Making wall mounted pc need urgent help

[hammad1029]

So I'm building a wall mountable PC with an atx mobo and psu. What im doing is using wood with carbon fiber on it and screwing the parts directly. However, i read somewhere that carbon fiber is a conductor so my question is that will my components be safe? If not, can i use rubber washers beneath every component to keep it from frying?

Secondly i don't have any motherboard standoffs on me either (and it's impossible to get them by themselves, where i live. Trust me ive tried ) so can i just screw the motherboard directly on to the carbon fiber applied wood by drilling normal holes? Perhaps with rubber washers in between for further safety?

 

[stdragon]

Carbon is conductive. However, carbon fiber is also laminated (resin coated) which can act like an insulator as well. Aside from potentials issues with static electricity build-up, try testing the material with an ohmmeter.

 

[mortemas]

It doesn't matter. The metal case that the mobo would usually mount to is also conductive. Just make sure your standoffs meet specs.

 

[mortemas]

I wouldn’t rely on a resin coating as a justification for mounting the mobo without standoffs. A nickname for the back of a circuit board is “cheese grater” because the numerous trimmed leads from through-hole components stick out the back and are sharp. They can pierce the resin and cause a short. Granted, newer boards have more surface mount components these days, but through-hole hasn’t disappeared completely. Additionally the tiny, delicate surface mount components could break off the board if you mount it without standoffs. The ATX 2.1 spec is that standoffs need to be at least 0.25 inches and a have cross section no larger than a 10 mm x 10 mm square. Rubber washers would be fine, but allow for some compression.

 

[stdragon]

It doesn't matter. The metal case that the mobo would usually mount to is also conductive. Just make sure your standoffs meet specs.

OP is asking to mount the MB directly WITHOUT standoffs.

Doing so is ill-advisable unless it's 100% certain that the material that the MB is mounting to is non-conductive. Otherwise, solder points on the bottom will short out when coming into contact with material that is conductive.

 

[grimfox]

CF should be fine. It's actually beneficial to mount to a metal frame as mobo manufacturers assume that is the norm and use the mounts for grounding. Back in the day you could run into issues with the all acrylic cases, because they didn't have that grounding capability.

So long as you CF panel isn't fraying to a point where fibers are making contact with the board (most resin coated CF wouldn't do this unless it's broken) it should not be a problem.

Make the effort and order some of the standoffs on line. It's going to make things a lot easier if you can find something that will work. If you can't find the exact parts, that's fine, but get something. I think it'll improve the look of the system if you do that.

 

[USAFRet]

You need standoffs, for a couple of reasons.

1. Just screwing it directly to wood or a carbon fiber plate will cause the corners to bend down. The backside of the motherboard has the ends of all those pins sticking out. Those will be contacting the board, while the corners with the screws will not.

2. Heat/airflow. The board needs a little bit of free air space behind it.

 

[parallacks]

I thought about doing something like this recently.

2 points:
1, I've read that the metal of a case provides additional grounding for the motherboard as it's usually connected to the PSU.
2, The mounting points are designed for this, BUT the component pins on the back of the PCB are not and I worry that you may short one or more circuits. But I'm not an electrical engineer, so ymmv.

Consider making your own stand-offs with machine screws and multiple nuts, with holes drilled through the wood, instead of wood screws. And/or buy/make something tubular to act as a spacer for the screws from a local hardware store. Perhaps you could cut short segments from a hard plastic straw from a travel cup to work in a pinch. And maybe make sure the carbon fiber is also connected to the PSU. Again, I'm not an electrical engineer, so consult one or try at your own risk. Good luck!