1500W

"Seizure"

Category

Case Fabrication

Status

Ready for Battle

Deets

Ok. I am addicted. Perhaps you are as well . . .

For me it started innocently enough with a commodore64 and a whole lot of stickers.

There was something oddly compelling about just owning a computer. And while logging on to Quantum Link after 9PM and glimpsing the “web” was cool back then, fact is it was Pong that began the addiction. Ok. I know that sounds really nerdy but as a kid I couldn’t put the thing down. Then I was playing PacMan one day in the mid 80’s . . . I look up from the screen and . . . somehow it’s 2008. I’m married with two children! What was that?

For me gaming is way more than a pass-time . . it’s become a lifestyle. And making it fit correctly into my life (hopefully in some kind of balance with family and work) as well as into the décor of my home is becoming more and more important. That’s why I started this little project.

For the complete worklog check out: http://picasaweb.google.com/woundedbadgers/Siezure
I wanted the best of the best . . . you know . . .. enough digital horsepower to pull a virtual locomotive. And Style is everything.

My wife won’t tolerate the chaos I call a desk anymore. First, it didn’t fit the décor of the rest of the room, secondly it was a mess of wires and cases. Had to do something. So just before this past Christmas I bought a graph paper notebook and the plans started to hit the paper.

The thought was a desk custom made for gaming. It had to look like a piece of mission oak furniture at the same time support ‘the new’.

By New Years Day I was randomly cutting wood in the garage, making adjustments, making firewood… and then cutting some more.

Not knowing how long it would take I hesitated in buying any computer parts, knowing that if I did, they would be out of date by the time the desk was finished.

To start, my wife’s design parameters dictated that it needed ‘blend in’ when it was off. Turns out that was a tall order for anything 8 foot cubed. What I ended up with was big, very big. Big enough for three 30” LCD monitors.

There was space for everything but the problem was it was too spread out. I wanted the DVD-RW under the center monitor. As the cords go, that is a good 6 feet from where the computer case could be… Then it hit. Dump the computer case all together.

As I found our later, that is much easier said than done. Back to the wood shop, I made the desk in two sections. The lower section was made up of ¾” MDF. In no time this added an incredible amount of weight but made the table surface feel like a slab of marble.

The top was made entirely out of oak. I wanted a lot of animation on the unit but could not come up with any real ideas. Then we saw Airplane II one night. That was it! To be truly sinister this desk had to have an element of Rock, the computer in Airplane II with all the flashing lights. To work this out took days of development and burned out LEDs.

After a while a plan started to materialize. The base started with a ¼” pegboard and a handful of LEDs. Thanks to Digikey, I started a regular stream of LEDs in the mail. The two 2’ square panels consumed 1,012 LEDs, a dozen sticks of hot glue, 100’ of Cat-5 cable, and who knows how much solder.

On a late wintry Sunday evening, the panels were complete and operational. But blinking LEDs do nothing for the family room décor so it became clear that they needed to be hid. I hid them behind a piece of ¼’ stained glass I got from a local glass shop. They were quick to correct me; its not tinted, its stained. Tinted glass in a film. At any rate it has a dark mirror like finish that did a good job of hiding the LED’s provided they were off. These panels hid a huge under desk area that I was eager to consume.

This is where the computer case comes in. As I said before I wanted to spread out the components on this desk and therefore I decided to take the bold step of eliminating the case completely. What if I put the motherboard ‘under glass’ like I did the LED’s?

What if I put a USB hub on the right when it could easily connect to the keyboard and mouse (I am right handed).

All things said, as I built the top I integrated a motherboard box into the design. Taking it one step further, I built the box with cooling in mind.

When building in oak, 120mm (5”) is relatively small amount of space in the grand scheme of things. This made it real easy to place 120mm fans. Three fans when it was all said. Looking at the Ausu Espresso upstairs, it was clear that something had to be done about the dander created by the family pets. There are a lot of fan filters available but when using three 120mm fans, a household furnace filter seemed most appropriate. Otherwise those filters would need to be cleaned weekly and they are not conveniently located. Off to the hardware store to get the best hypoallergenic filter available. Who knows, do processors get allergies? The air box and filter now take up a large part of the desk’s lower left half.

I went ahead and ordered the Fan controller, DVD-RW, and panel mount USB hub. When they arrived, it became real clear that no one in the industry thought the drive bays might be 6 feet away from the motherboard. In my case that was no exaggeration. Fortunately, and with a lot of work, the short cables were replaced with custom made 6’ cables. This did not take hours, it took days. Cutting, crimping, shielding, shrink wrapping… it was horrible. Finally that was done and things started to fit together.

By this time spring was in the air and the desk was taking shape. Most of the woodwork was done and it was now on to sanding, staining, and painting. On my free evenings I worked with the extra white and blue LED’s I had laying around by this time I was quite comfortable working with LED’s and their supporting timer chips. I wanted light in the mother board case and by accident created the feel of a lightning storm.

There are 14 sets of blue and white LED’s, each flashing briefly every few seconds. Behind the tinted glass they really make a lightshow. At this point I got carried away. That and the fact that Digikey has a hefty discount when you order LED’s by the hundred. I made hidden lighting all over the desk using LED’s encased in oak trim. With all these LED’s the standard control switches were not going to work. I opted for LED tipped low voltage switches to control, well, just about everything. I did say low voltage (12volts to be exact) which means that all my wiring was 12V. This was great because it meant that I only need to deal with 110V in one box. This box held all the 110V junctions along with a bunch of 12v relays that ran off the switches. By doing it this way I could control everything including the fridge. Yes, this thing has a small 6 can fridge on the lower right side. Because of all this 12 v activity and over 1,200 LED’s I thought it would be responsible to monitor the 12v subsystem hence the three meters on the right hand side. They keep an eye on the key voltages and amperages.

As I got closer an intense discussion arose regarding the #1 philosophical dilemma of our time, AMD/ATI or Nvidia/Intel. Now before you Intel proponents out there get hung up on my selection, I am here to promise you my next desk will be Intel.

Today, this one is AMD. As all you AMD fans know, the Phenom 9850 debuted on April 7th. I was ready to order hardware April 7th. The stars were aligned for AMD this round. Purchases included, three 22” Acer LCD displays, three Asus ATI 3850 graphics cards, 4gb DDR2 1033mhz RAM, Maxtor 500Gb hard drive (although I seriously considered buying an additional 16GB SSD to improve the shock and aw performance.

Also included was the Logitech z-5500 with optical connectivity which was linked to an Asus M3A32MVP Deluxe motherboard via a 10’ optical cable and of course the Phenom 9850 CPU and a copy of windows Vista 64bit to complete the order. The components almost don’t really matter at this point. They can be upgraded anytime. I’m already watching the prices on the 30” HP monitors… tomorrow always brings better goodies.

Now that the machine is nearly complete, other ideas to use the extra space are coming up. An oxygen tank for better gaming performance. A toilet instead of a chair for increased on game activity… ok maybe going too far . . . .but the cup holder will be installed this weekend. Another thought is a proximity warning system to let you know if anyone is sneaking up on you while you are playing a heated game of Crysis; which is outstanding on three screens by the way.

So, here it is, my best shot at creating an environment that optimizes the experience of the game. Obsessive compulsive? I hope so. Anyway, it’s a long way from Pong and PacMan and my little Commodore64.