Home made multi-pc case?

[Ohls]

I'm seriously considering starting 5boxing right now. Altough I dont have the economy to build 4 new computers at the moment. I plan to get my setup up slow 1 step at a time.

First thing I thought I'd do is build my own 4box case. I've seen it done before on some blog I just cant find it now. He had made a 5 pc box though. And for something entirely different.

All I really need is the measurements. But I'd figure that if I could buy the steel plate which the motherboard sits on it would help a lot. And make things more sturdy. So does anyone know where one could get a hold of a motherboard plate?

The only with doing this that I can think of as of right now is cooling. I plan on just putting to pretty big fans on either side of the box blowing air through it. But I dont know if it'll be enough.

Any feedback is greatly appriciated =).

And I know that doing this might not save me any room and make things more complicated. But I wanna do it to save money and I like building my own things =).

[wolviex]

make it out of wood, buy sum old PC cases from surplus stores, ask local schools or colleges, garage sales, u can find lots of motherboard plates around dirt cheap.

[Team_Supa]

or you could build a good pc i would say

e6550
gt8600
2gb ram

That will handle 5 instances of wow without any issue, and softbox with autohotkey :D, that will save you alot of effort and money.

[Wilbur]

No wood. I cannot stress enough how bad an idea it is to make a PC case out of wood.
In theory, Designing it will probably take the longest amount of time. You have to take into consideration PSU's for each of the machines, Motherboard trays (would probably best if you could rig these so they could slide), Drive trays, Riser cards for GPU's etc.

Personally, I'd build it as a staged system. PSU's on the bottom, vertically alligned Motherboards on trays, followed by Drives. Personally I'd leave the optical drives IDE & power cables exposed, for easy hot-swapping between machines.

I'd expect this sort of rig (if the framework is well designed) to be about three times as wide as a standard ATX case and about similar height to a Full ATX case.

Good luck and post up the designs if you ever make it :-D

[Tiuz]

I've seen it done before, granted it was a whole semester project by some electrical engineer students at my local university. But it looked friggin sweet when they were done. Good luck and definitely post some pics if it ever makes from paper to reality. :)

The biggest issue for them was spacing for parts and heat management. They solved the issues by going for a larger, pentagonal shape, and a big honkin' fan at the top of the machine. It wasn't that quiet...but kept the machines running.. each motherboard had it's own "side" of the pentagon, don't really recall much other than that.

GOod luck!

[keyclone]

here's a thought:

1 mainboard per side, on hinges, boards 'facing' into the middle... fan on the bottom and the top with a blow hole on the top. place the drives on the outer sides, one per side to space out the heat. if you could put a colling agent in a ring around the top and an air channel down along the outside, the cooled air would go across the drives, under the bottom lip of the main boards then up through the middle across the cpus and grfx cards.

the power supplies and UPS i would probably put in the base.

you could also put vents along the bottom, about level with the bottom of the mainboards, to pull in air from outside... but if you have a proper cooling system pumping air from the top ring, it wouldn't be worth it

overall, i'd imagine stacking the parts by their heat production... hottest to the top

sounds like an interesting project.. can't wait to see it

[Ohls]

or you could build a good pc i would say

e6550
gt8600
2gb ram

That will handle 5 instances of wow without any issue, and softbox with autohotkey :D, that will save you alot of effort and money.

2gb of ram and 5 wows? Are you sure of that?

Either way. I'd still like to 5box it the good ol' way.

I was thinking something like that you described Wilbur. Like a tray system where you can slide the mothorboards in and out. With a door like thing on the front. I thought I'd use SATA RAID HDDs though. And then just put them all in the top. In their own seperate tray.

I was actually thinking of making it wood. That way I could match it with the rest of my furniture. And it wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. I'm planning on making it with metal strings(donnu if thats the right word) to support the mothorboards. And then put holes in the walls to put in fans. Pushing air from the bottom and sucking it out at the top.

Right now I'm trying to think of a good way of hiding the fans.

[manipulator]

or you could build a good pc i would say

e6550
gt8600
2gb ram

That will handle 5 instances of wow without any issue, and softbox with autohotkey :D, that will save you alot of effort and money.

2gb of ram and 5 wows? Are you sure of that?

Either way. I'd still like to 5box it the good ol' way.

I was thinking something like that you described Wilbur. Like a tray system where you can slide the mothorboards in and out. With a door like thing on the front. I thought I'd use SATA RAID HDDs though. And then just put them all in the top. In their own seperate tray.

I was actually thinking of making it wood. That way I could match it with the rest of my furniture. And it wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. I'm planning on making it with metal strings(donnu if thats the right word) to support the mothorboards. And then put holes in the walls to put in fans. Pushing air from the bottom and sucking it out at the top.

Right now I'm trying to think of a good way of hiding the fans.

if you set 4/5 to like 800x600 and everything at its lowest u can do it and just have the main WoW bigger and mid settings

[Wilbur]

Bad idea - A computer case is designed with Thermo-dynamics in mind. A PC case is basically a large heat-sink, with heat being taken away from the areas thats its generated. Wood, is not a good conductor of heat. In a constant 40 degrees C + enviroment, the wood will crack and get damaged, as well as not being as solid as metal.

Welding up a framework and adding paneling can be done in a similar amount of time to making one out of wood. It'll be stronger, heavier and will cool better. The main problem with having this many computers in such cramped conditions will be heat. Heat generating items will have to be sectioned off. Hard-drives will require shitloads of cooling. If you've ever had to deal with an X-Blade enclosure you'll know how much of a problem heat build-up was with them.

Good luck getting the heat problem solved :-)

[Wally]

Have a look at some of these - while they are specifically building cluster, the same contruction techniques could be used.

http://www.clustermonkey.net//content/view/211/1/

or

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markgosling/sets/72157594343066943/

[Lost Ninja]

Bad idea - A computer case is designed with Thermo-dynamics in mind. A PC case is basically a large heat-sink, with heat being taken away from the areas thats its generated. Wood, is not a good conductor of heat. In a constant 40 degrees C + enviroment, the wood will crack and get damaged, as well as not being as solid as metal.

Welding up a framework and adding paneling can be done in a similar amount of time to making one out of wood. It'll be stronger, heavier and will cool better. The main problem with having this many computers in such cramped conditions will be heat. Heat generating items will have to be sectioned off. Hard-drives will require shitloads of cooling. If you've ever had to deal with an X-Blade enclosure you'll know how much of a problem heat build-up was with them.

Good luck getting the heat problem solved :-)
Having made and used several PC cases out of wood, I'd have to disagree there. Most PC cases are made out of metal for cost and assembly reasons not for cooling or even airflow reasons.

A well designed case made from virtually any material, will beat a poorly designed metal case for heat extraction any day. I have also run a PC from a card board box, two 120mm fans (one at front one at back) and kept a lower mean temperature than the case (steel) that the components came out of. It was also an awful lot quieter.

Plus arguably plastic is at least as good an insulator as wood yet several mainstream PC manufacturers use all (or mainly) plastic cases.

The only real issue you have when using non-ferrous materials for PC cases (and note plastic cases normally have some form of thin metal lining for this exact reason) is interference, and with wood the simple solution is to line the case with aluminium foil, making sure there is an earth connection through the PSU.

As for the disscussion in hand, I saw an interesting rack mount unit like this made from an ikea drawer unit, each drawer containing a PC (micro ATX) the guy was using the setup for distributive computing (rendering I think), each drawer was a mainboard, PSU & HDD he had a fan set into the drawer front. Not sure on cost and I haven't got the link to his webpage in front of me, I'll try and dig it out.

[Sam DeathWalker]

http://www.lubic.com.tw/gallery/

[trigemina]

When I was building my 3-box system, I decided to go the wooden case route.

My case doesn't look as good as those linked to, but it does the job.

For $65.00 in materials and about 8 hours of work I can't even say it was worth it, but it was an interesting project.

For those of you who are worried about thermal issues, note that the space for each computer is very small and that I have no case fan. Just a big heat-sink processor fan and the power supply fan. They do run a bit hot, but not that much more then my main PC.

If you do decide to design and build your own case I have a design tip: Avoid putting big red buttons where they can easily be hit with your toe!

http://abstrusa.com/case1.jpg
http://abstrusa.com/case2.jpg

[MrLonghair]

How much would it cost to get started building boxes into 19" racks? Could probably scavenge a few out of containers or if you ask the right people nicely, not much floorspace taken up, easy to move around, just need longer cables for input and output.

[Bradster]

While trying to find case I saw that goes along with what you were saying I found this computer case and HAD to link it. LOL

The Compubeaver (work safe)
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2007/4/beaver-pc.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2007/04/beaver_stuffed_with_computer.html&h=352&w=468&sz=48&hl=en&start=11&um=1&tbnid=c8UP-brr3bMYZM:&tbnh=96&tbnw=128&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpc%2Bcase%2Bmods%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D 1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DwVp%26sa%3DG

[DogBaa]

some pics on my setup, including the 4-slaves-in-a-box

http://marino.be/wow/trollteam/DSC01162.JPG

http://marino.be/wow/trollteam/DSC01163.JPG
http://marino.be/wow/trollteam/DSC01164.JPG

still have to close the box and make it a bit more presentable, but for now it does the job, cooling is better and it's not acting as a secondary heater anymore :)

oyeah, I did clean up my desk before taking them pics :)