PC Scavenging
There are thousands of unused but perfectly functional computers collecting dust and slowly becoming e-waste. Depending of their configuration, those computers can be refurbished and become a computer for someone in need, a secondary or back-up computer, a media center pc, a retro gaming machine, a test computer or even a home server. 🖥️
A neighbor kindly gave me his old computer and I decided to use it as a media center computer in my parent's living room. With this computer permanently connected to the TV screen, watching a movie or showing picture of my last trip would be as easy as turning on this computer (instead of plugging in my laptop with a short HDMI cable leaving me in an unconformtable position to show those beautiful pictures...😅).
The first step was to test and clean the entire computer. Once this was done, I reassembled the components on my wooden test bench (aka: a piece of wood) and looked at the configuration. I knew the computer was not new just by its looks (and the fact it was still rocking Windows XP) but I expected something a little bit better... The CPU was a single core AMD processor coupled with 512 MB of RAM that I immidiately upgraded with two sticks of 1 GB each. At least there was some sort of Nvidia GPU... 😵💫
This mediocre configuration did not stop me from building the media center PC!! I thought that with a new operating system, a quieter cooling system and a nice looking case this would still make for a good media center PC. 🍿
Upgrading GPU Cooler
The only part of the cooling system I could change was the GPU cooler. Eventhough it was not very loud, making it fanless by using an old Intel CPU cooler would make it even quieter.
3D Modeling
The next part was for sure the most difficult part: building a computer case that properly fit all the components while being small enough to fit in the TV cabinet and nice looking enough so my parents would not mind it.
I first drew the design I wanted by hand keeping in mind that it would have to fit everything in the smallest volume possible while keeping the design easy to build out of wood because it would match the living room and most importantly because it was the only material I could work with... Then I fired Google Sketchup (my favorite 3D modeling software at the time 🤣) and made a 3D model in order to make sure every component would fit.
Building
Building the case was not that difficult thanks to the thoughtfull design. However, mounting the components was more difficult as I was dealing with few and refurbished mounting hardware that I sometimes had to screw in the low quality ply wood I was using... 🪛
Conclusion
The result was not as good looking as I had planned. Thick and bent pieces of wood made the case looks bulky and visualy unpleasing. The poor paint job on the ply wood and the lack of wood oil on the front panel did not help either. As for the quietness, there were too few holes for the fans to draw air properly, resulting in a noisy and sub-efficient cooling system...
Do I need to say it never went in the living room? 😂
