Here’s a computer/case I recently built and airbrushed for my girlfriend’s dad from some extra parts laying around. The poor guy was still running on Windows98 for pete’s sake… I had to do something for him…

But he owns a number of hotrods, so I felt this style was fitting…

I needed to build a Teamspeak server for some buddies of mine, so I decided to take the opportunity to learn a bit about Linux. In this case, an older copy of Linux Redhat I had laying around, along with some spare parts that have been collecting dust in boxes. I still have some finishing touches I am putting on the case for it, but I used a micro-atx motherboard, laptop components, and some butchered parts of an old case to make it a very small, low power and dead quiet setup. It’s mounted inside a small chrome trashcan I picked up at Target, laying vertically on it’s side with a custom faceplate and rear panel. (looks like a miniature tower)

The components:

• EPIA M10000 motherboard
• Morex 120W power supply
• 512mb DDR RAM (redhat WS minimum)
• 80gb 2.5″ laptop hard drive
• 8X Slot loading DVD-RW
• Linux Redhat WS
• Old Steel CPU Case/Chassis
• SimpleHuman chrome trashcan (from Target)
• Lots of elbow grease

I will post some shots of the internal mountings/workings when I get some me to take the server down for a few, and of course, once I have the faceplate finished and mounted. I’m building some metal mesh screening into it to allow for ventilation, although this doesn’t run even close warm due to the low power consumption.

Hope you enjoy the pics!

I took the big @ssed aluminum heatsink off of an old PIII I had laying around, and with a slight bit of grinding/milling on the mounting face, and 2 holes for pass-through bolts, it mounted up to the GPU just fine. (With some Arctic Silver Compound, as well)

Doing all this dropped my temps on the card 15 degrees, and allowed me to overclock it up to a 430mhz core, 490mhz memory, and bringing the FPS in ATItool from 210fps to 260fps… If I remember correctly, it ran at 42C idle, 58C full load on air cooling (running a new Radeon x800 GTO now)….. I could have gotten better with a liquid cooling system, sure… but this was a cheap alternative… hahhahhaha….

Here’s a shot of this ‘ghetto mod’ I did on it: (Radeon 9800pro video card)