As there are a wide selection of ATX to bench instructables already out there I thought I would simply share my photo's of the end result.
The total cost for me to build this was around £12 which in my mind is well worth it!
The spring terminals allow me to connect directly into the 3.3V, 5V and the 12V lines. As I tend to use the 5V and 12V more than the 3.3V (and the fact that I only ordered two of each of the panel meters) I fitted a volt meter (red) and a current meter (blue) to those lines. Both from eBay.
At the moment there are fuse holders inside (to keep them safe from, well me really!) but when the new panel mount ones finally arrive I will be fitting them on the case so they are accessible from the outside.
A lot of the other instructables require a resistor of X value to be fitted across here and there but on this one I simply shorted the brown (sense) and orange (3.3V) and it seems to be pretty stable so far. Although I have not put it under a lot of load yet the voltage only fluctuates occasionally by 0.1V.
I used two bits of perforated ally sheet for the fan protection, one actually covers the fan and the other covers the air inlet. These didn't come from the computer case but the rubber feet that I hot glued to the bottom of the case did :-)
The plastic case itself came from work, I dropped lucky on that.
As I was pulling the old computer apart I found a new use for the heat sink due to its weight and the old fan from the rear of the case.
After I mounted the fan on it to blow away the fumes I thought about fitting a single spot light of some sort on it. Then I found a load of cool white LED strip off cuts from previous projects (kitchen) so I slapped an array of them over the fan and used two switches to select which ones I turn on.
You can never have enough LED's in a project :-)
The fan is just the job and I used an old snap connector so I can plug it in on demand.
The total cost for me to build this was around £12 which in my mind is well worth it!
The spring terminals allow me to connect directly into the 3.3V, 5V and the 12V lines. As I tend to use the 5V and 12V more than the 3.3V (and the fact that I only ordered two of each of the panel meters) I fitted a volt meter (red) and a current meter (blue) to those lines. Both from eBay.
At the moment there are fuse holders inside (to keep them safe from, well me really!) but when the new panel mount ones finally arrive I will be fitting them on the case so they are accessible from the outside.
A lot of the other instructables require a resistor of X value to be fitted across here and there but on this one I simply shorted the brown (sense) and orange (3.3V) and it seems to be pretty stable so far. Although I have not put it under a lot of load yet the voltage only fluctuates occasionally by 0.1V.
I used two bits of perforated ally sheet for the fan protection, one actually covers the fan and the other covers the air inlet. These didn't come from the computer case but the rubber feet that I hot glued to the bottom of the case did :-)
The plastic case itself came from work, I dropped lucky on that.
As I was pulling the old computer apart I found a new use for the heat sink due to its weight and the old fan from the rear of the case.
After I mounted the fan on it to blow away the fumes I thought about fitting a single spot light of some sort on it. Then I found a load of cool white LED strip off cuts from previous projects (kitchen) so I slapped an array of them over the fan and used two switches to select which ones I turn on.
You can never have enough LED's in a project :-)
The fan is just the job and I used an old snap connector so I can plug it in on demand.
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Well before I found this place I was building things around the house and for work. And like you say, I also used to add LED's to kits and demo boards that on the odd occasion actually served a purpose but in most cases made the observer focus on them (taking their attention away from some of the more dodgy bits!)
I hope I bought back happy memories :-)
The LED's are from a 12V strip so they basically piggyback on the 12V supply to the fan. The two switches on the fan just select which bank of LED's come on but if I had thought about it before hand I would have put another switch on to turn the fan off.
hindsight is a wonderful thing :-)