Desk Top vs Tower

[Southern Man]

I have been thinking recently about the old desk top design of the old 386/486's and wondering why the design went by the way side. I am getting ready to make yet another move with my 5 towers and I'm not sure if I'll have space to place them in my new environment. Several of these boxes are set and I won't be going in them any time soon to do anything to the MoBo or adding cards or anything and what they mostly do is either act as a server or just fold. It would be nice to just stack them and forget them. My boxes I play with a lot I would like to keep in towers but the others would suit me just fine to stack. The only options I have seen recently are server cases which cost a bundle. Anyone know of a desk top style ATX case on the market?

Why did we ever change over to just towers anyway?

[The Spyder]

Coolermaster makes some great ones that are aluminum and look sweet....... get rackmount

[drow_elf]

you could still stack a tower, or even turn it on its side, the drives would just be sideways (or you can turn a desktop into a tower)

[loop]

just place your standard tower cases ontheir side, infact
www.ebuyer.com
they sell midi towers for about £15, you could buy a couple of those and turn them on their side, wont hurt nothing.

[stigweed]

I think they stopped doing desktops (most places) because:
1) they take up more desk space than towers
2) air doesn't get much of a chance to convect to the top of the case so with the cheap cooling solutions offered by OEMs there would not be good enough circulation and the thing would over heat. Also instead of hot air going to the top of the tower out of the way, it can circulate around all the expansion cards, drives and other components indiscriminately.

Am I completely wrong?

[cloasters]

Welcome to AOA's corner of the 'Net, stigweed!

Yeah, you're right about the reasons that desktop cases fell out of favor. I thought about one seriously, to make a box less appealing to the sticky fingered, "Yuck. It's just a desktop."

I found that off the shelf desktops simply didn't come with enough fan mounts, even for a slightly OC'd PIIIE. An Athlon desktop box required massive cutting, to the point of compromising basic structural integrity.

A tower can be placed on its side with new HDD's in it. Tray loading CD-ROM drives become impossible, unfortunately. Maybe the slot-loading one's aren't that much more expensive. The natural "S" of airflow in the tower will be lost. This may make a real difference in cooling.

[Southern Man]

Thanks for the replies people.

Some of the thoughts here has me rethinking the idea but my intent was to watercool so that would not be a problem.

Stacking the towers on their side is still somewhat appealing as I'm networked so I don't really need a CD ROM in any of them. The main purpose would be folding and serving.

Another thing I was rolling around in my mind was the thought of building my own design. I've never done metal work though. May end up being a real pain.

The other idea is to build a wooden cabinet with slots for about 8 mobos. Mounts for the psu's and the hard drives, and a central air cooling design or ducting. Running it all from one keyboard, video, and mouse with a KVM switch.

It just seems crazy to have 8 towers all sitting around taking up space if all I'm going to do is fold or serve with them. I don't really play with but 2 of the five I have now anyway. The others just sit there and do their jobs. I guess I was just looking back for ideas before taking on a project I'm not so sure of.

Oh well it doesn't hurt to dream a little.

[Random Nonsense]

Make your own rack.... OC mojo has how to make the cabinet, Im pretty sure you could put togeather a simple rack case fairly easily, i was gonna make one out of good ole MDF!

[cloasters]

Yes, OC Mojo, with a link in the right sidebar, made a big splash with their DIY 19" rack design! It was linked to by many of the heavy hitter sites.
The difficult part of it was that it required welding, at least for me.

Eight mainboards in a wooden rack. Jumping gazonga's, we're talking a mainframe here! OK, it's not. Nonetheless it will be more capable(in a Beowulf cluster) than multi-million dollar mainframes of yesteryear!

Is wood as the material in aid of preventing grounding problems? Frankly, I dunno if a metal case that's used as a common ground is a better idea, or not.

Whichever material, it's going to need gigantic fans. Ordinary PC fans would be incredibly loud. Unless these are stock P3 boxes--maybe. A "whisper box," it can't be. Time to call dimmreaper, he knows monstro fannage. Sheesh, is there even enough room for eight ~120 cfm 120mm's?

One would think that placing the mainboards on edge would be better than stacking them. In a stack.. way too hot in the top of that case!

[Random Nonsense]

horizontal rack? i like your style cloasters! I might give it a go myself, since im planning to revamp my room im gonna hopefully get all my PC's kicking again........ need space though.

[Holst]

Im going to move to a horizontal mobo system once I go TEC, a case is just toohard to get inside of.

Ill probably be fixing CDROM CDRW and Floppy under the shelf of my desk for easy access with the mobo on the floor near my feet with everything easily accessable.

If I were to build a folding cluster then if stack horizontally either in a wooden case or just using tubing as they did here.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/OcUK_Pics/stomp1.jpg

[Random Nonsense]

Holst, im building a "test station" into my new desk, similar idea, i will have a set of standoffs for ATX boards on the top of the desk, a PSU screwed down and a CDROM, FDD and HDD around somewhere too.....

[dimmreaper]

I've got an old sterio cabnet I've been thinking about turning in to a massive PC chassis for 8 or 10 systems. It's just one of the good old wood ones, with the glass front access panel, and the little metal pegs to hold the wood shelfs in place. Perhaps you can round up something similar Paul?

[drow_elf]

speaking of wooden cases- does one need to setup some sort of metal plate to attach the mobo to to give it a proper ground or will it work to simply attach standoffs to the wood?

[Southern Man]

I see I'm not the only one who misses the horizontal set up. The entertainment center is a good idea but I think I can build something more geared to what I need. The idea is to isolate the PSU's so I can vent the heat from them out the window. The grounding can be established with a small braided line with Eye Holes running from board to board and grounding to a common ground with the PSU's.

I'm starting to like this idea better and better as time goes on. I just need a alternative power source to run it all as the electric Co. here has like the 4th highest in the nation. I hate to think what 8 systems would eat up in the way of electricity. Having the KVM will help as the monitor is probably the biggest power hog, but I imaging running 8 systems will bite a good chunk of watts.

Any one have an idea how much wattage 8 300 watt (max) PSU's will eat running the cpu at 100% 24/7?

[The Spyder]

About an exra $44 a month here for me- 10system- 8 on all the time- selling most however.....

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by drow_elf
speaking of wooden cases- does one need to setup some sort of metal plate to attach the mobo to to give it a proper ground or will it work to simply attach standoffs to the wood?

The motherboard is grounded through all the black wires in the ATX power cable. There are more than enough ground wires to do the deed.

[dimmreaper]

Originally posted by Southern Man
Any one have an idea how much wattage 8 300 watt (max) PSU's will eat running the cpu at 100% 24/7?

Average power consumption will be around 120W per single CPU machine +/- 20% depending on components. Most any CRT monitor uses more than that. If power consumption is a big issue, the use of small lithography CPUs offers the best performance/power ratio. For folding, Tbreds would be best now. P4s may be better in the future(see my thread in FAH topic), especially when Intel transitions to its 90nm process.

[RoadWarrior]

I've converted a desktop case to accept an ATX form board, and there are several issues.

* The PSU and it's supports and get in the way of the CPU and DIMMs
* Standard lenght 5.25 drives, CDROMs etc, in the lower two drive bays also get in the way of the CPU and DIMMs and the top one requires careful cable routing.
* In elder days, we had poky little 12ins to 14ins monitors which stood nice on a desktop case. These days our monsta 17 and 19inchers +++ are too big for it, both weight wise and size wise, it's like sitting in the front row at the cinema.

So designing a good ATX desktop is difficult, you have to either make it wider, make it deeper or make it taller. Since you're mainly complaining about size, then any well thought out ATX desktop is probably gonna take as much space as regular mid towers on their sides.

I think heat is a non issue, having the CPU in the bottom third of the case is worse than having it in the top third??? Puhlease! the ATX design is notoriously crappy in this regard.

regards,

Road Warrior

[Southern Man]

Originally posted by RoadWarrior
I've converted a desktop case to accept an ATX form board, and there are several issues.

* The PSU and it's supports and get in the way of the CPU and DIMMs
* Standard lenght 5.25 drives, CDROMs etc, in the lower two drive bays also get in the way of the CPU and DIMMs and the top one requires careful cable routing.
* In elder days, we had poky little 12ins to 14ins monitors which stood nice on a desktop case. These days our monsta 17 and 19inchers +++ are too big for it, both weight wise and size wise, it's like sitting in the front row at the cinema.

So designing a good ATX desktop is difficult, you have to either make it wider, make it deeper or make it taller. Since you're mainly complaining about size, then any well thought out ATX desktop is probably gonna take as much space as regular mid towers on their sides.

I think heat is a non issue, having the CPU in the bottom third of the case is worse than having it in the top third??? Puhlease! the ATX design is notoriously crappy in this regard.

regards,

Road Warrior

Monitor wouldn't even be an issue with what I want to do. I just want a neat stack of boxes with horizontal CR mounts if any. Going to use KVM to communicate anyway.

I really think I could come up with something if I applied myself. Just haven't taken the time to design and think about it.

Thanks for the comments.