Birch and Mahogany Home Theater PC
This is a home theater PC I built from mostly spare parts. It was designed to be as compact and quiet as possible, given the parts I used, and also not look intrusive in a living room setting.
First of all, you will need all the hardware required for a fully functioning computer: A Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Video card, Power Supply, Hard Drive, DVD Drive, and an cooling components.
To build the case, you will need:
1/4" sheet of marine mahogany
3/4" sheet of birch veneer plywood
12' of 3/4" aluminum angle bar
"L" brackets and screws
Lots of machine screws and nuts
Scrap of sheet steel- I cut mine from an old CD player
Perforated aluminum sheet, "Modders Mesh"
Varnish
2 large momentary push buttons
Tools:
Wood Saw
Dremel/Rotary tool
Sand paper
Drill
Pliers
Screw drivers
Hacksaw
This slot loading DVD drive was pulled from an old ibook, and I soldered leads on it for the eject button
Mini-ITX motherboard, 1 Gb Ram, 2.6 ghz Celeron CPU
To mount the cpu cooler, I cut out the outer fins, drilled holes lining up with the holes in the motherboard, and bolted in the cooler.
I built my motherboard tray out of a scrap bit of metal cut out of an old CD player. I used this, because the height of the folded up part on the left happened to be almost the exact height of the video card I used. The motherboard needs to be raised from the surface, so I mounted standoffs in the proper positions. I also cut a hole for the back panel out of the side of the metal. To secure the video card, I drilled a hole in the top lip of the metal. The video card is bolted to this through the hole in the low profile back panel adapter.
Metal with standoffs attached.
Backplate hole cut:
The video card is secured by being screwed into the lip in the top of the metal.
To save space, I decided to mount the DVD drive directly to the bottom of the motherboard tray. To do this, I just cut the aluminum drive bracket out of an old laptop, and screwed it to the bottom of the motherboard tray. I glued sheets of felt to the top and bottom of the slot in order to eliminate vibrations.
I decided to build the internal frame of the case out of aluminum angle bars, because it is light, versatile, and easy to work with. The design had to be as compact as possible, but the case also had to be well ventilated and parts had to be relatively easy to install. All the parts were drilled and bolted together with hex nuts- the same ones used in erector sets.
The motherboard trey was screwed into the frame:
Test fit with spare CD drive:
To mount the hard drive, I added another bar of aluminum along the bottom, and drilled it to fit the holes in the HDD.
I cut holes in the motherboard tray adjacent to the 24 pin power socket and the IDE socket, to make routing cables easier. Once your frame is finished, take some time to practice installing the hardware, as there will probably be some installation quirks with your case. For example, you have to screw in the hard drive in mine before you screw in the PSU, because if you don't, the screw holes on one side are inaccessible. These are not big issues, but it is good to take note of them. Especially practice routing cables, as this is probably the most difficult thing to do in a cramped space.
All hardware installed:
Cable routing is pretty tricky:
Most of the outside of the case is made of birch plywood, but the front is a strip of marine mahogany left over from the boat I am building. I cut notches in the plywood, so the mahogany just slides in. The plywood is held together with brass "L" brackets.
The case needs to be well ventilated, especially since I am using a passively cooled GPU, so I made the top of the case out of aluminum modders mesh. I cut the sheet a few inches wider than the case, and folded in the edges. To fix the aluminum to the wood, simply screw it in from the inside with a few wood screws. Make sure you can remove them though, as it is best to fix the aluminum after you sand and finish the wood.