Wooden PC documentation.

2009-03-04T05:56:00.000-08:00

The screenshot of my main computer controlling my headless wooden system.The left side of the cube is my main computer running Slackware 12.2+KDE 4.2.0,and the right side is KRDC,the application which is used to control my wooden PC,running slax+KDE 3.5.10.

A big thank you for my friend Ze Ru,who helped me to setup this case at no cost at all,and helped engineered such a nice case(at least for me)

The purpose of this PC is;

1.To set up a PC just for downloads,and in the future it could be used for other things such as mail server etc.
2.To make use of my brother-in-law's unused PC.
3.To experience ourselves how PC modding could turn out.This is the first time Ze Ru and I made a custon PC,and it's our of wood too.

The PC is just basically a Dell Dimension 2400,without hard disk.It's running P4 2.66Ghz,512 MB RAM.

In order to keep the total cost low,we used some cheap and yet strong wood as material and we used some stuffs from my store room,particularly the cooling fans and shellac paint from Ze Ru's home.I bought a control switch to control the fan speed.

Ok,let's move on.

First,our wooden PC case size and dimension must be planned.Then,we too must figure out the placement of hardwares since I'm not that generous to give so much space to a simple PC.Besides,we too have to plan the cooling of the case since wood is a very bad thermal conductor.

Let's take things one by one.We bought ;

1.1x1 feet wood(I don't sure what type of wood we bought since Ze Ru did this task) for RM 13
2.A number of screws for RM 1.
3.1 feet Aluminium stick for RM 5,if I'm not mistaken.

First,we sketch our PC case plan.We marked the lines that we will cut through.

Our PC case dimension will be 36x29x12 cm.It's not that small but a DVD burner will be included.

We then proceeded to cut the wood to the size we wanted to;

Ok,the journey started from here.We must cut some part of the woods and holes for the computer fans,I/O ports,DVD drive,fan controller,front USB slots and audio port,LED lights and power switch.

The parts of wood was being cut for motherboard's back ports.This is the best tool we could use because we didn't have access to more advanced tools.

The holes for the cooling fans.

This process cost us two days to complete because of wrong tools used and some reasons we would keep it undisclosed.

But after it's complete,things went easier for us and it's still tough going for us.But when the going gets tough,the tough gets going.

Motherboard and PSU is screwed into casing.

I removed the power intake cord from the PSU casing,and fit them back into this wooden casing and soldered back the wire.we removed the motherboard back to strengthen the motherboard's grip with the casing.The aluminum sticks are there to support the DVD drive.

Then,all the hardware went in.

The DVD Drive is very close to the processor heatsink,but not touching it

Ze Ru connected the IDE cable to the DVD drive.

Ok,so after we connected everything,we were ready to go.The PC did not start for some reason,and we found it to be caused by the RAM.So we reinsert the RAM stick and we were back rolling again.But as we just found that problem after everything is fixed,it's quite a tedious task to just reinsert the RAM stick as we had to remove the DVD drive first,since DVD drive is just above the RAM stick.

I didn't use any hard disk in this setup.I run my OS from USB drive instead.I don't have any spare HDD lying around and I reluctant to blow $$ for HDD.And since USB drive is so cheap now,why not USB??

I chose SLAX Linux because it's easy to run,consume just 300 MB of space including all the programs I need and I'm Slackware user so slax should be easier for me.

Here's the applications I added to a stock slax;

1.KTorrent
2.VNC server
3.Wine
4.FlashGet(run with wine)
5.Firefox

This system is controlled using VNCviewer from my own computer when I run windows,and KRDC when I run Slackware.And here's my PC;

Back view.Our mis-enginnering left a hole on the bottom left side,as the power intake cord didn't fit due to PSU's capacitor.

Front View,I have to use some small stick to power up this computer since the power switch doesn't get long enough to be within our finger's reach.

Ok,all is done and it's time to PIMP up my case with luxury shellac paint.

First,I put some filler to close any holes that result from the setup of the system.

And now comes the most enjoying work,the shellac painting;

The paint is left to dry

And finally,we got what we want;

Notice how shiny and reflective the paint is!!!

And the rig is now running;

And here's the screenshot of KRDC controlling the desktop,just like the top picture;

Our wooden PC case documentation

Wooden PC documentation.