Intro
I already had a powerful computer setup so I wanted something more
quiet, small and low power consumptioning to function as a basic home
server. I love to tinker with hardware etc. so I wanted to make
something quite unique for a case. I have seen many nice and creative
cases before but none of them were made out of a bottle. In November I
bought an industrial 3.5″ SBC board (with Socket370). For the project I
selected a 1.5 litre Ballantine’s bottle for case. That was the proper
size and shape for the task at hand.
Ballantine’s
Prepping the bottle
Cut
I tried to cut and drill couple of similar bottles at home but I
realized that my tools are not good enough for it, then finaly a
professional glass grinder man prepared the whisky bottle for me. He
made two holes: one at the back of the bottle for CPU cooling and one at
left side for put in the stuffing.
Hardware
I bought an Intel P3 733EB processor, a 256MB notebook RAM, a 40GB
notebook HDD and finaly a 60W mini-ITX PSU. The RAM module is placed at
the back side of the
mobo. A compact flash card slot also situated there, so I could use it instead of IDE HDD.
Side panel
In the next step I made a new plexi side panel and I fixed the mobo for it together with the powerconnector and
the power switch. The small piece of plexi at the left functions as a
“lock”. It can be fixed by two small screws and it then holds the side
panel in place.
PSU
I made new cabling for power switch, HDD LED and 12V power connector.
Installing the OS
During the OS installation I used a normal IDE cable to connect the
HDD and CD-ROM. For normal use I connected the HDD with 44 pin mini-IDE
cable so no separate
power cable is
needed. I put this all together in the office, because my son was born
in December and I do not have free time at home anymore. At least during
the day time so most of the mod was done at night…
Fitting it all inside
Almost there
HDD and
PSU already installed inside the bottle. Now comes the tricky part on how to get the rest of the hardware components to fit.
Installation completed
The
HDD and
PSU panel were fixed in position with a double-sided self-adhesive
tape. First I wanted to fix them with screws to be able to replace them
easily, but I could not do it because of the very limited space inside
and small „service window”.
Powered ON
Up and running
Posing
Posing
You may notice that the bottle cap is sitting on the table top on all these images.
| At this point the cooling was not good enough yet. After half an
hour the bottle was a bit warm so I disassembled it and glued an old VGA
card cooler into the bottle neck to help the air flow out. Furthermore I drilled 6 additional holes at the side panel so
now the fresh air can flow into the bottle at the big hole on the back
side and through these small holes. I drilled out the bottle cap as well
so at the first watch it seems the bottle is original, untouched. These
little tweaks improved the cooling and the temperature came down. |
|
Fan installed to bottle neck
Additional cooling holes on the side panel
In use
Serving
Since that time my Whisky PC is still working well and quietly in the
corner of my living room. Perhaps I should start planning on making a
cluster of these… Combine the fun of emptying the whiskey bottles with
some good company and
building a high calculation power cluster. ;)
Source:
http://metku.net/index.html?path=mods/whiskypc/index_eng
Feel Awesome Liking This Article :D
0 comments:
Post a Comment