Book of Knowledge - My Home Server

In the planning stages, I've been working in sketchup here for a couple of hours and here is what I have come up with:

I screwed up and I think I'm going to be reversing the internals (The motherboard and PSU) so that they hand on the other wall that is currently plexi.

I also need to widen it a bit. Its at 5", but with 3/4" MDF (which is what I'll probably end up using, it'll make the hard drive a squeeze.

Moe's Tavern is still on, but has been moved to the back burner. This is a slight bit more important to me at the moment, and should go quicker.

Comments, suggestions are always welcome.

-Trace

P.S. I'll try to have updated sketchups in a little bit

Updated Sketchups:

I'm undecided about using the plexi. Thoughts?

I also am contemplating modding the PSU and shrinking the width and making the whole setup fanless.

The Specs will be an Atom 330 on a mini-itx board with a 1TB harddrive.
It'll be low power so I think I can get away with fanless everything if I make the "pages" area of the book a mesh.

Thoughts?

Size wize this case currently is 16" tall, 5" wide and I want to say 12" deep.

Side note: Do not render on your atom processor. It is the slowest thing known to man. I have an i7 at 4Ghz I should be doing it on but my sketchup wasn't working on it.

OHHH you! This should be cool! And I wouldn't use plexi, I would make it look like a book, then you can open it an surprise!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mark_Hardware

OHHH you! This should be cool! And I wouldn't use plexi, I would make it look like a book, then you can open it an surprise!

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+1 on that idea!!! The book-look should be great!!! maybe like one of those antique books...

Thanks guys, keep the ideas coming!

Edit: Chaksq threw out the idea of a picopsu. This would allow this build to be tiny. I'll be resketchuping what that would look like. Stay tuned

New Sketchups: New Dimensions: 4" wide, 8" deep, 12" tall

Added "bronze/brass" text and showed possible location of secret power button

An Idea of size:

hmm one way to have the button hidden is to have it touch and to make it touch sensitive have two wires close to each other and have them hidden so when you touch it you close the circuit

I guess I don't do much reading; the title was on the wrong side of the book.

Here's a fixed look at it: (the power button would be in a similar location)

I built a cardboard version to get a feel for the size, which is as good as this mod can get until I order and receive parts. I want to make this as thin and small as possible, but don't have all the measurements I need. I feel that it's still a bit too big, however it is really small! Pictures are in order I imagine so for for your viewing pleasure, I now present my cardboard mock-up:

Marking for cutting:

My cardboard pieces cut out:

Built, standard soda can for size comparison:

Parts I'm looking at:

MoBo/CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186184
Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820227494
PSU: http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-90-80W-power-kit
And I already have a 1TB drive I will be putting in.
Total cost (approx): $180
I have a max budget of about $250 if you have a suggestion for a diff MoBo/CPU, RAM, or PSU. Needs to be 100% fanless.
Input, suggestions, ideas?