If you’re tired of wrestling with cables and having to take everything apart just for a simple hard drive upgrade, this DIY “PC in a desk” could solve many of your woes.
We’ve talked about a few computer-in-desk mods before, both for cooling and aesthetic purposes. But DIYer Steve Palmeieri put together an entire desktop computer in his standard wooden desk, with cables run throughout (so there isn’t a mess behind your desk) and the tower in an open drawer (for easy access and upgrades to your hard drive, video card, or whatever). It actually looks like an easily doable project, if you feel so inclined. Hit the link to check out a full slideshow of the project.
Computer Desk Case [Steve Palmeieri via Hack N Mod]
Lee
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:41 PMprobably won’t allow visa debit either i’m guessing http://goo.gl/mPLfH
Lee
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 12:42 PMsorry wrong lifehacker article
ba!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 1:02 PMpretty good idea.
Timmahh
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 1:38 PMLike the idea, worried about the heat dissipation issues. Definitely wouldn’t mind giving this a shot though.
Stove
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 3:35 PMI’ve done this a few times (in a smaller drawer), and heat dissipation can be an issue if you don’t modify the drawer at all.
As with any other case, you have to think about the airflow. You ‘ll be knocking a hole in the back of the drawer for cabling anyway, so you might as well wedge a nice big fan there to start getting airflow going.
If you want minimal effort and minimal heat, use something like an atom desktop board or a mac mini. I used the guts of a p4m laptop for a while (back in ’06) and it worked pretty well.
Timmahh
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 4:51 PMThanks for that, I have an Asus Rampage III Gene board in my current system I might see if I can shoehorn that in!
AJS
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 2:15 PMIMO there would be very little heat build up mainly because everything is onboard. Only real things generating a lot of heat would be CPU and HDD. Honestly could’ve still mounted the PSU inside the drawer and use it as another extraction fan, or switch the two fans on the back for one big 200mm exhaust.
Otherwise nice concept and clean look in the end.
JonBOY
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 3:13 PMGenius! As well as being tidy, having the PC tucked away in the draw would also be a great way of reducing pollution produced by the PC.
Too bad my desk doesn’t have one of those big bottom drawers
PsychoIceBear
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 6:38 PMLame, Lame, Lame.
Just call this article ‘I switched out my PC into a wooden box’ and be done with it.
The PSU is external ? Gee whiz.