I've had my desktop for a while now, about a year now if my memory serves me correctly. It was a very boring computer, so boring that I didn't even bother to take a picture, it was the kind of build you see in YouTube videos claiming to "beat the consoles for the same price" (Something that's only possible for the people fortunate enough to live in USA), it's specs were a follows:
- AMD FX-6300
- AMD Radeon R9 270
- Kingston HyperX 1866 Blue 2X4
- Asus M5A78LM-USB3
- Samsung 840 EVO 128GB
- WD Black 1TB
- Cooler Master Thunder 500 Watt
- Crappy $25 Cooler Master Case (I don't remember what model any more, all you need to know is that it was bad)
A perfectly normal, reasonable gaming PC, but boring as all heck. One day while I was playing around with overclocking my processor I ran into some instability caused by the extra heat from the CPU causing my graphics card to overheat. Being a logical fellow I decided that the best thing to do would be to get some more airflow going on inside my case. Unfortunately as I have previously mentioned my case wasn't very good and so airflow was a tad limited and even the addition of some more fans left my temperatures higher than I would have liked. This is where most people would give up and just turn down their overclocks to get the computer back into the magical zone of safe temperatures, but I was feeling adventurous. Spurred on by the builds I had seen around the internet I hatched a plan to wall mount my rig using a piece of plywood and some ingenuity.
I unfortunately don't have any pictures of the early parts of the build process as I started before I knew I would be writing a blog so you'll just have to make do with my descriptions. The build process started with a trip to Bunnings to pick up a a sheet of plywood and a couple of cans of spray paint. I then laid out all of my components on the board in some kinda order (I didn't really plan ahead at all, this was a bit of a mistake as you'll see later).
I then used a jigsaw to cut out some holes near where the cables would need to go (Near the 24 pin connector, the EPS connector and the PSU etc.).
A lick of paint later it was looking a whole lot better. Hard drives and SSDs could be attached with some screws through the wood. The motherboard was almost as easy, drill some holes for the to put some bolts through, find something to use as a stand-off (I found some small rubber cable management grommets worked well), bolt it on and you're set. The power supply and graphics card however would prove a tad more difficult. To hold the power supply I fashioned a simple bracket out of some metal bits (Kinda like the big plates with the holes in them that you find in a Meccano set except bigger and more solid). A few coats of black paint and it looked a million bucks (or at least fifty, I mean, it's not made of solid gold or anything).
I haven't actualy got around to mounting my graphics card yet, I only really have time to do things on the weekend so I haven't had time to work on my computer for a while. I have however given it a matching blue paintjob. The graphics card in question was a new (used) R9 290X TriX from Sapphire Technology, it's a great card for the $330 price tag I got it for second hand, but it had the one small problem, it was bright orange. Now this would have been fine for most people, but I was already going to lengths to make sure that my rig was using a blue and black color scheme and having a bright orange graphics card at the heart of the build just wouldn't do.
To take the shroud off for painting I had to disasemble the whole card.
That GPU is shiiiiny.
Aaaand painted.
Got it back together again without too much difficulty.
That's really all I've done so far, next weekend I should be able to find time to work on getting the graphics card mounted and sleeving the power supply cables with some paracord that I bought online. But that will have to wait until another time, so for now goodbye.
Lord Stawberries.
I then used a jigsaw to cut out some holes near where the cables would need to go (Near the 24 pin connector, the EPS connector and the PSU etc.).
A lick of paint later it was looking a whole lot better. Hard drives and SSDs could be attached with some screws through the wood. The motherboard was almost as easy, drill some holes for the to put some bolts through, find something to use as a stand-off (I found some small rubber cable management grommets worked well), bolt it on and you're set. The power supply and graphics card however would prove a tad more difficult. To hold the power supply I fashioned a simple bracket out of some metal bits (Kinda like the big plates with the holes in them that you find in a Meccano set except bigger and more solid). A few coats of black paint and it looked a million bucks (or at least fifty, I mean, it's not made of solid gold or anything).
I haven't actualy got around to mounting my graphics card yet, I only really have time to do things on the weekend so I haven't had time to work on my computer for a while. I have however given it a matching blue paintjob. The graphics card in question was a new (used) R9 290X TriX from Sapphire Technology, it's a great card for the $330 price tag I got it for second hand, but it had the one small problem, it was bright orange. Now this would have been fine for most people, but I was already going to lengths to make sure that my rig was using a blue and black color scheme and having a bright orange graphics card at the heart of the build just wouldn't do.
To take the shroud off for painting I had to disasemble the whole card.
That GPU is shiiiiny.
Aaaand painted.
Got it back together again without too much difficulty.
That's really all I've done so far, next weekend I should be able to find time to work on getting the graphics card mounted and sleeving the power supply cables with some paracord that I bought online. But that will have to wait until another time, so for now goodbye.
Lord Stawberries.
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