Scratch Build Project: The Ultimate Computer Desk

[ultimatedesk]

Hi Everyone,

I've been working on a big project lately to create what is to me, the Ultimate Computer Desk.

Here are the stats in brief:
- Built of 3/4" 2-Sided Maple Plywood and Solid Maple
- 2 Integrated Desktop Computers
- Fan Control
- Noise Control
- Dust Control
- 3 Monitor Expansion Capacity

I'm actually quite a few weeks into the project already, so I won't post all the pictures and all the steps I've taken, but I'm hoping some of you will chime in with your ideas and comments.

Constructive thoughts, criticisms, and shouts of encouragement are always welcome

 

[ultimatedesk]

This was the result of many hours spent in Google Sketchup:

And here, you can see the two cabinets blown up to get an idea of the construction techniques I'm going to use to build them:

The dark bits are solid maple, which I will be using as trim, and the light brown bits are 1x1's that I will screw to the cabinet from the inside, to minimize the number of screw holes on the outside.

In these two diagrams, you can see how the computer components will be laid out inside the cabinets:

Both systems will use 4 intake fans, and they will pull air through a large piece of furnace air filter material, so some strong fans will probably be needed to maximize air flow.

The two "cubby" holes on top of the desk (One on each side) will house the switches, fan controls, LED's for power and HDD, as well as the optical drives.

 

[ultimatedesk]

Here is the small wood shop I have access to:

And the sheets of plywood I picked up from the local hardware store:

I got all of the major cuts done in one session and labeled everything accordingly:

And made a nice big mess 😉

 

[ultimatedesk]

This is what happens when I forget to print out my workplans for the day:

I'm going to put together the 3 drawers (without faces) by gluing, clamping, and then countersinking some screws into them:

Everything looks nice and squared up:

And, once the glue has dried, I put some screws in. Some good work for this session:

 

[ultimatedesk]

I decided to cut the holes into the surface pieces, which by the way, are super heavy and unwieldy. They are 8' long and weigh between 20 and 30 pounds a piece.

I started by measuring and marking the appropriate lines, and then cut a rough outline with the jigsaw:

I went deep into the corners, carefully trying to keep them square:

I then clamped a straight-edge down and ran a router across all 4 sides to get nice clean edges:

I was very happy with the tolerances. A few minutes with some sandpaper, and the corners will be as close to perfect as they come:

I then repeated the process in a similar manner for the bottom desk surface. The bottom desk surface has a hole that is 1/2" smaller all the way around to create a lip that the glass will rest on, that will cover the computer in the left-hand cabinet. Yes, the whole desk surface weighs a ton when lifted together as one piece 😉

And to finish off the first flurry of updates:

Stay tuned for more

 

[duk3]

Looks nice!
Is that ARES xfire?

 

[OllieUK]

I can believe that the tops are heavy and unwieldy. I made my daughter an 'Upsy Daisy' bed (From a CBeebies kids TV show from the UK) when she was little, out of 15mm MDF for the base and I think 6 or 8 mm ply for the shaped ends and sides. It looks great but I can't lift it in one, also it won't go through any house doors without being dis-assembled and re-assembled due to the height of the ends - though I guess you'll build that desk in pieces and then assemble in situ.

So my advice which I guess you've probably already thought of is to make sure it is easy to assemble, carry and disassemble from manageable sized assembled chunks.

Nice project!

EDIT: Oh and looking at your left cabinet design I couldn't quite work out your airflow solution for the PSU. Is the PSU going to push the hot air out the bottom into the space underneath which is also where your front intake fans pull from? Just a thought..

 

[_tru_]

looks good, but you might want some top exhaust and front intake? small space high temps it will have.

i was thinking. your exhaust is good so how about in front for air intake you add speaker mesh wire covered by perforated cloth so it resembles a house speaker? just a thought though i thought that with no front intake it will only be circulating hot air. but then again if you use the panel as a door you can cool it off anytime.

 

[ultimatedesk]

Looks nice!
Is that ARES xfire?

Thanks - that is indeed a pair of ARES cards. I don't think that is what I'll be using as components, but that is what I selected as a model, since they are rather large cards, and it gave me a good idea of the amount of space I'll have in the top of the cabinet.

I can believe that the tops are heavy and unwieldy. I made my daughter an 'Upsy Daisy' bed (From a CBeebies kids TV show from the UK) when she was little, out of 15mm MDF for the base and I think 6 or 8 mm ply for the shaped ends and sides. It looks great but I can't lift it in one, also it won't go through any house doors without being dis-assembled and re-assembled due to the height of the ends - though I guess you'll build that desk in pieces and then assemble in situ.

So my advice which I guess you've probably already thought of is to make sure it is easy to assemble, carry and disassemble from manageable sized assembled chunks.

Nice project!

EDIT: Oh and looking at your left cabinet design I couldn't quite work out your airflow solution for the PSU. Is the PSU going to push the hot air out the bottom into the space underneath which is also where your front intake fans pull from? Just a thought..

Yes - it will disassemble into 4 pieces - the desk surface, the desk shelf on top, and the two cabinets. As for the airflow, the 4 fans act as an intake, which will pull air from the hole in the bottom surface, and the air will have nowhere to go except out the back of the cabinet, with the aid of the PSU, CPU Cooler, and fans on the video cards.

looks good, but you might want some top exhaust and front intake? small space high temps it will have.

i was thinking. your exhaust is good so how about in front for air intake you add speaker mesh wire covered by perforated cloth so it resembles a house speaker? just a thought though i thought that with no front intake it will only be circulating hot air. but then again if you use the panel as a door you can cool it off anytime.

Hmm, there are only intake fans - the 4 fans in a row are all intakes, on both cabinets. The left-hand module will pull air from the hole in the bottom surface, and the air will have nowhere else to go except exhaust out the back of the case where the PCI cards are, and CPU Hole, as well as the PSU exhaust fan. Same will occur on the right-hand module.

Hey all, hope everyone had a good Holiday!

Hey everyone, it's been a little while since my last update, so here are a few snapshots. As some of you might know, I've been a little held back in the project due to not having selected my motherboard I/O plates and motherboard trays. Without having the actual items, I couldn't make the appropriate measurements to make cut-outs in the back of the cabinets, and therefore, was unable to make the dado cuts due to worry about everything not fitting properly.

So I scrounged through some old desktop systems I had lying around, emptied their components into my bins, and decided to take apart their chassis in search of some good motherboard tray and I/O parts.

So - off to the spooky basement with a pair of chassis, my trusty drill and dremel.

Having never drilled rivets out of a case before, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. At first, I started with a bit that was a little bit small, so the rivets came up onto the drill bit itself and got stuck on there pretty good. Eventually, I moved to a bigger bit, and all it took was one good squeeze of the trigger and the rivet would come right out nice and cleanly.

Starting to rack up some parts here

You can see in the image above that the I/O and PCI Plate is built right into the back of the desktop chassis - this is unfortunate, as you'll see in some future photos, my other case actually had a modular I/O plate. I'll have to take the dremel to that part to get what I need.

Time to grab the pliers...

Here is the shot of the back plate of the other desktop chassis - see how the I/O plate was actually riveted in, and not pressed as a whole back sheet like the other one? Soo much easier to deal with.

That was a pretty fun experience taking apart the cases. I've got a bunch of scrap sheet metal now too - wonder what interesting projects I can come up with to use them...

On to that first I/O plate - I need to dremel out the section that I need

Huh.. that actually didn't work out too well, at least, not the way I would like. I'm going to take these parts to the shop to see if there are any better tools for getting nice clean lines.

Until next time!

 

[shovenose]

most of your pictures dont seem to work? 🙁)
thats a really cool project...i want something like it, except with capability for about 10 computers...

 

[jefe323]

very nice looking project. can't wait to see the outcome

 

[ultimatedesk]

Thanks for the comments guys - try refreshing the page, and the images should load up properly.

I had some time to take those motherboard tray and I/O Plates to the shop to try out a few tools / techniques for shaping them into something I actually like.

First off, yes, Mike and I tried using the nice Dewalt Jigsaw, but the Mastercraft metal blades we were trying to use just wouldn't stay in the darn clamp. It would cut like butter for maybe 10 seconds and then bam, the blade would fall out of the bottom of the jigsaw onto the ground. Not sure what was going on there.

Next up, we tried this neat little Mastercraft oscillating tool with a metal blade as well, but no such luck. Couldn't figure out a good way to clamp down the metal tray, so it just vibrated it like crazy instead of actually cutting.

Our next contestant was an air compressor powered cutting wheel, which, was ultimately less accurate than the dremel, and just as slow.

So we took out the big gun, the sawzall.

Ha, no, just kidding. It wouldn't work even a tiny bit for a piece like this.

In the end, you know what ultimately worked the best?

Yeah, a hacksaw. Go figure.

Anyways, here you can see my mangled I/O plate for the motherboard. It's not a pretty sight at all in my opinion.

This is the nice I/O plate that I didn't even have to do anything except drill out a few rivets.

I think I'm going to have to come up with a better solution for this. We'll see shortly 😉

Hope everyone who is getting snow is enjoying it, I know here in Ottawa, it's been a pretty crazy few days!

Stay tuned for more updates, will be spending some time in the shop this week and working with WOOD!

 

[shovenose]

how far away are you from here? i have an io plate/mobo tray that came out of a case with removable mobo tray...you can have it free if you come by

 

[ultimatedesk]

Thanks for the offer there shovenose, but I think I've solved that particular issue.. I'm in Ottawa, Ontario, FYI

I had a bit of time in the shop this week to work on getting my drawers up to speed. I decided to take the advice of a fellow forum member and add "false fronts" to my drawers so that I can attach the "real fronts" using screws by screwing from the inside of the drawer, so I wouldn't have any screw heads to cover up on the outside.

Here they are, with my roughed out false fronts - I happened to have 3 pieces of wood almost exactly the size I needed.

Time to take out 'ol trusty

A quick test fit, and all 3 fit perfectly

Add a bit of glue, and some trusty clamps, and we've got ourselves the beginnings of some false fronts!

All 3 of them fit rather nicely. I think they helped square out the drawers overall as well (Even though they were only out of square by around 1/16th of an inch).

So, I've got some time for the glue to dry. I'm not sure if anyone can remember this, but in my original cut sheets, I had planned on cutting out a specific piece of wood using the wood that I jigsawed out of the desk surface.

Here's that piece:

Not, exactly.... square..

So I take this nice little protractor attached to a table saw slide - it's set at 90, so here we go!

 

[ultimatedesk]

I do 2 sides, and then use the actual table saw fence to square out the other 2, but something just doesn't seem right..

It's not really square. What's going on here?

Aha! Looks like the protractor was a little bit off, resulting in a shape one step closer to a diamond as opposed to a square. After a bit of readjustment, I redid that bit and cut it to size - it's the drawer face for the large drawer.

Now that the glue is settled, I decided to throw a few screws into the false fronts.

Awesome. And solid too!

Now, this is kind of embarrassing, but I had to go back and fix a mistake I made in my initial cuts. This piece of wood was supposed to be 20" x 28", but it ended up being more like 19.8" x 28". It may not seem like much, but this is the back piece to the left-hand cabinet. I would have to adjust the width of all 3 shelves if I were to continue using this, and I've got the space already pretty tightly packed with computer components on the top shelf.

So... don't do this at home, just cut a new piece of wood (I didn't want to cut into a new sheet of 4x8 just for this one piece...)

This piece looks like a good fit...

:banghead:

No one will see it, because it'll be in the back, but you will all know. So... let's just forget that ever happened, ok? 😉

 

[shovenose]

i will never ever ever forget lol jk

 

[ultimatedesk]

Haha, thanks shovenose 😉

I decided it was time to glue the two surfaces together that would comprise of the actual desk surface and take a break from working on the drawers for a while.

Here it is, the first piece. At first I wanted to lay it face down, so I could evenly distribute screws through the bottom, but in the end, I went face up so I would protect the surface, and it would be a LOT easier to line up the holes.

I threw on the top layer, lined them up, and thought to myself: Hmm, I wonder what it'll look like with the top shelf stacked on:

Pretty cool. This was the first time I had actually pulled a chair up to it to get a real grasp of how big this desk is going to be. I was pretty psyched.

Just a note, the two pieces of wood on each end holding up the shelf will actually be the inner supports (ie, pushed inwards towards the middle of the desk a foot or two), and the cubby holes on the outer ends will support the long shelf. The long shelf also has to be trimmed a couple inches, it won't reach right to the end of the desk.

This next part was really quite a challenge on my own.

I lined it up as best as I could (According to the holes that I cut out, since the edges are easy to trim later), lifted one end with a mighty, strong arm, squirted as much glue as I could with my other arm (And only as far as I could reach!), put it down gently, ran to the other side and repeated.

Let me tell you - with the amount of glue I put down, and the fact that each side weighs 20-30 pounds - it did NOT want to slide around easily to get into perfect position.

In the end, I had to muscle it around a bit to get the holes lined up satisfactorily.

(I spoke with a couple friends about this afterward, and one of them suggested making some pilot holes and screwing in a few screws BEFORE the gluing, and then retracting the screws so that just the tips go through the bottom board. That way after the glue is put down, you shuffle around the top board until the tips of the screws find the pilot holes, thus, eliminating the issue of getting proper alignment before the glue becomes too tacky.)

I then threw some weight on top of the table, attached as many clamps as I could find, and started putting some 1.25" screws through the bottom.

A few clamp shots of the hole - everything lined up pretty much perfect. 1/2" on the left and right, 1/2" at the bottom, and I think just a little under 3/4" at the top. (The size of the lip between the upper and lower holes)

I wasn't satisfied with the way the clamping was going on lengthwise on the surface. I didn't have enough clamps to place them every half foot, so luckily, Mike had some of these nice, big, cedar logs lying around that I re-purposed temporarily.

The end result turned out quite nicely. The hole was lined up properly. There is only a small overhang / underhang of maybe 2/16's of an inch on two of the edges of the surfaces that should be easy to correct with a flush-bit on the router later.

We'll take a look at them next update! Thanks for staying tuned!

 

[ultimatedesk]

I got a chance to do some work on the drawer face trim - this was my first time doing solid wood trim.

I cut a nice piece of maple into 1/4" strips, glued, and sanded. I only did one piece this time, as I am not totally sure that this is the way I would like to go.

Something about the trim not meshing quite well with the plywood.

First, I set the table saw to the right width:

Measure 3 times, and you get a nice solid cut:

Made a few strips:

Cut, glued, and clamped on the initial pieces of trim. The trim pieces were about 2/16's of an inch wider than the plywood, which is great, since there will be no voids, though, I'll have to do quite a bit of sanding:

Took the sander to the top and bottom:

Overall, it looks pretty good. I'm still not 100% certain about it, however. I'm thinking there is a strong possibility I will go with solid maple for the drawer faces.

 

[ultimatedesk]

Had another really busy weekend and unfortunately, wasn't able to post the update on the weekend like I originally wanted to...

BUT! Made a new friend - meet Mr.Air Nailer.

Nice and fast, no need to clamp everything down, and I can get a lot more trim done a lot quicker.

I really did a better job of being picky with the trim, and selected cuts that matched the colour a lot better:

Compared to the first drawer face that I tried:

That had to change, so I took my most subtle and elegant tools:

And, replaced the two mis-coloured pieces with nicer ones.

Anyways - this is what my trim production line looked like for the day:

First, I would mark off the lengths on an appropriately coloured piece of trim just using a pencil and holding the trim against the piece:

Take it over to the miter saw and trim it to within a sixteenth of an inch or so on both ends:

See that cedar log in the bottom right? Remember it being longer? Mike was in the shop today turning them into table legs, which partially explains the big mess!

I then took the piece that is being trimmed, as well as the trim, to the little sander. I would sand to a good 90 degree angle, and get the length just right.

Glue down, and nail down!

Occasionally, I'll crack the trim with the nailer... which means it has to be removed, and re-done with a new piece of trim:

After some sanding:

I finished all 3 drawer faces and then got started on the actual drawers. They look pretty decent. Not perfect, but they look nice.

 

[king smp]

Nice work so far.
Cant wait to see finish product.
This link could be interesting to you primarily about grounding mobo to PSU
http://forums.techgage.com/showthread.php?t=5504
Good luck, keep up the good work and dont breathe too much sawdust

 

[kinth]

i love the idea of building the comp into the actual desk , gave me some good ideas.
while personally like a good looking case it could be cool to build some fans into the actual desk so i could have a cool case but also keep it looking tidy and out of the way and not have it over heat

 

[ultimatedesk]

Thanks for the link - interesting read.

The fan should be nice and cool, lots of airflow, as well as a good dust solution. Hopefully, you won't be able to see ANY cables in the end product!

I used a fairly similar process as the drawer faces, I started out by cutting myself some fresh trim strips from this piece of maple:

Hit the miter saw and sander, and lay down some glue:

Then with the nailer. Whoops, one more split.

Here's a before and after shot from the sanding. You'll notice the maple strips got burnt pretty badly when I put them through the table saw (The blade is getting a bit old). After a bit of sanding, they look as fresh as ever:

 

[ultimatedesk]

After trimming all of the drawers and faces, I had to get some wood filler to fill in all of the screw and nail holes, as well as the small voids between the plywood and solid wood. All in all, this process went OK - not as nice as I would have liked.

For the mostpart, I used Elmers Natural Colour Wood Filler. While it did the job, the colour matching wasn't exactly... inconspicious, to say the least. I also tried mixing some sawdust from the random-orbit sander with some wood glue, with not so great results.

You can clearly see, in the end result, that the sawdust/glue filler looks more like glue. It has an almost transparent look to it. I guess I should have used more sawdust?

Anyways, I finished up the rest of the voids and holes with the regular Elmers stuff:

And then sanded it it all up:

Anyone have any tips on how I can further hide the holes? I will have to go over them again with some more wood filler just to smooth them out completely, but even so, I have a feeling that the stain will accentuate all of my filling, which is not the desired effect, to say the least!!

I have ALMOST determined the stain / technique I will be using. I'm getting some very nice, richly coloured red mahogany / cherry right now on my test boards. With that in mind, has anyone used darker wood filler than the natural wood, when staining dark with good effect?

 

[shovenose]

what power supply are you going to use in the computers?

 

[ultimatedesk]

what power supply are you going to use in the computers?

You know what I would really LOVE to use as power supplies? Those freakin gorgeous Seasonic X-Series Modular PSU's, however, I think they are a bit outside of my budget and maybe I'll throw in some good quality Corsairs. So basically..

Undecided so far 😉

No real update today, but stay tuned, I'll have something interesting in the next day or two