The story...

The kitchen computer is one of the most used computers in our house. For years this computer was a laptop that had a busted screen connected to a monitor and keyboard. If we only needed to surf, this would have been an okay setup to have. However, 3D games and HD content on the web has made this the worst computer ever (according to my 9 year old). I had a friend email and tell me about a deal Micro Center had going on with their AMD chips. Buy a chip, get a free motherboard. This was to hard to pass up. I got a Phenom II X4 840 quad core chip and a motherboard for $99. Nice... now, I need to put it in a place that use to occupy less than a inch deep... Here is where the problem starts. I could not find any reasonably priced case that would be, powerful enough, small enough, and quiet enough to suite my needs. So, like any geek with a miter saw would do, I built my own case. I wanted to start a blog to show the progression and the changes I make. Feel free to comment.


Oh, and before you blast me about the exposed power supply - I do know the dangers. The power supply is surrounded in metal on the back and sides and one can not touch the dangerous capacitors because of the plexiglass on the front.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Updated case...

I ordered a new CPU heat sink from NewEgg.   I was so excited because it look like it would be a perfect fit for the ghetto computer...  but... its about 8mm to tall.    I was so bummed.

But, in true ghetto fashion, I extracted the fan and made a mount for the stock heat sink and bolted the new fan on it.   Works... sorta.    The new fan fits and solved my sound problem.  I went from 45db with the stock cooler to 39db - which is just a little over ambient noise for the kitchen.



But now, the idle heat temp is 33 (Celsius) and quickly goes to 40+ when you have any processes going on.  This is no where near the temperature limits of the CPU, I just like to have my temps down as low as possible - especially since this is a wood case!

I also added a power switch to the back access panel and I made a small aluminum tab to mount my power and hard drive LEDs to.  You can see them in the upper right hand corner behind the case fan.  Blue for power and green for the hard drive... I think it looks nice...

Next... some sort of stain maybe and a better cooling hear sink.
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