Ghetto Box Build

This is more of a fun project than anything serious. Just a quick bit of cutting and screwing and huzzah it was complete.
I will have a more polished and impressive mod (actually build) up here when time and money permits but for now this can be a preview.

The back story
I found a Toshiba Pentium 4 on the side of the road during a council clean-up. Of course I couldn't resist and had to pick it up.
Trouble is that it had a s***ty design and terrible CPU heatsink with no fan so it kept overheating. It has a surprisingly nice mobo that supports SATA and DDR2 RAM so I guess it was one of the later P4 designs.

Anyways, both my and my girlfriend's laptops died at the same time. Damn Acer, the power plug jack broke off the main board. They quoted $300 to replace it since they were out of warranty, luckily I'm not a newb so I have ordered the replacement parts for $30 and I can fix it myself. In your face Acer! But I am still waiting for them to arrive.

We are nearing the end of the lease on our place so we don't have proper internet at the moment, just wireless broadband. For some dumb reason the USB modem doesn't work on Mac's so it didn't work on the only working computer left in the house, my work desktop. We can't survive without internet for the 2 weeks we have to wait for the parts to arrive so I needed a solution.

The build
I needed to set up the P4 to make it work better without risking a fire in the house. Just for fun I used a cardboard postage box that I had just received some stuff in.
It only took me like 2 hours to get it all sorted out. Yay!

I didn't think to take shots during the build and it wouldn't really have been that interesting anyway, just craft knifing the holes for things to fit, so here are the finished pictures:

Just an unassuming cardboard box chilling on the floor. Nothing suss.
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Boom! It's a computer.
You can see how the cardboard is all bent. It looks like the PSU is too heavy but actually it's because the mobo power cord is too short. I realised this far too late and had already cut and screwed the PSU into place. Incidentally it leaves a nice gap for the hot air to exit.
Kept the activity indicator thingies but they look dodgy like this, the power button too. So I'll sort something out for them later.
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Stealthed that s**t.
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Sneaky huh?
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This is the old case it was in, dodgy really. You can see the hole I have cut in the box in the backround for the intake fans. Ghetto stylin', woo!
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Everything is easy to access which is always a plus.
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Pretty messy but it does the trick. The OD on the right helps with the airflow so it runs over the processor heatsink and the RAM. When this picture was taken I was teking the opportunity to backup all our junk. I love how small laptop HDD's are. I left room for a normal sized HDD between the OD and the top by the way
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There were some cooling issues still and I couldn't figure out why because there was some strong airflow through the case. Then I realised that it was all avoiding the heatsink and going over the top. Insert one ghetto cardboard air baffle and coolness is achieved. Now the air runs through the heatsink fins while cool air runs over the RAM, the cool air then drags the hot air with it and out the gap you saw earlier.
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Finished
So there it is, an awesome solution to a small problem. It is kinda fun to have it sitting there on the floor all sneaky like. The only things I'm thinking of changing is that I would like to make a more efficient air baffle, and exit fan besides the PSU fan and I would probably make the power button look a bit more snazzy. Beyond that it was just meant to be a temporary solution although it is made from leftover bits I don't need so it will probably stay as it is.

One more problem but it's not with the build. Even with the fans on 'super cool awesome mode' in the BIOS instead of 'mega ninja quiet mode' they pretty much idle until the CPU gets really hot then go crazy for 5 minutes until it is cool and revert to idling. I would prefer to have them just motor away at a middle speed to keep it more stable but it isn't doing that. I know I can just change the voltage in the BIOS or hard-wire it to the PSU cables but I haven't got around to it.

THE END

Get-Toe!!!!

I re-made this more neatly with another box I received. I just have to find the photos I took while making it.
I'll do that post later when I locate them.

รุ่นไหนนี่ สุดยอด

Excellent.

either speed fan or something like (program to control fan speeds and monitor temps)
oooooorrrrrr... take the time... solder in some resistors and wire em directly to molex :)