Project: Whisper

[TonyAKAMrClean]

I agree with the rest of them. Looks sweet! Count yourself lucky on getting that aluminum mesh... That stuff is often hard to find and expensive when you do find it! Here in my area it is at least. I guess there's the Modders Mesh that MNPCTech sells, but it's pretty pricy. Anyways, awesome job!

[Technochicken]

Thanks again for all the positive feedback everyone! I have been worrying about the temps, so I pulled off the heatsink, and replaced the thermal pad that was on it for some proper paste, and now the temperature peaks at 67 C, which is about 10-12 degrees cooler than before, so now I do not have to worry about it frying itself.

About the mesh, while I got it for free, the person I got if from purchased it from McMaster, which apparently a good place to get it. It is not exactly cheap from there, but it also comes in 3x4 ft sheets, which is a lot of mesh. Also, the problem with the Modders Mesh from MNPCTech is that it is steel, not aluminum, so it would be harder to work with and requires treatment to prevent it from rusting.

Here's the McMaster link, if anyone is interested:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#perforated-metal/=66ws4a

[blueonblack]

I've been planning to permanently install a USB wireless adapter in Clockwork also, but my plan has been to mount it externally. For whatever reason it never even occurred to me to crack the case off of it and mount it internally. HUGE +rep for that! Do you know if you can remove the antenna and replace it with some other conductive device? No idea what they're made of myself.

[Technochicken]

I think it would be pretty easy to remove the plastic from the antenna, strip the wire, and attach it to something else. I actually thought about wiring it to the aluminum frame of the case, but it gets perfectly good reception as it is so there was no point in doing so.

[x88x]

You can just desolder the stock antenna connection from the PCB and solder on whatever your replacement is; most antennas are just some form of copper wire. That being said, be careful what you replace it.

I'm not an expert on the subject by any means, but from what I do know...

The length and shape of an antenna is tied directly to the wavelength of the signal that it is designed to receive. There is a very good reason why companies spend millions of dollars every year designing better antennas instead of just soldering existing antennas to giant lumps of metal. So, actually, Technochicken, you might have actually gotten worse reception if you connected your antenna to your case body. This isn't to say that replacing the stock antenna is a bad idea. Far from it; if done properly, you can get great reception boosts from a better antenna. Just make sure you do your research before making the jump.

[blueonblack]

Well, regardless, thanks again and congratulations on an excellent case. I agree with the others in that the aluminum and the wood are an excellent contrast. Your intake slots look great and the size of the thing is nice too.

Well done.

[Technochicken]

Upgrade time!
The hardware in this was fairly slow, especially when running Vista, so I've bumped up the specs a bit. Unfortunately, my 8400gs seems to have bitten the dust for no apparent reason during the upgrade process, but the motherboard has a built in 4500HD chipset, which should be fine.

Specs:

Celeron e3400 2.6 Ghz
2 Gb DDR3 1066
Western Digital Caviar Blue 160 Gb
Intel BOXDG41AN mini itx motherboard.
Windows 7 32 bit
Macbook DVD drive


I got all the parts at the worst possible time, because I was already simultaneously upgrading my video card and overhauling a "broken" macbook to give to my sister. I also just got some semi-broken imacs which I am working on as well.

Desk atm:

old vs. new GPU:

Parts:

assortment of broken/semi-broken macs:

I am fixing up the black one for my sister. All I need now is to borrow the leopard disk from a friend. Total expenditure so far: 35$ for a battery. The white macbook has horrible liquid damage, which is too bad, since it has a 9400m, but I got 4 gigs of ram and an optical drive out of it.

testing the motherboard:

I learned that the stock cooler is absolute garbage, so i installed this cooler I had lying around. It runs about forty degrees Celsius cooler.

Going back to the optical drive I pulled out of the macbook: It can read DVD-R's, unlike the previous drive in the HTPC, so I decided to use it. Also, it is SATA instead of IDE, and a sata adapter came with the motherboard. Unfortunately, since it is from a mac, it has no eject button. Unlike most mac drives, it does not even have any eject pins on the outside, to solder a switch to. I figured it must have some sort hardwired eject pin, so I cracked it open:

Success! See that tiny little gold dot?

In order to make it eject, you ground that pin, which I did using the drive's casing. I soldered a wire to the pin, and clamped another under a screw in the drive:

Voila!

Parts together. The cpu cooler has only a few mm of clearance:

Back together:

Thanks for looking!

[x88x]

Haha, nice hack on that ODD!

[AmEv]

Suggestion for one of the iMacs and the white 'Book:
Stealth mod.

[Technochicken]

Final setup picture: