Once the magic smoke comes out, things don't work any more.
John Kasunich
jmkasunich@fastmail.fm
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Wed, 27 Dec 2006
Shoptask PC mounted on a panel
Over the last couple of days I've managed build an "enclosure" of sorts for the Shoptask PC. Its not an enclosure in the normal sense, since it will be inside a larger box. Its just an aluminum panel with all the various bits and pieces that make up a PC mounted to it. There is the motherboard of course, the video card, the network interface (this mobo didn't have onboard NIC), the hard disk, and a fan that cools the hot stuff. For now the power supply is separate, although I might regret that later. The piece of aluminum I had on hand as a panel just wasn't big enough for that.
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It looks a little weird, but should work well. It is really quite rigid, considering that its made of thin aluminum and thinner steel. The shiny slotted parts that support the plug-in cards are actually chunks of the back panel of the old EMC compile farm, the rest of which is now in computer heaven. (From the dumpster you came, and to the dumpster you shall return... but it served us well for a couple of years in the meantime.) The slots on the left in the first picture are the traditional "back panel" slots, but I'll have the option of bringing the 5i20 I/O cables out the slots on the right, or the big opening on the bottom.
There is no good reason for the strange angled corners on the cover over the main part of the motherboard, I just didn't want square corners hanging out there with nothing to support them. The hard disk hangs off the inside of the cover, on shock mounts (two blue and two black rubber grommets, with screws through them to the drive underneath).
The fan location is the result of some head scratching, but I'm happy with it. It blows down a sort of "tunnel", with the CPU heatsink on the right, the memory DIMMs on the left, and the hard drive for a roof. When it gets to the end, the air bounces off the back of the graphics card, then heads out in all directions. It does a very good job of cooling just about everything that might get hot.
(posted: 27 Dec 2006 22:58) (permalink)