Here’s a DIY quiet PC project story by a Finnish teen who has the distinction of being the youngest SPCR editorial contributor to date. The project involves another custom-built wooden case (not the first at SPCR), exotic woods, a cardboard box, and some help from Jani’s father.
August 2, 2006 by Jani Tikka (jani.tikka at gmail dot com)
| Here’s a DIY quiet PC project story by a Finnish teen who has the distinction of being the youngest SPCR editorial contributor to date. The project involves another custom-built wooden case (not the first at SPCR), exotic woods, a cardboard box, and some help from Jani’s father. – Mike Chin, Editor |
I’ve thought about making a quiet wooden computer case since the year 2000. I checked dozens of articles about wooden computer cases [Editor’s Note: Are there that many?], then drew sketches of my ideas. I had hundreds of different ideas about the front panel and I sketched about ten of them. Soon the sketches started filling my tables and cupboards. I couldn’t decide which one to choose. Now I only had one serious problem: I still live with my parents because of my young age and I needed my father’s acceptance for this project. After convincing my dad that this project was a good idea, he really started helping me with the project. I was actually pretty surprised. 🙂
In February or March, we marched to the local hardware-store, bought the birch plywood and cut it into pieces (to fit the completely new design for the case, which I made just before we left) with hardware-store’s own big circular saw. The plywood cost us about 32€.
At home we made the drawings for the internal part of the case to which the components would be attached, and after that I sanded the veneer plywood in our basement. Then we put on a nice coat of super glossy varnish.
We made markings onto the bottom-veneer and cut pieces away from it with a hand-held upward cutter. Then we fitted the back, side and the front pieces into the holes and we noticed that they fitted like a left shoe onto right foot… nah, just kidding, they fit perfectly on the first attempt. We also cut holes to the front panel for the optical drives etc. and to the back for the mobo-tray and power supply.
We had almost assembled the inner part of the case when we noticed that maybe the fan holes would be good to make, too. So we disassembled the case, and cut 3x 120mm intakes and 1x 120mm + 1x92mm exhausts where I could put fans if I wanted to. Next day we assembled the case and glued all parts together to tighten the fit with the screws. We re-sanded the case with very fine and smooth sand-paper and put on another layer of varnish. Next day we did the same process. Once it was all dry, I assembled my computer in it.
Here are a couple of pictures of the project at this point.
From the front.
From the top / side.
See the HDD silencing section if you wonder about the cardbox box.
The inner construction seemed fine but we were still undecided about the external design. We were going to use pine, but we saw this marvellous looking dark-hued wood called Nyatoh. We both had a look at it and said: “That’s definitly the wood we’re gonna take”. So we bought a couple of these huge boards (250cm x 30cm x 2cm), cut them in half and of course cut a 50cm piece off them because we only needed 200cm. The case is 100cm high but we needed two boards per side to fill the depth (60cm). This time we did all the cutting at home in our basement with a mitre saw. We redesigned the outer part for about 20 times until we came up with the current design. The case isn’t completely finished even yet (the drive-slot-holes in the front panel are going to be stealth modded with birch ply wood and the current ugly-as-hell-powerbutton’s going to be replaced by a brass one. The case turned out to be everything I had hoped for:
- Nice looking
- Very big
- Well ventilated
- Very quiet!
- Pretty cheap. Only a bit over 110€ was spent to the materials of the case (of course more money was spent on the tools but they weren’t bought just for this project (cutter etc.)
Here is how the case looks now:
Finished wooden case.
With the door open.
View from behind.
Here are the specs of my server/internet/media PC currently:
- 850 MHz Intel Celeron (Coppermine-core) with stock Athlon XP heatsink, no fan
- 384MB SDRAM
- Some crappy Compaq m-atx mobo with integrated graphics and sound.
- Old and noisy 20Gigabyte Maxtor hard drive
- Self made wooden case with a single Coolermaster 120mm Ball bearing 1200rpm fan @ very low voltage. Attached the fan to the case with rubber “bolts”
- 300watt DTK-computers PSU with the fan forced to 5V (inaudible and still cool)
- Hauppauge wintv tv-card
This computer’s pretty good for watching movies, too, since it’s really inaudible. The case is very sturdy, and the whole computer weighs about 20-30kg (haven’t weighed it, but that’s an estimate).
Harddisk Silencing
So I had already made the computer itself virtually silent and the only noise coming from the computer was the harddisk’s high pitched whine, which was still audible even inside Coolputer’s Level HDD shell-enclosure and the sound-insulating effect of the wooden case itself. The whine was still annoying and audible over any background noise, so I decided to add another layer of acoustic insulation.
This old Maxtor HDD…
…was still annoyingly loud even inside Coolputer’s Level HDD shell-enclosure.
I recycled the cardboard box in which my DVD-ROM drive had arrived in. I chose that box because it was the right size, covered with foam on the inside, which seemed to have quite nice silencing effect. First, I tested it on the table with a 13 year old Seagate Barracuda that had a terrible whining noise. I made cuts for the cables to the box, connected the HDD to the PSU and powered it up. The cardboard box silenced the bare drive very well, but although the whine was still audible from about a metre away. After a while in the cardboard box, the HDD felt very warm. Still, I decided to try the Maxtor in the cardboard box with the HDD cooling/silencing enclosure, hoping the Maxtor would be cooler with the enclosure.
HDD now doubly enclosed.
After installing the cardboard box / HDD assembly, I ran Windows and opened up the temperature monitoring program. It showed 27°C after the computer had been on for 15 minutes. I ran a test which really made the HDD work, and then the temps went up to 37°C but that’s as high as it got during the testing. I think, the temps could be lower if I made a hole in the cardboard and put a fan to blow cool air into the box, but that would mean more noise, which is of course intolerable.
Some days ago I noticed that temps had gone over 47°C, and when I touched the HDD it felt very warm. First I was amazed that it was so hot but then I looked at the room’s ambient 31°C temperature and wasn’t too amazed any more. The HDD silencer works very well and didn’t really cost anything to build.
Conclusion: The HDD was completely silenced. It became hotter than normal but it’s cool enough for me. The main thing is that the HDD has worked well for the past three weeks 24/7. I will get a new quieter drive for the server, soon, though.
Here you can see most of the tools used in the project. Big thanks to my father for the tools and his help.
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SPCR Articles of Related Interest
Doug’s Quiet Wood Case PC
Rusty’s Quiet In-Desk PC
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