aluminum briefcase pc

Show off your quiet rig.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
Mirar
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Falun, Sweden
Contact:

aluminum briefcase pc

Post by Mirar » Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:48 am

Heya, haven't posted anything in a while, but I thought I should show my latest project anyway.

I needed a PC for travelling, and I needed a PC to connect to the TV to show movies, and of course normal cases aren't pretty (ymmv) and not very practical for travelling, so I decided to simply put a PC in a briefcase.

It's modded a bit, so it's probably "silent" although very very far from my normal semi-passive-watercooled rig. It's made from leftover parts (yes, I have a ton of more or less silent fans laying around from previous experiments, Mike knows what I'm talking about) and the budget were very low.


Image
click for more images and descriptions


/Mirar

rbsteffes
Posts: 114
Joined: Mon Sep 13, 2004 7:35 pm

Post by rbsteffes » Tue Sep 21, 2004 12:10 pm

I'd give you 5 dollars for a video of you trying to take that on an airplane.

Mirar
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Falun, Sweden
Contact:

Post by Mirar » Tue Sep 21, 2004 12:16 pm

Bwahaha... :-) Yeah, that could be interesting.

flyingsherpa
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 475
Joined: Fri Sep 26, 2003 6:28 pm
Location: CT, USA

Post by flyingsherpa » Tue Sep 21, 2004 12:26 pm

neat project, but why not just use a laptop? is it because of the TV-out requirement? i guess i don't follow laptops much so maybe that feature is not available on them... though seems like it should be possible with some adapter or something. anyway, good job.

Straker
Posts: 657
Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2004 11:10 pm
Location: AB, Canada
Contact:

Post by Straker » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:19 pm

tons of laptops have s-video out and enough VRAM for a second display, or video mirroring if not, see last part of post though

jabba
Posts: 101
Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2004 11:34 am

Post by jabba » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:34 pm

rbsteffes wrote:I'd give you 5 dollars for a video of you trying to take that on an airplane.
Lol ... I'm sure even if you explained what it was, they wouldn't let you bring it on. I'm sure the thing looks "explosive" when opened.

Mirar
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Falun, Sweden
Contact:

Post by Mirar » Tue Sep 21, 2004 10:04 pm

flyingsherpa wrote:neat project, but why not just use a laptop? is it because of the TV-out requirement?
Well, two reasons. This thing cost me less then $150 in hardware (the motherboard is "demo", the PSU is the cheapest, and except the CPU and the $15 case I had it all already as leftovers from silencing projects),
and another important thing is that since it's (also) a media computer disk space is important and I haven't seen any laptop that can chew on a bunch of normal 3.5" HDDs...

But actually I had tried to use the same hardware in a normal miditower, but it was so ugly and loud and heavy I had to do something. (And I couldn't convert it to a laptop.) ;-)

And here's for you that's too lazy to click the link above:
Image

/Mirar

RaNDoMMAI
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 337
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 8:12 am

Post by RaNDoMMAI » Wed Sep 22, 2004 5:26 am

what did you use to stick the harddrives tot he side panel? and what did you use to secure the motherboard down?

neat stuff

~RaNDoM

Mirar
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Falun, Sweden
Contact:

Post by Mirar » Wed Sep 22, 2004 6:32 am

I used elastic strings. They are fixed to the case plywood (beneath the black foam seen in the picture above) with cyanoacrylate superglue.
It works well so far. The PSU is fixed with that too.

The superglue needed a really long time before it could be put to stress though, like 12-14 hours. I did a lot of false starts before I understood why... my first experiment was fixating over night, so that one worked well.

RaNDoMMAI
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 337
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 8:12 am

Post by RaNDoMMAI » Wed Sep 22, 2004 6:19 pm

whoa, i didnt think they made glue strong enough to do that.

btw, i notice that you rheatsink is surronded by the elastic. Is that safe? it wont burn or something?

thx
~RaNDoM

Mirar
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Aug 11, 2002 3:26 pm
Location: Falun, Sweden
Contact:

Post by Mirar » Wed Sep 22, 2004 11:35 pm

The heatsink is just top 60°C... it wont harm the elastic. The CPU will be dead from the heat before it harms the plastic. :-)

But you should use elastics from a sewing shop, so it can take more stress and more heat (you can usually wash it in 60°C). Normal rubber bands die quickly, especially when heated.

Tephras
Posts: 1140
Joined: Tue Sep 07, 2004 11:03 am
Location: Europe

Post by Tephras » Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:39 am

Mirar wrote:But you should use elastics from a sewing shop, so it can take more stress and more heat (you can usually wash it in 60°C).
That really sounds as something to keep in mind when looking for elastic strings I must say. Thank you, that was a good tip.

Post Reply