Mini-ITX build

Calibos

Just finished a new bedroom build using a tiny Antec ISK110 case with i5 4570S, 8gigs if ram, 60gb SSD, 250gig 5200rpm drive from old laptop. Did a few little mods to improve cooling efficiency too, the first of which was to mount the CPU with Icy Diamond TIM.

This is what the case looks like unmodded:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6192/antec-isk-110-vesa-case-review-just-about-as-small-as-it-gets

In the end I went for a 4570S 65w to play it safe with the OEM PSU seeing as I would be fitting a HDD as well as SSD. Given that I am coming from a D525 Atom powered Arctic MC001 mini PC and 8 year old Dell before that, the 2.9ghz 4570S is still a revelation in the bedroom.........a bit like myself really

I'd read about concerns about excessive heat on the rear mounted 2.5" drives in reviews. I was removing the HDD from the old Arctic and installing an SSD in that machine for win7 & XBMC use for my father when I realised that the HDD thermal pad and thick metal foil 'heatsink' that is fitted to every Arctic is exactly what I needed to help keep my drives cool in the ISK110. Luckily I have another 5 Arctic MC001 xbmc machines in the house (got them in February during the €99 Amazon sell off). These other machine run Openelec off USB thumb drives and so the drive enclosure thermal pads and heat foil are not used. I took 4 of the Thermal pads and 1 heat foil and covered the exposed parts of both the SSD and HDD with the pads and then adhered the foil on top. The foil is thick enough to stand when held in a corner so its not like the stuff you roast your Christmas Turkey in the foil is self adhesive and is stuck to the chassis, thus transferring heat to the chassis as well ensuring lots of surface area to absorb the heat and conduct it to the sides of the case where the CPU cooler can help move it out of the case. Last thing I did on this side was to use the dense compressible foam pad that came inside my 4570S tray box between the back of the CPU socket and the HDD mounted right behind it. This was to insulate the HDD from the heat from the back of the socket.



Here's my cable management such as it is.



Heres a fan cowling I made from some black kydex plastic I had lying around. The reason I did this was because of something I observed with another little tech ghetto mod I did for my new ASUS RT-N66U router and ISP router its bridged from. Both get very very hot so I used an old sandy bridge i5 stock cooler without heatsink that happened to fit snugly within the plastic frame of the ASUS' upright stand. Powered off a 12v phone charger, it blows right in the rear vents of the ASUS keeping it cool to the touch. I noticed that a ton of air was flung off the tips of the fan blades as there is no cowling on these fans unlike conventional PC fans. There was more than enough flow and pressure to the side of the blades to also blow in the vents of my ISP' cable modem and keep it cool too.

I figure there was a ton of wasted airflow just coming straight back out the full cover mesh top of the ISK110. The cowling forces all the air to pass through the heatsink instead.



I then made a cover with fan cutout for under the mesh from another piece if black kydex. This prevents the warm air from the heatsink from merely deflecting off the motherboard and back out the top mesh only to be recycled by the fan. The air is forced to pass other components requiring some cooling on its way out its only escape routes out the side vents.



End result before I robbed a pair of my Mothers black tights to use as a dust filter under the mesh

Calibos

Photos of the unconventional bedroom workstation this PC is mounted to, to follow......

Calibos

Calibos

It's kind of proof of concept at the moment made with bits and pieces I had lying around to test positioning and practicality. I had gotten used to an old desktop on the floor and monitor on a side table beside the bed and just couldn't get used to using a laptop or iPad in bed without feeling I was missing out on the power and screen size of a more powerful full size system.

However that arrangement forced the bed into a position that made the room feel tiny and cramped with little free floor space. With the size and power of mini-itx systems these days, the seed for this idea was planted.

I couldn't bolt anything to the wall and wanted something that could move with me anyway. The stand is a Sweet stand with the sweet bag hangers cut off. The bed is a divan bed that traps the feet of the sweet stand thus ensuring the whole lot doesn't tip sideways when the monitor is swung back against the wall for sleep.

The 2.1 speakers are 2005 vintage Creative I-Trigue's. I love the aesthetic of them and still haven't found a better looking or sounding PC speaker in this small form factor. Anything a similar size doesn't look or sound near as good and I'm not interested in the bookshelf type fancy PC speakers. The speakers were mounted to the VESA bracket on the back of the monitor with odds 'n ends. The SUB is under the bed where I cut out a square of the bottom lining of the divan bed to accommodate it.

Just used various bits and pieces to hide the sweet stand frame and cables for the time being and and the PC case is just attached with its VESA bracket by cable ties. I've initially mounted it low thinking I need to be able to reach the powerswitch but of course then had the Homer Simpson DOH! realisation that it would be turned on getting into bed but turned off from the Start button in windows. Consequently I'll be mounting the PC case high to make what little fan noise there is inaudible. This also will give the monitor articulating arm a greater range of motion.

When I strip it back down to move from 'proof of concept' to 'finished product' I reckon what I'll do is use 8mm acrylic sheet mounted to the sweet stand frame, sprayed with plasti-dip soft touch matt rubber with CALIBOS stencilled out with the stencilled letters and edges of the acrylic lit by RGB LEDs.

If I find the acrylic easy enough to work with I'll probably build a new case for the PC from it in the style of the stand and do an i3 build in the Antec ISK110 case for my brother. Might even mod a qnix 27" Korean monitor I'll be ordering. Will probably have to take it apart anyway to fix the common backlight bleed and will use the opportunity to spray the bezel with the matt rubber plastic-dip and you never know, I might even be able to add some LED detailing to match the stand.

Calibos

Did a bit more tidying up last night. Reconfigured and remounted the monitor arm to the stand so I could use the plastic cable hiding arm shrouds properly. I mounted the PC to the Black Laptop tray attached to the top of the stand that handily had VESA mounting holes. Its at a slight angle because I packed out the bottom of the PC's VESA bracket with some foam to eliminate some vibration of the case in the bracket caused by the fan. Made a new shroud for my Corsair 200mm Head Cooling Fan thats mounted to a Gooseneck Mic arm which is bolted to the stand. Hid the frame of the stand and cables with some black Baize material I found in a wardrobe. Pint Glass of coke mounted in my cupholder made from a Delrin plastic Telescope Focuser spacer.

I love ghetto modding stuff with random sh1t I find lying around and it turning out half decent

Lu Tze

Calibos wrote: »

Did a bit more tidying up last night. Reconfigured and remounted the monitor arm to the stand so I could use the plastic cable hiding arm shrouds properly. I mounted the PC to the Black Laptop tray attached to the top of the stand that handily had VESA mounting holes. Its at a slight angle because I packed out the bottom of the PC's VESA bracket with some foam to eliminate some vibration of the case in the bracket caused by the fan. Made a new shroud for my Corsair 200mm Head Cooling Fan thats mounted to a Gooseneck Mic arm which is bolted to the stand. Hid the frame of the stand and cables with some black Baize material I found in a wardrobe. Pint Glass of coke mounted in my cupholder made from a Delrin plastic Telescope Focuser spacer.

I love ghetto modding stuff with random sh1t I find lying around and it turning out half decent

I must say, I like seeing how people mod things for a specific purpose. Though I can see the purpose of this, I have to ask why? Do you plan on operating your pc mainly from the bed - despite your mods it's not Ideal.

That said, that an exceptionally tidy job for what is in essence a wall mounted desktop! All you need now is a mini fridge stuck on the end of that cantilevered arm!

Calibos

I've a problem with my neck which means I can only look straight ahead or to my right for extended periods of time. My back would hurt for extended periods sitting at a desk. That combined with the fact that I liked to browse the internet before sleep but only had an old Dell Desktop at the time and couldn't afford nor have a laptop or iPad at the time either, meant I arranged the room in a certain way to have the Desktop on the floor beside the bed and a monitor on a little table to the right side of the bed. I got very used to typing lying on the bed and a big screen. So even when I could afford and bought an iPad and had access to a laptop, I still preferred to use the desktop lying on the bed (Well propped up on pillows). I just got very used to it and didn't want to go back to a conventional desk arrangement nor downgrade performance or screen size

The downside was a very cramped arrangement in the room with no larger contigious area of floorspace.

I know these preferences are peculiar to me so its not like I am suggesting anyone else should build something like this but for me it let me have my cake and eat it too. ie. The type of PC and screen I want, where I want while at the same time allowing the room to be re-arranged to maximise contigious floor space and make it feel less cluttered.

NTMK

Have you Thought about wall mounting it so you can operate it while standing (small Tray for KB/M) as Lying down the whole time isnt good for your lower back at all really. It was something that was recommended to a housemate of mine who had back ligament problems

On the Ipad/Tablet idea you can get mounting arms for them too so you wouldnt need to prop it up on pillows etc. On android there are also apps that allow you to control your pc so you could browse using your large screen

cool work station all the same:)