Project Shelfie

[pwal]

Hi all,

I have started another project and thought I would share with you all to see what you think.

OK first off a little background, I have made a few builds over the lsat couple of years, my current build is a watercooled Bitfenix Prodigy which I have posted previously on here, but have decided to think outside the box (Literally) for this product.

The build I am doing is for my daughter, but I wanted something a little different.

I have been inspired by modders building some amazing rigs in desks and some great wall mounted PCs, and as the title may suggest I began to consider the possibilty of mounting a PC within a floating shelf.

I began looking at the depth of floating shelves I already had and also at various outlets to see if there were any I could utilise or if I would have to build my own to house the components.

Obviously space and cooling were my biggest worries so to enable enough room for a SFF PSU and cooling I was after a Shelf that was 60mm deep as a minimum, deeper if possible, but soon found that wherever I looked 50mm appeared to be the maximum depth available.

I decided to see if it would be possible to source components that might fit into my 50mm shelf rather than building one from scratch and is the reason for my hardware choices.

After a lot of measuring and researching I came up with the following decisions:

I decided on an AMD APU specifically the A8 7600 as this was a low power 65W apu with decent onboard graphics that shouldnt generate too much heat, and would also negate the need for a Graphics card.

I was intending to get an ITX motherboard for the build, but there seemed to be a very small choice of ITX boards for socket FM2+ So I got the tape measure out to see how much room I had to play with and began looking at micro ATX boards, many of which actually vary in size quite a lot.

I settled on the Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-HD3 as it was the right size, didnt cost the earth and had HDMI, SATA 3 and USB3 so looked the best choice for me.

A friend of mine was selling a 4GB stick of low profile Kingston HyperX 1600mhz ram which was perfect for this build so purchased this.

For the Hard drive I went for a Crucial MX100 250GB SSD.

My last two components I spent the most time researching and sourcing just to get them to fit inside the shelf.
The standard cooler that comes with the A8 7600 is quite low profile but still was too tall for this build.
I was hoping to go with the Noctua NHL-9A but at 37mm would have been just slightly too high once mounted. So I decided on the AKASA AK-CC1101EP02 at just 29mm high, not the best cooling power but was the best fit for this project.

The PSU ended up being the hardest to find, because of the shallow depth a TFX or SFX psu would not fit so had to find a flex atx psu.

I managed to source a 250w psu from a Shuttle XPC Glamor cube which was the perfect size, however this was only a 20 pin connector so also had to purchase a 20 - 24pin adapter to fit the mobo.

So with the componants sourced I began the project.

Here are a couple of images of the componants and shelf that I will use:

I shall upload more images and updates of the build soon.

Thanks very much for looking at my project.

Pete

 

[pwal]

So, with the hardware sorted it was time to figure out how and if I could fit them into the shelf.

(Oh and sorry for the poor images used my phone for most of them)

My original idea was to construct a thin wooden shelf/tray with the components on that would be attached to the wall and then use the floating shelf to slide over the top and hide everything.

However due to the shallow depth of the shelf I decided to cut out the bottom and then place the shelf on top of the tray. This would then give me vital extra mms. I also decided to make the tray out of aluminium as this would help remove heat from the build rather than enclosing completly with wood.

So the shelf started to undergo a bit of a mod:

Now that the shelf was cut out it was time to make the tray.

Believe it or not this was made from a piece of an old caravan my dad had in his garage, do my best to try and recycle ,

Did a test fit to see how much room I had:

To make for better airflow and a little more room the rear of the tray was cut out, this meant though that the motherboard standoffs would not all be able to be used. To get round this problem an aluminium plate was made with the standoffs attached which the motherboard could then be attached to.

Did a test fitting on a mock up wall to see how it would fit. At this time I had not yet recieved the SSD so used an old 2.5inch HDD for comparison.

The wiring is a bit messy but wasnt worried too much as it would all be hidden.

It was then time to do some temperature and ventilattion tests.

For this I booted up the system in the open tray into the bios and monitored the temperatures at idle for aproximately 20 mins. I then placed the shelf cover over the tray to see how much the temps would rise.

It soon became apparent that extra ventilation was needed as the temps started to climb. I decided to grab the router again and make some exhaust vents for the cpu cooler:

Not the tidiest job but it seemed to do the trick, temps rose by just 1c this time.

Then to give the PSU some cooler air I drilled some holes in the bottom of the tray and a small aluminium shroud was made up to direct the air into the psu:

With the extra ventilation in place the shelf was ready to fit to the wall.

I have now recieved the SSD and the build is up and running. My daughter wanted an LED to shine down under the shelf which I have added but think it needs a second one to illuminate better which I plan to add.

I have begun to cover up the wiring but have not quite finished this yet, also I intend to paint the exahust vents on the top of the shelf where the bare wood is showing and I am hoping to add a better on/off switch to the one that i pinched out of an old PC and incorporate it into the shelf to finish it off.

But here are some images of where the build has got to at present:

Thanks again for taking interest in my project

Pete

 

[Doomslayer]

Wow that is a good idea dual use too

 

[SPS]

That turned out pretty well, nice one dude.

You almost managed no visible cables

 

[Thelosouvlakia]

That's awesome!

 

[pwal]

That turned out pretty well, nice one dude.

You almost managed no visible cables

Thanks, hoping to hide the last of the cables away if I can, but quite pleased with it so far.

 

[Feronix]

Quite awesome! If your house ever gets robbed, no-one would ever steal your shelf

 

[TPC]

Quite awesome! If your house ever gets robbed, no-one would ever steal your shelf

until nowh34r:

 

[Feronix]

until nowh34r:

So what's the plan? I have his IP h34r: =00=


Just kidding mate. The only thing I might steal is this idea for a fun little project

 

[pwal]

So what's the plan? I have his IP h34r: =00=


Just kidding mate. The only thing I might steal is this idea for a fun little project

Oh dear :mellow: lol

Yeah was a fun project, thinking of doing a higher spec water cooled version for myself eventually, this was like my trial run.

 

[Bartacus]

Very slick pwal, love it!

 

[remember300]

Very good idea.
i almost cried at the title but you redeemed your self lol
looks very clean though and look forward to your improved version. could use risers or something to lie your gpus on their sides. to drop the thickness down.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Nice idea that

 

[Gurt11]

Haha, nice, shelfie... I get it kuddos for an original idea!

 

[Master&Puppet]

Nice idea dude, well implemented.

 

[Thelosouvlakia]

Oh btw can we have some temp readings while the system is under load?

 

[pwal]

Thanks all for your comments, I shall get round to posting some temps soon.

Have a good Christmas everyone.

 

[voodoografix]

Well executed sir and cunning idea .

 

[pwal]

Hi all thanks again for all your comments hope you all had a good Christmas and New year and hope you didnt catch the many flu and cold viruses floating around.

I have tried to get some temps while underload for this build. I used Heaven benchmark for putting under load and used Core temp, Hardware Monitor and easytune for monitoring temps.

The only problem is all the monitoring software gave different temperatures so not sure which to believe.

I did a comparison though with the shelf removed and the shelf in place to see if there was much difference in temperatures.

With the Shelf removed results were as follows:

Core Temp max = 23C and a min of 0C - (obviously dont think this is the correct temp)

HW Moniter has a number of temps

TMPIN 2 max of 35c and Min of 13c (Think this may be the Mobo temps but not sure).

Package temps max = 72C min = 46C (Think this maybe the combined temp of the CPU and GPU cores of the APU but seems rather high to me)

Easy Tune Moniter = 39C

The easy tune moniter will only show current temps and the temp recorded was just after coming out of the bench test - maybe this is the most accurate of the cpu temp but can not be sure.

I did the test again with the shelf on and had these results:

Core temp max = 21c min = 0C
HW Monitor TMPIN2 max = 34C min = 13c
Package Max = 71C Min = 42C
Easytune moniter = 36C

As you can see although I am not entirely sure which temps are the most accurate, It would seem that the temperature of the system was pretty much the same with the shelf on as it was completly open with the shelf off, infact the temps dropped down a little but that is most likely due to a drop in ambient temperature I believe.

During both tests the cpu fan did not spin up to full speed making me think that the easytune moniter was the most accurate rather than the HW Moniter package temp.

I shall try this again perhaps with different software to try and get a better idea of temps.

Thanks

Pete

 

[barnsley]

What program did you use to get the cpu temperatures? AMD's overclocking software gives a much more accurate temperature.