A wooden box?

[zygomorph]

I have most of a base system in spare parts, and I was hoping to put it to use. All of the parts are at least two years old, so I'm not too upset at the prospect of doing weird stuff with them. The one component I do not have is a case, which is the raison d'être of this forum inquiry.

How bad of an idea would it be to make a case for these components out of wood? I own all of the tools neccesary, have worked with wood before, and think this would be kind of cool. The only potential problem I can see would be either finding longer screws to mount the drives or using thinner wood to create an enclosure for them, but I would appreciate some feedback from people with more experience. This wouldn't be a LAN machine, so weight and portability are not issues.

 

[pinetree]

I would imagine that proper grounding would be an issue you would have to solve.

 

[zygomorph]

All of the components plug into the motherboard, and all of the connectors include grounding lines. Shouldn't all static transfer from the motherboard to the PSU?

 

[Guest]

Micromart did an article on their wooden PC have a look at their website.

Totally possible to do, plan it well and post results.

 

[zygomorph]

Can you provide the link?

 

[JDFan]

Doug's Quiet Wood Case

 

[Guest]

http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&client=opera&hs=PDL&rls=en-GB&q=wood+pc+case&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=NEWQS5jTLqb60wTrwaDyDA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCAQsAQwAw

dude I nearly fell over!!!

Gotta get my chisel and jigsaw out of hibernation

 

[mrmez]

It would certainly be a nice change.

Do it and be sure to post pix etc.

 

[darkguset]

Besides the not really terrible obstacles mentioned in the article (resonance, etc) the other thing i would REALLY worry about would be its durability. Not mostly because of how it would break into pieces if you tried to move it and you dropped it, but in a case of a fire, it would be terrible!!!! Now some of you may think that in the case of a fire the case does not really matter, but having been in a friend's house in an exact case (pun not intended) like that, i can vouch that, had his case been a wooden one, not only his PC, but his house would not have had survived. And yes, apparently after his PC was on fire (externally) for over 10 minutes, the only thing that did not work after the firemen put the fire out (and used and extinguisher inside the PC as well) was the floppy drive!!! (the plastic facia had completely melted as well as some cabling inside the case) To everyone's surprise the computer booted up fine. It seems that old hardware could take a lot of punishment (this happened in 2002 in UK).

 

[Starges]

You need to build one with lots of open spaces, wood tends to retain a lot of heat.

 

[jsc]

That's what the forced air cooling is for.

Suggestion if you are considering doing this. Starting off with an existing motherboard tray is a good idea. But before you screw it to the wood, enlarge the holes and use a small, rubber grommet in each hole for a shock mount.

Resonance in large wooden panels can be a problem. Screw a strip of wood to the inside of the panel a little off center along the long dimension of the panel (old homebrew speaker builder trick).

 

[mi1ez]

Check out some of these mods/scratch build on bit-tech

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/case-mod/2010/02/08/art-deco-zenith-5-s-29-radio-case-mod/1
http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/case-mod/2009/12/14/cygnus-x1-by-attila-lukacs-oldnewby/1