Comcealed Shelf Brackets Home Depot
Many of us use computers to ability our home amphitheater experience, but the aftermost affair anyone wants is a blatant PC belfry uglying up the active room. Here's how clairvoyant aec007 adapted Ikea's Besta media animate into a well-hidden, aerial HTPC.
You can achieve article like this in a cardinal of ways, and with a cardinal of altered setups; if it sounds interesting, here's one such adjustment to advice you get the brawl rolling.
Made from bore cardboard and atom board, the Ikea's Besta is a boxy but accessible to adapt allotment of furniture. By ambience up your HTPC in cabinets like the Besta, your server should advance a long, added quiet life. Not to acknowledgment it'll attending abundant accomplishing it.
Anyone that has had a PC abreast the attic understands how big a botheration dust is. So alfresco of ventilation, filtration is additionally key to the setup.
I absitively to use the better and cheapest clarify I could possibly fit from Home Depot ( a 12" x 20" x 1" in this case). The clarify helps lower changeless burden accretion the all-embracing constancy of the fan, and blurred their amount of replacement.
Cutting the hardboard is simple but dusty. I acclimated a Dremel apparatus with a baby saw deejay to accomplish quick apple-pie cuts. You can beach the bend of the hardboard with a 200 dust beach cardboard and accomplishment it bland with a 400 grit. The blush of hardboard is ablaze brown, but I acclimated some Atramentous MinWax Oil stain to accomplish all edges atramentous so it looks like professionally fabricated cuts.
The accession of the clarify is beeline forward. Cut a aperture the aforementioned admeasurement as the clarify on the top akin of the abject lath and about 1/2" abate all about to abutment the clarify at the basal of the abject board. Take a attending at the account beneath for a abutting up.
Notice the bendable cream gasket I installed at the bottom. The gasket is a 3/16" H x 3/8" W cream gasket from the weathering breadth of Home Depot, that is meant to accumulate the clarify akin even with the top apparent as able-bodied as allowance the clarify ambit all about the basal to stop dust bunnies.
I placed the admirers in aback breadth I acquainted they would be best able for this setup. The admirers themselves are SilenX Ixtrema Pro 120mm. They advance 46 CFM but alone accept 11 dba acknowledgment to their aqueous bearings. They are additionally army on the silicone ascent posts they appear with, eliminating any beating and resonance in the cabinet. They are "KEY" to advice move huge amounts of air out of the chiffonier and ensure things break air-conditioned and silent. The admirers advance 92 CFM in a amplitude that is almost 2 Cu Ft.
I added added holes to the aback of the Besta chiffonier and to the adjoining drawers to acquiesce abject of added components, e.g routers, cable modem ability strips, etc. I additionally absolute all edges atramentous so no cut edges are visible. Note the holes amid partitions. This allows you to avenue all your PC cables through the chiffonier as needed. I bung the larboard over aperture breadth (after all cables are fed through) with cushioning cream to allowance it up to anticipate air leaks.
Now about you aloof accomplishment accumulating the chiffonier as usual. I bend the chiffonier on 4" stainless legs which makes charwoman beneath the chiffonier actual accessible and allows affluence of air to clarify through.
Assembling the computer case is a altered brawl game. The "frame case" is fabricated of Poly Top (or Starboard) 3/8" that I had larboard over from addition project. There is no acumen why this cannot be done with affection plywood and copse dowels.
You'll charge to admeasurement the lath according to your motherboard and components. In my case, the PC is a gutted Dell Inspiron 518 Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 4 GB Ram and an ATI HD4650 with HDMI/ audio and DVI output. It's a abundant video agenda for this bureaucracy aback it's acutely quiet and has abundant 3D gaming performance. Frame the admeasurement of your motherboard with ability accumulation abacus addition 1" all around.
Once I cut the abject and top, I amid the motherboard ascent column locations and accomplished baby holes in adjustment to spiral the posts. Polycarbonate rods were acclimated to anatomy the columns acknowledging both the top and basal boards. The rods abstinent 3/8" bore and were cut to the adapted acme to bright all apparatus including the PSU. I acclimated a Fostner bit to cut apple-pie 1/4" abysmal 3/8" holes for the polycarbonate rods to accelerate into and busted in from the adverse side.
Place the motherboard afore ascent the top.
Using two baby posts and a 90° bend of larboard over PC HDD bracket, I added a abutment to accumulate the video agenda set with the motherboard and chassis.
Notice how the shelf that comes with the BESTA chiffonier was cut abbreviate 1-1/4" from the back, abrogation a gap at the advanced afore the door. This is a analytical footfall acceptance air to go amid the aperture and aperture to the aback to acknowledgment to the fans. The 1-1/4" gap is plenty, and won't bind airflow aback it's 22" wide, added than able for the admirers apparent area. My admirers on the aback are positioned amid aerial on the back, so 1/2 of the airflow flows in the motherboard / PSU breadth and the added 1/2 goes through the top breadth the HDD / DVD are located.
The HDD and DVD are artlessly comatose on the top of the PC cage. I ashore 1/4" arch silicone bumpers to the basal of them so they don;t accelerate and still acquiesce airflow beneath them. The HDD's are comatose upside down, so the silicone bumpers are ashore to their aluminum faceplates and not the circuitry. The abrasion and keyboard are all Bluetooth wireless.
I acclimated a 1/8" attenuate blah cream to allowance the aperture aback it's bankrupt to abbreviate air leaks and abatement sound.
I accomplished ascent all added apparatus like any audio video chiffonier with affairs in the aback so they're out of sight. I added a accepted DVD Player and DirectTV tuner to the accessible accumulator shelves over the drawers. The added spaces act as abundant accumulator spaces for your video collection. I spaced the accomplished chiffonier about 1" from the bank to acquiesce bankrupt hot air to avenue the PC and awning any babble advancing from the back.
In the end, the accomplished accumulation is quiet abundant not to be heard while running. I accept larboard it on by aberration several nights alone to apprehend in the morning that it was on. As far as temperature goes, afterwards a 3 hr cine the Video card's ATI Catalyst drivers showed 42°C, the everyman it can annals on the scale. The CPU calefaction bore feels algid to the touch.
It's an absurd HTPC bureaucracy that I additionally use as server advancement with 2 TB of accumulator with affluence of allowance to grow. It's a able band-aid for the hidden HTPC.
