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Performed Mods:
The entire casing is made of LEGO bricks, there isn't a single screw, or soldering, or glue. It's completely deconstructable. The fan is blocked by 4 silicon fan mounts, which also provide vibration absorption. All the hardware components are blocked, once it's closed there isn't a single piece free to move (except for the fans :) )
This is how my previous case mod should have been in the first place, last time i just started putting lego bricks together, and the outcome was unpredictable. This time i had my previous work to learn from, and i made some adjustments. The case isn't on a platform anymore, it measures 26x26x13 bricks ( roughly 207x207x116 mm ) and with better wire placing and disposition of the components (expecially the dvd burner and the disks) i was able to squeeze in a 120x120x25 fan, and 2 small 10 cm white neons. The hardware is the same of the previous mod ( still comfortably below 120w of total power consumption) but this time i managed to make it more... solid. this time the on/off switch module is perfectly blocked by the bricks, the same goes for the power plug and the VGA port of the discrete video card. The drilled bricks this time help the air flow, letting air come out from the side since the fan is sucking the air in from the top, and the neons have a O/I switch so they can be turned off. I provided some pics in a dark room, and the effect is quite something :)
With the big fan set to minimum, the noisiest thing is... the external power supply, and Everest tells me it runs pretty cool.
Last but not least, this time i retrieved enough bricks to give the case a more rational layout, the first 4 layers are intentionally whole, the upper layers are drilled for air flow, each layer maintains the same color... if you liked the last one, hope you'll like this even more :)
21 Comments on Lego PC 1.0
Edit: How can i Post here while on a Points Vacation.... Gerald Devides by ZERO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No, legos don't get hot, in fact they don't even get warm except for the ones on the left side, near the gpu heatsink... you can feel the air flowing out of the drills on the other 3 sides, and since the fan is manually adjustable, even if things might get hot, with a couple of minutes of maximum fan speed the system will definitely cool down... i tried playing Starcraft II (1920x1080, medium details), and temperatures were definitely below warning, with the fan at minimum speed.
Since i have a spare 32 gb SSD, i'm going to switch the 2x250gb 7200rpm raid 0 hard drives with a 32gb SSD + 640gb 5400 rpm single hard drive... all in 2,5" form factor, so the difference on the storage disk won't be much worse, but the OS partition wil get an amazing boost, and the SSD draws even less power and will always run cooler :)
www.trust.com/products/product.aspx?artnr=14909
it has an integrated trackball, and the mouse buttons are on the upper left and right corner of the keyboard chassis; it is cool, but the keys could be a little too close if you use it for serious typing(i can't type well on that, but maybe it's just me :) ) ... in my ideas its purpose was to be placed in the living room, witht the pc attached to the tv, and to be used on the couch while watching some movie/internet/playing some game, so it's perfect :)
My first attempt, with no case fan, overheated and went in heat protection shutdown after about 2 hours due to chipset temp issues, no air circulation at all... the cpu and the gpu, however, have both active cooling, and they didn't reach high temps even in a "still air" case...
with that in mind, for this version i added the big fan (and i have to admit i got very lucky, a 120x120mm fan is exactly 15x15 bricks, so blocking it was much more easier than i thought :D ) and everything is cool even with the fan at minimum speed, as i said above the fan sucks the air from the top and the drilled bricks provide the exhaust, you can feel the air flow through your fingers if you put the hand close to one of the sides, and in normal use the system is almost inaudible, in long gaming sessions the gpu fan becomes a tad noisier, but it's a small price to pay for a discrete gpu (ati 5570 1gb ddr3) over the integrated one (ati 4290 shared memory from 880g chipset) :)
Seriously, great stuff :)
@marcello: it's built from scratch, and needs no tools to be assembled... maybe we disagree on "worthless"
@bambolina: it is a real pc, please write a real comment, man!!!!!
@bendtner: there are pics and a description, and you still don't know what this is... a hint: it's a pc.
Extremely fascinating how far human creativity can go... Nice job Gi0v3, well done ^_^
To the 1/10's people... Are you jealous this pc runs better than yours??? XD
cannot believe someone vote 1! shame on u!
btw, love metalocalypse \m/
A square
i understand that some people, many people in fact, may not like this kind of mod, and i'm fine with that... what i'm not fine with, is letting some people vote 6 times, and with multiple accounts, deleting the accounts and leaving the votes is quite useless... since this is far from fair, and nothing seems to be done even with evidence of biased votes, and it's been more than a month, i think i'm not going to post any new mods here anymore, lego or not lego, because there's no such thing as justice here.
i think there might be at least one more multiaccount within comments and/or votes to this case mod, but frankly this time i didn't even feel like PMing the moderators, seeing the old (but still illegit) votes still there made it look like a waste of time.