Wall-mounted PC
I rather like this idea. It makes cable management easier and cleaning is just a matter of hitting it with a can of air for ten seconds every couple weeks. I don't think I'd want the cycling color LED lighting though; that could get distracting very quickly.
Mind you, it's purely utilitarian and power-user in nature; people who are picky about their ManCave appearance will balk at it. But as anyone who's ever seen my home office can attest, I'm not the least bit concerned about appearances. The only thing I wonder about is the vertical mounting of the hard drives. Obviously it doesn't affect the SSD, but hard drive installation instructions used to tell you to always mount it horizontally and level. I've never had a reason to do otherwise, but I assume modern drives have overcome any potential issues in this regard. Any of you IT guys (which is like three-quarters of our readership here) wanna address that?
In any case, (see that? punny!), I'm gonna seriously consider this option the next time I build a gaming box. I can think of a much easier way to do it than fabricating all the components to make a custom backboard, though; it involves a heavy steel case, a two-pound sledge (my favorite tool) and a hack saw...
Piclick for more info on how it was built and a video of the cycling LEDs.
Mind you, it's purely utilitarian and power-user in nature; people who are picky about their ManCave appearance will balk at it. But as anyone who's ever seen my home office can attest, I'm not the least bit concerned about appearances. The only thing I wonder about is the vertical mounting of the hard drives. Obviously it doesn't affect the SSD, but hard drive installation instructions used to tell you to always mount it horizontally and level. I've never had a reason to do otherwise, but I assume modern drives have overcome any potential issues in this regard. Any of you IT guys (which is like three-quarters of our readership here) wanna address that?
In any case, (see that? punny!), I'm gonna seriously consider this option the next time I build a gaming box. I can think of a much easier way to do it than fabricating all the components to make a custom backboard, though; it involves a heavy steel case, a two-pound sledge (my favorite tool) and a hack saw...
Piclick for more info on how it was built and a video of the cycling LEDs.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 08:30
3 Comments:
Cool idea. Just don't forget the max distance for a USB cable is about 5m though. And VGA cables can have trouble driving good quality video at HiRes (1600x1200 or greater) past about 3.5 ft. :)
As to horizontal vs vertical on platter based disks, I honest don't think it matters anymore. We've got some multi-terabyte SANs in the Data Centers that are the disks vertical and others that are horizontal.
I have to say that not having to screw around with working in the confines of a case would make upgrades and troubleshooting components hell of alot easier.
I do wonder about cooling though. You don't have an enclosure that forces a vortex of air across the components with everything open.
Hrm. Well, you've got fans on the CPU, GPU and PS, so the main heat producers are taken care of. I would assume if you have a ceiling fan generating air movement in the room, it would sufficiently dissipate any ambient heat into the room and be pulled into the return air for the A/C. I suppose one could mount a fan bank or something above it on the wall if heat becomes a problem.
The USB restriction wouldn't be a big deal for me, as I don't use it for data stream-intensive purposes, just flight controllers, keyboards and such.
Displays might be a problem, though. I'm running a 6-ft DisplayPort cable right now on the left-most of my three monitors with no noticeable detrimental effects, but I don't know how that might change if I added in two more extended cables, as the other two outputs are DVI. By the time I build again (couple of years at least) I would assume DVI would be pretty much gone, but 4K may be mainstream, which would start the cycle over again...
Thanks for the info on the drives; I suspected as much, but I try to avoid going anywhere near our server room at work, as they might think I know something and give me yet another unpaid hat to wear. =P
Two words.... Wireless Video. :)
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