Instead of cooking for Thanksgiving...

[Ulu]

...or going out, we stayed home & I built a new computer. I'm posting from it now.

 

I wanted something to sit in the living room by my La-Z-Boy that didn't look like a computer & I had this little oak phone stand (or replica antique ice box), and a pile of used PC's I've been scrapping out from work.

 

Anyhow, she's got a Gigabyte mainboard & dual-core Athlon A64x2 64 bit processor, 500 watt PSU, 4 GB Kingston 800mhz DDR, Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS video w/ 500MB, plus onboard video & sound. It has a 120 GB Adata SSD and dual WD Caviar 500 GB HDDs.

 

The parts, boards, & peripherals came from 5 old PCs & the steel chassis bits were carved off of 2 other PC cases, and trimmed, bent, drilled, hemmed, etc. to house the drives and boards. The drive cage clamps in with one screw, and the back comes off for service.

 

It's not the most modern thing but it's powerful, has AutoCAD and Revit plus MS Office, it all works, and it didn't cost a dime.

 

It did take me about 4x as long as a normal PC to build though. I designed everything on the fly & there was some metal work, mostly tin snips, dremel & drill. Some fluting pliers might have come in handy when I took the oil-can out of the chassis. All told the metal work was a success.

 

Cutouts in the cabinet back

 

Power supply bracket:

 

Drive cage assembly with 5 drives:

 

The chassis goes in:

 

The guts:

 

Booting Win 8.1 Pro 64

 

Dual boots to Win XP Pro 64

 

 

 

[Niel Hoback]

  Holy crap!    I once changed a light bulb.

[LAKOTA169]

I'm thinking about upgrading my Commodore 64.

[40plyrod]

Very cool! 

[Don Coatney]

LAKOTA169, on 29 Nov 2014 - 5:29 PM, said:

I'm thinking about upgrading my Commodore 64.

I just upgraded my 3.0 to 95. Runs a lot faster now.

[Ulu]

I got a used Timex-Sinclair if you really want a challenge.

 

 

Dang, I'm sorry but some of my pics are too fuzzy! I didn't look at them closely enough & my eyes suck anyhow. 

 

Anyhow, this was an easy build. Partly because I had so many parts to choose from, but also because I've been messing with computers a long time.

It's much like building cars. You read the manuals and buy the parts.

Or scrounge them in this case.

 

The parts sure weigh a lot less than car parts. 

 

(Of course when I build a virtual machine, the parts are practically massless. No heavy lifting at all.  )

[Dennis_MN]

Reminds me of the Johnny Cash tune, one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime. The ending was something like it's a 51,52,56,54,56,58,59 automobile.

[TodFitch]

Reminds me of the Johnny Cash tune, one piece at a time, and it didn't cost me a dime. The ending was something like it's a 51,52,56,54,56,58,59 automobile.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=johnny+cash+cadillac+one+piece+at+a+time

[Ulu]

You'll know it's me when I roll through your town....

 

I didn't need a lunchbox though.

 

I trucked it out the door on a dolly.

 

The truth is everybody at work has been wondering if I'd ever throw out the stuff.

 

I still couldn't bear to part with the PS2 or the PC-AT.

 

Nearly antiques now....

[Ulu]

Here's a couple better photos to replace the fuzzy ones.

 

 

 

 

 

[Niel Hoback]

   Don't forget to empty the drip pan before you go to bed.

[Ulu]

I converted it to air cooled.

[pflaming]

Testing....just testing....

Ulu came by and put my Phoenix icon in my profile. Thus the test.

Edited December 31, 2014 by pflaming

[DJ194950]

Looks good Paul,

 

Now if only I can get Ulu to take a drive North about 70 miles with one of his home-built leftovers computers ready to replace my Dinosaur of a computer! 

 

DJ

[Ulu]

The motherboards are all crap. Fast, but have cheap Chinese condensers.

 

This one will work until another condenser blows. Unless you can solder circuit boards, it's hopeless to own one. There's over a dozen (though normally only certain ones blow.)

 

If I was being thrifty, I'd get a used off-lease business computer from  tigerdirect.com  with Win7 on it. Much cheaper than new, and better quality than lots of consumer PCs. A new bare motherboard with processor from them is very cheap if it's not the latest and greatest stuff.

 

Win8 turns your PC into a big smartphone. It's not attractive at all, and some chores rely too much on cascading menus.

It works great so far, though I think it's a throwback aesthetically.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Ulu

[BobT-47P15]

I ended up with a new H P computer when Mary Ann's aunt passed on........it has Windows 8.1--  and the folks at the

computer shop set it up so the front screen has icons just like my older computer.  Those original icon things are

back in there somewhere.    (You can probably tell that I'm no computer expert.}    

 

I also bought from the shop a used HP which has Windows 7 on it.  Have not yet hooked it up and tried to use it.  

I took them my  several-year-old Dell to see if it could be upgraded to 7, and they looked at it.....then said "NO"....

not enough capacity.  But I hate to do away with it as I have a bunch of stuff on it, especially pictures, I don't want

to lose.  

 

Guess I need to find someone who knows how to make the "thumb drives" work correctly and load my pics onto some

of those.  I tried using one, but didn't seem like it was working right......or I didn't know how to load it somehow.                 

[Ulu]

If you have a lot of pictures & things to save, just take the hard drive out and put it right into the new PC. (If the BIOS is set to "AUTO" it will probably show up in windows on the first boot, as D: or E: (unless you have other drives and devices you've plugged in.)

 

Anyhow, then you can just transfer everything directly without slooooow thumb drives.

 

Any PC tech could do this in about 30 mins half asleep, not counting data transfer. (That depends on how much data you have.)

 

Then go put a couple slugs through that Dell (Yuck!)

Edited January 3, 2015 by Ulu