linksys:
4H0TM.jpg

........ you did use thermal past between the chip and heatsink right?!
 
........ you did use thermal past between the chip and heatsink right?!

Usually heatsinks on those routers have a thermal pad on them, so paste isn't really needed. Unless that's not the original heatsink from the router. Even still, those things don't put off that much heat.
 
Usually heatsinks on those routers have a thermal pad on them, so paste isn't really needed. Unless that's not the original heatsink from the router. Even still, those things don't put off that much heat.

Tell that to Unicom. Either that, or D-Link, which uses Unicom chipsets... stupid hot. I'd swear thery require active cooling... Especially on the DIR655 design. Anything over 4-5 devices doing normal websurfing (one streaming media, rest email and simple stuff), and it will overheat in a wallmount position. I ended up attaching thich rubber feet into it and jacking it an half inch away from the wall to even keep it cool enough to bear with until my RT-N16 arrived.
 
I had 4 devices connected to mine, and never had any heat issues with it. Wish I still had that router, this Belkin one I have now is a complete POS and resets itself all the time.
 
I'm loving my DD-WRT WRT54G-TM routers, got two of them and they both have been working flawlessly for months.

I like the xbox 360 watercooling up there ^^^, wish I had the spare parts laying around to do something like that, lol.
 
I was hit with sudden inspiration for this one, after setting up my third monitor for xbox playing.

Ridiculously simple, and something that I really needed. Didn't even cost me anything.

Instant cellphone/tablet stand, just add cardboard:

IMG00031-20110220-2310.jpg


Excuse the crappy quality, had to take this with a friend's cellphone as uh, mine was occupied, as you can see.
 
First off, this is an epic thread :)

Aside from taking the case door off my old computer and using a box fan to cool it off enough so that I could play Doom 3 (lol), my latest ghetto mod involved taking the 3 5.25" bay covers off my case, and cutting a piece of cardboard to fit in that space. The taking that cardboard and on the inside of it, cutting out enough space to hold a 120mm fan and taping it (using clear packing tape mind you) to the cardboard, and then taping the cardboard onto the case :p

Also, my h70 is held to the case using bent paperclips at the moment until my lazy ass drills holes to screw it into the case properly :p
 
First off, this is an epic thread :)

Aside from taking the case door off my old computer and using a box fan to cool it off enough so that I could play Doom 3 (lol), my latest ghetto mod involved taking the 3 5.25" bay covers off my case, and cutting a piece of cardboard to fit in that space. The taking that cardboard and on the inside of it, cutting out enough space to hold a 120mm fan and taping it (using clear packing tape mind you) to the cardboard, and then taping the cardboard onto the case :p

Also, my h70 is held to the case using bent paperclips at the moment until my lazy ass drills holes to screw it into the case properly :p
I have a black piece of metal that holds a front bay fan, and one that holds my h50 to the top of my case... Sounds like you might think about investing in some metal pieces.
 
haha, yeah I saw that article about Asus re-using the motherboard box as a temporary case. Kind of crazy but it's not a bad idea for testing purposes. If the mobo is DOA, it's already in the box ready to be shipped back to them :p

As far as my ghetto mods, yeah I saw that there's a Scythe Kama Bay that's metal and holds a 120mm fan in the 5.25" drive bays which would work well but I can't find any for sale other than ebay, which I refuse to use (I'm not paying 50 bucks for something that sold for 23 retail that I don't need other than to improve the aesthetics :p) Anyone know of something like the kama bay for 120mm fans that are still available online/retail new (or the FS/FT here of course :) )?
 
Here's mine. I have a hard drive in the 5.25" bay but it gets pretty toasty so I made a card board fan holder to fit in the bay since I don't have any disk drives.

Oh and my entertainment center is made out of 2"x4"s and scrap wood from home depot (it's $.41 for scrap wood) don't know if that is ghetto or not.

 
heh, you actually screwed the fan into the cardboard, if only I had thought to be that fancy. props to you :)
 
ghetto gfx card repair.
it has some other error as well,so i might try baking it as well.
but the new caps work well.

brlm35qv0h23fhwtp.jpg
 
Back
Top