My fondest memories of building computers are when you do something like
take a bunch of broken computers apart and turn them into two or maybe one even
zombie computers that function quite well or when I take something that
someone has officially declared as broken and make it awesome by either
using it for something else or fixing it myself. Sure,$6 to $30,000 computers are
fun, and when someone goes out and spends like 2 grand just on water
cooling, their build log will look downright beautiful. And props to them.
I'm sure their rig looks great. But the build logs that will always grab my
attention are the scratch builds. And the builds where someone didn't have
buckets of cash, but they made something unique and awesome. That's what I'm
going to try to do today.
Intel's
Skull Canyon Knuck features a sixth generation Core i7 processor and
Thunderbolt 3. Learn more in the link in the video description down below. I
generally find that off-the-shelf test benches are lousy, sacrifice
functionality for looks, not useful for what you actually want to test hardware,
or they cost way too much. We like our high-speed PC tech stations, but they're
still 70 to $120 US for these ones. A
lot of money for essentially some admittedly staticresistant plastic and a
few screws. Even just buying a motherboard tray in order to DIY
yourself a test bench isn't that cheap. And then you don't really have great
options in terms of component placement for drives, power supply, and more.
Sevitus, a buddy of mine and prolific Twitch streamer of much lols and many
funds, was recently looking for a test bench of his own, and I couldn't
recommend him anything that I truly believed was a good deal. I even tweeted
out to the community asking what test benches they thought were a good deal,
and the response was to that question was a resounding
cardboard box. That's lame and sad. And I want one that
I can put drives on. I want one that I can actually mount my motherboard to. I
want one that can securely hold my expansion and graphics cards. I want one
to cost next to nothing or be free. I
want one to be unapologetically made out of scrap materials.
So, jokes about Apple's marketing efforts aside, let's begin. First thing
you need is a donor case. All it needs is an intact motherboard and IO tray and
an intact left or right side panel without a window. This is a spare case
from Scrapyard Wars that we have no use for and got for free. It's best to tear
down the case as cleanly as possible and with consideration for how the various
metal scraps can be repurposed. Things like mesh could be used for radiator or
fan covers or something. So, don't just go ham and risk ruining something that
could enhance your final test bench. Begin by removing all the screws you can
first and take out anything they were holding in. Then, whip out the drill or
a punch and start removing rivets. Very few cases are made entirely with screws
these days, and those that are will probably be way too nice to be
repurposed this way, so expect to be removing a relatively large number of
rivets. When you get up to the front, put aside the front ports, activity
LEDs, and set of power and reset switches or even diagnostic speaker if
your case happens to have one. These can be used to trick out your test bench or
even just stored away for future builds. Once you've mostly stripped down the
case, leaving the motherboard tray intact. And as a note here, be careful
because this required leaving a couple rivets in for me. Then it's time to whip
out the spinning wheel of death, also known as the angle grinder. There are a
number of ways you could do this, but personally, I think this one worked out
quite well, and sparks are cool. Decide at this point how much of the
motherboard tray you want. It's a good idea to leave in cool stuff like
attached hard drive mounting holes, but your case might be extended ATX when you
only need an ATX test bench or you don't want those mounting holes cuz you just
want to put your drives on the bottom. Whatever it is, this part is a judgment
call. I decided to leave the power supply mount up top for convenience.
Then I decided to axe everything else. Sharpied off my cut lines and got to
work. Doing this took some time, but not that much. Having a buddy to help you
would be great in terms of holding things in the right places while you're
trying to cut through stuff so it doesn't fall or bend or whatever. Safety
first. Wear your protective goggles and gloves when working with metal. There's
probably a few other things that you should do that I didn't, so do those as
well. We did the cutting with this angle grinder, but I'd also highly recommend
having a sharp metal file on hand in order to clean up your edges of your
test bench so that it's actually safer work and it isn't going to cut your hand
up whenever you try to move it around because stuff like angle grinders can
leave really rough edges. Next up, you need to cut up the side panel you chose
earlier in order to make it more or less match the dimensions of your motherboard
tray. This is pretty much the same procedure we did previously. I just put
the part that I just cut out on top of the side panel. Sharpied around it, then
cut it up. Next up, I grabbed some spare 2x4 chunks from our wood scraps bin and
made a set of legs and a set of feet. I drilled pilot holes and counter sunk
them as well in order to make the feet flush against the surface of the table
and then just screwed everything together. This resulted in a virtually
free test bench that I was able to construct in under 2 hours that is
sturdy, durable, and very easy to mod due to its thin metal and wood
materials. You can improve upon it by spending like 10 bucks on some nylon
motherboard mounting hardware from something like McMaster car, painting
it, installing additional mounts for radiators, drives, etc. Adding switches,
USB ports, those things that you harvest earlier, and more. It's your platform
and it was free. Do whatever you want. So, this one's mine and I'm kind of a
functionality first kind of guy. So, other than maybe a few switches, this is
probably its final form, so to speak. But if you guys decide to make one of
these scratch test benches on your own, please post on the forum, the thread
that's linked in the video description down below. That would be awesome. I would love to see it. I just love that
kind of stuff. Doesn't it seem like they've got a
subscription service for pretty much everything at this point? I mean, Blue
Apron, why would you need a monthly supply of fresh Blue Aprons? Well, you
don't because that would be stupid. What Blue Apron actually is is a way to
create delicious chefdesigned recipes at
home. They deliver not aprons, farm
fresh ingredients, everything you need right to your doorstep in exactly the
right proportions. There's no trip to the grocery store. No extra rotting food
left in your fridge because when else were you going to use, you know, the six
cloves of garlic that you had to buy because you just needed one. And they
offer a couple of different plans. There's the twoerson plan and the family
plan. Recipes are delivered in a refrigerated box, so the ingredients
will stay fresh even if you're not at home when your package arrives. And they
offer a large selection of recipes. And they're always adding new dishes to the
menu every week. There is no commitment.
You can skip or cancel the service at any time, and each menu is between 500
to 700 calories per person. All the meals can be prepared in 40 minutes or
less, which if you do the numbers is less than the amount of time it takes to
go to a restaurant and come back. You might as well make something better for
yourself. And it gives you an opportunity to practice your cooking
skills and learn to make new recipes. It's available in the USA and again,
it's at the link in the video description.
And if you loved this kind of stuff, like the video, get subscribed. If you
hated it because you're like, "Don't use cases for interesting things. Don't make
things for free." Screw you. You can dislike the video. That's fair. Uh, if
you like our stuff in general, you can use our Amazon affiliate code to shop at
Amazon. Buy a cool t-shirt like this one at the link in the video description below. Join the forum. Possibly become a
forum contributor, and check out this video.
What video is that? Uh,
node 202 review. There we go. Just thought of one. Brandon's laughing in
the background. Don't know what that's about. Go check out that video. That'll
make Brandon laugh. The more times you watch that video, Brandon will laugh more. 100%. No lie.