Corner Desk PC

After what seemed like a lifetime of building in this house, I finally got to renovate an old chicken shed into an office for ME !

I’ve worked in IT now for almost 30 years and have built all sorts of mad PC based projects, but I decided that I wanted something different as my day to day PC.

After a few designs I came up with the corner PC unit which solved a few issues I had with the location and access to the front panel which I used a lot at the time.

I’m currently on V2 of the unit, after upgrading the guts last year to something more beefy, I had to add additional forced ventilation, replace the PSU and upgrade the storage to a larger caged solution which is slung under the main box.

I hope you like it, its served me well over the years.

Step 1: Making the box

Materials
Length of nice wood approx 48"x5"
MDF or similar 25" square cut in half across the diagonal for top
Off cuts of MDF or ply for base and supports
Scrap PC chassis
Donor PC (cables, backplane etc)
3 "L" brackets
Glass 10"x4"


The dimensions were decided by the size of the motherboard and chassis bits  robbed from an old case, mine is  14” square 6” deep.

I built a basic box frame round it using scrap ply and MDF, mounting the salvaged back plane etc and giving the inside a good decent coat of whatever I had lying about.

I built  it all up and mounted the PSU right behind it in the corner void.

Once the box was made and the rig tested, I measured and cut the opening in the desk.

The internal pictures here are all from V1 but very similar to V2 apart from the the back which changed dramatically when the video moved to PCI-e, I had to rework it to suit the slot change.

 

Comments

[ljuwana]

awesome...good looking...

[tjones29]

I love this design. How clever!

[darkmickey420]

a better way to test the heat would be a laser thermonitor

[tinamus]

This is absolutely amazing!! Now I want to do something like this!!!

[CroobCraft]

I'm thinking of building a smaller scale version for my son, loosing one cdrom drive and the power panel to let the face sit further into the corner, mine was restricted as theres data trunking under the desk.

If you fancy a crack at it and need any dimensions, or advice just shout, more than happy to assist.

[wolverine2099]

That Is Very Nice

[steliart]

That's a very cool design and idea!!!
Thanks for sharing.

[Kurt E. Clothier]

Just out of curiosity, what did you use to test and balance the airflow in such a tiny box?

[CroobCraft]

The original tests were done using an old motherboard, top was sealed with perspex and a chimney test smoke bomb was released in a box attached to the left hand side, in the initial tests, I had 2 fans, but a single fan centered on the right hand side appeared to give me a better airflow over the processor and GFX card, with the old rig it was easy, ran very cool under full load with a single exhaust fan, the new rig however was more of a challenge, it was my fault, I chose an AMD Phenom 965 knowing that it ran V hot, I replaced the existing fan with a nocturna and added another just behind the main screen, under full load for extended periods of time the processor does get a bit hot, 60 odd degrees C, i'm going to replace the Stock AMD heat sink when I get the chance which should help, meant to do it at the time, but never got round to it, If I did it again I would stick in a processor that runs a bit cooler, would have been much easier and I rarely need 4 cores at full tilt.

[Kurt E. Clothier]

Nice. Of all the PC case type mods I have seen, rarely is heat dissipation taken into consideration like you have done. Then they wonder why the thing stops working after a week.

[CroobCraft]

I spend a fair amount of time each month cleaning out air vents and heat sinks and dealing with heat related issues while out on site, the majority of servers that I deal with are not in nice cool filtered rooms, but sit in busy offices where they can get choked quite quickly, makes you very airflow conscious, it is important to ensure also when dealing with enclosures this small that the vents are cleaned more regularly that usual, especially if theres pets about that shed fine hair.

[Kurt E. Clothier]

Good things to consider. Thanks for the information.

[hedwards2]

I just happened to stumble across this and have to say,
"You da man! (or woman)"

I wish I had this kind of talent but my wood-working skills are below par to say the best. Love just looking at these sorts of things and just drooling......

[CroobCraft]

Thanks, i've loved working with wood as long as I remember, its such a forgiving material (most of the time), I'm lucky to have built up a decent workshop over the years, and spend many a weekend in there with my father who has probably forgotten more than i'll ever know when it comes to building stuff and engineering in general :)

Woodworking....comes with time and patience, i'm my own worst critic, my scrap bin is testement to that fact lol.

[Aiden1015]

Very nice build. I'm assuming the far left panel is for your power,reset, and light switches. It'd be cool to see USB in the front. Maybe modify one of the add-on USB ports that fits into a PCI slot that comes with the motherboard, that way you have easy access.

[CroobCraft]

Cheers, yep rocker switch far left, sunken reset in the middle and blue power button.

The original fan controller had some USB ports but then I ripped it out, I bought a triple headed usb block with memory card slots, with the intention to fit it, but never quite got it installed, ended up with 2 USB cables that sit behind the screen and spool out when required, one of them is visible in the photo both hooked to USB3 ports, I have a mini USB for phone/ebook etc, which is the white cable just behind the keyboard.

I suppose if I used USB keys or external drives on a regular basis I would have got off me arse and sorted it, and I may do yet, or maybe i'll use it as an excuse to buy another screen with base mounted usb ports, the Samsung is 5 years old and I've already had to repair the PSU once :).