As discussed previously, I’m in the midst of a rather involved and highly-delicate “case mod” involving expensive wooden furniture and nearly 350degrees of thermal load, in my copious free time.

The first diagram below (left) shows the near-final design diagram, and I’ve confirmed that everything fits. Everything except the rear exhaust fan block. There will have to be a wee bit of … “furniture modification” as the slot for cable ingress is too small. A liquid cooling system was added mainly to keep the sound level down. The pump is quieter than most fans, and the large CPU heatsink and exhaust fan pictured were able to be replaced with a small copper block and some tubes.

The second diagram below (right) outlines the machining specification for the replacement front door panel. Originally it was high-end non-thermal glass (to allow remote control IR to pass through), but had to be replaced with something I could cut. After a bunch of trial and error, I settled on 1/8″ acrylic. I’m still working on this piece- I’ve gone through a bunch of scrap trying to get the cuts and breaks right, and that is holding up the final tweaking (and pictures!), mostly.

The liquid cooling system (pump and exhaust fans) has a total noise of 11dB, all of which are in the rear of the cabinet. The 120MM intake fan is almost completely silent ~5dB, but inward-facing so it doesn’t expel much noise at all (<1db immediately outside the cabinet). The noise measure from The Comfiest Couch in the world with the entire system runnng is 5 dB – quiet enough to hear the harddrives prattling about, and substantially quieter (5-6 times) than the air-cooled equivalent.

Saga 1: The Cascading Power of New Things

A while back, I got a new “TV”: An LG LH90. This TV, unlike my old TV (a Sony Wega that weighed 275lbs), could actually be placed atop furniture (as opposed to a steel-reinforced, purpose-built “Wega Stand”). Through the miracle of 4 HDMI ports on the TV, the cable box, Playstation 3 and my primary home PC can all be slaved  to a single gigantic screen: The TV also has a fiberoptic audio output which went smoothly into my old-yet-still-amazing surround-sound receiver, allowing me to use just the HDMI between devices for all video and audio. Consolidation nirvana!! But there was a problem:

My TV could be remote controlled from The Comfiest Couch In The World.

My PS3 could be remote controlled from The Comfiest Couch In The World.

My cable box could be remote controlled from The Comfiest Couch In The World.

My PC … couldn’t.

*twitch* *twitch* *sob* I had to get up and … *twitch* push a button.

So, I set upon the Intertubes with the goal of fixing that. Unfortunately, as forays into the morass of technology acquisition seem to go for me, I was sidetracked by a dangerous thing: potential.

Saga 2: Patiently Purveying Potential Possibilities… Primarily

While I should have been sufficiently pleased with acquiring a Thermaltake HTPC remote system, I kept listing restlessly at night, thinking of the other magical things I saw on the Interweb… Thinking of what I could do. After all, wouldn’t it be so cool if I built my PC into the furniture? That little cubby on the right was just begging to be modded- Begging to serve a higher purpose than banal storage.

But a mod of wood? Wood is a poor conductor of heat, and an amazing insulator: That would be a thermodynamic nightmare! And that point was precisely why I had to do it: I found a worthy challenge.

Specification

• Must not destroy, scratch or poke holes in the pricey (and pretty) furniture
• Must properly cool my 6-core system, and oversized graphics cards
• Must not be externally louder than current design (10-20dB)
• Must be completely controllable from The Comfiest Couch In The World
• Must be worthy