Ultimate DIY Desk PC - Desk Construction
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
3,605 words · ~18 min read
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this isn't the first time we've done a fatherson PC build online as Tech tips
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it's not the first time we've done a multi-part video and it's not the first
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time I have mounted a computer to a desk but I assure you that today's video is
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very different from anything you've seen on this channel before this
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collaborative project has been a long time coming with many helpers and the
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result and I think you'll all agree was totally worth the effort welcome to
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ultimate DIY desk
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PC RAV pow 22,000 milliamp hour portable
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charger can charge up to three devices at once while being the size of an
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average smartphone check it out at the link in the video
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description let's begin with the objective there are a lot of desk PC
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builds out there and even prefa desk PC cases but they all share at least one
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trait the price some are expensive due
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to their use of Premium materials While others are expensive because they
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require a well stocked workshop and a lot of time to build them this is
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different what we're building is a from scratch design that we're calling the
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ltd1 it's short for a desk one a
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complete desk PC case that you can make your yourself with a single piece of MDF
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a couple of saws and a piece of glass let's start at the beginning the first
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plan was to buy a cheap table from Ikea or off Craigslist then build the rest of
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the materials around that we rejected that because almost nothing we did would
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be applicable to someone trying to replicate the project so we started
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working from the other end what do all
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sick looking desk PCS have in common a
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big piece of glass so with some careful
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measurements you can easily adapt our design to whatever glass top you can
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find secondhand this is a big key for
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this project because thick tempered glass that's designed to sit without
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being fully supported the kind that you should use for safety is not cheap so
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our glass measured 29.75 in X
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5737 and cost us 40 bucks for the entire
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table on craigslist we just discarded the legs and got to work now to keep
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costs down the objective was to build the desk out of a single piece of MDF
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plywood is another valid material Choice here it's stronger but we wanted a
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smooth clean look something that might not matter to you so here are the plans
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we used you can see here that the largest cut of wood is the bottom piece
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that will be covered by the top glass just please note that if you want your
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glass to sit flush with the wooden box around all the edges you'll need to add
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three 3/4 of an in on every side to account for the thickness of the
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material used to build the sides we attached them in this manner to hide
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what would otherwise be unattractive seams around the outside of the desk for
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the rest of the cuts you see here we have a cutof saw and a table saw so we
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can work as we go but if you don't you can get your local building supply store
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to cut them for you starting with the smallest pieces so the operator will
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have more to hold on to officially it costs a dollar per cut but some places
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will do more for free if you come in at a time when they're not busy another
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sort of error that we made was in the height of the Box we made it exactly the
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right height for Sid mounted 120 mm fans
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then decided after the fact that we wanted a 3/4 in lip around the edge for
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LED lighting effects but it ended up working out anyway because we changed
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our mind about radiator mounting the next important measurement is one of the
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coolest things about this design the knee cutout you can do pretty much
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whatever you want here but the general idea is to avoid the awkward ARM
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position that a thick table usually forces the user into we started using a
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jigsaw with a ruler to guide it but and
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this would have worked for plywood because we aren't using plywood it made
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our blade Bend and it actually worked okay actually better to just draw a line
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and Eyeball it my dad wanted Perfection though and since he already owns a table
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saw he brought that over to fix it up so our knee cutout kind of got bigger and
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bigger this was probably the hard hardest part of building the desk but if you have it pre-cut for you you
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shouldn't run into that next up is the sides of the Box we originally tried to
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nail these on but discovered that without pre-drilling it wasn't going to
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work very well due to the crumbly nature of MDF the good news is that with wood
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glue and clamps this stuff stays together astonishingly well spoiler
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alert the entire end product is held together without a single screw or nail
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next up is the legs one nice thing about building your own custom desk is that
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you can have the height perfect for yourself we went with a 29 in height
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from the top of the glass to the floor for our isoceles triangle reinforced
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legs the assembly here is a little tricky you put the leg components
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together like so then when the glue is grabbing a bit but not hard it'll be
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about this color you can wipe off the excess then we position the legs at an
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angle for a bit of extra strength they're supported at the top by those
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trapezoid shapes an additional brace here between them down lower though
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would be a good idea but it's not exactly weak without it next up is the
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optional LED lip these are just thin strips of wood that we clamped in place
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around the outside edge to allow us to light up the inside of the case without
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being able to directly see the LEDs you
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can actually get pretty perfect seams by wiping the glue at the right moment
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during the drying process but as you can see ours isn't so in part two we may
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have to address that somehow but how does all the hardware go
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in well it actually took us a while to
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figure that out big deal well you just
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go like that that's awful isn't that what you
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want everything about what you just did there is awful isn't that what you want
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well I'm not sure yet so let's just kind of let's back up for a second here I
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think have table holes I think the things should be centered and we might
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just have to use extensions for the connectors that we need mhm where's the
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power supply going I don't know well what's going to go over here though
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that's that's sort of a concern right now is this just going to be like a like
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a diarama of like gaming figurines like what are we going to put here what about
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hard drives uh SATA cables that far not
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sure if that's a very good idea well right there so what's going on with the
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legs well you guys didn't have a preference so we decided to angle them
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for beauty yeah so the desk itself will be beautiful but the computer might not
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be in there you guys should have thought this
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through first you know what Von finding you kind of UNS supportive
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right now hey I helped your dad build this desk that's supportive that's true
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that's supportive he did most of the work yes yes we know he did do that okay
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all right so hold on let's just how this can we put that guy right there and then
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the cables can have like a nice like thing that comes here
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splits okay so we're thinking but again
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we are now officially out of components to put over there mhm we still have hard
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drives we still have reservoirs and but your reservoirs are really small no we
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can't put hard drives over there Jake we can't run a SATA cable that's like 15 M
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long so why don't we put where are we going to put the hard
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drives then on hold on let's not get too
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far away from our from from what's going on here so power supply can
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go out and
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up and up and up to where that needs to
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go so that's fine then sorry we need to
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get a mini one for gra oh yeah yeah but Cable model do completely custom link so
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I'll just send them exactly what we need
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then for this is stuff that I'm actually kind
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of worried about like how to get here to here we have an extended we do yes don't
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you put this here minus like go like
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this um cuz you're still interfering no
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you're still here no you're still going to hit it I
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think hit it there instead of using hard drives we could just use SSD like this
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are you sure hold on Jake we might be okay here okay hold my dad might have
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solved the problem are we planning to do hard pipe
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on this we can measure those in the bom
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uh do you want to hard that doesn't uh I don't think we really need
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to it might look kind of ghetto if we don't
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okay so we could do these here we could go pump pump Y and then we could go res
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res we still end up with some oh you
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know what no so we go like res res and then we go how many
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hard drives are there uh like four are they ssds no I don't I don't think we
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have a choice on that one so basically we go up and we bring this pump up no we
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can't no we can't we can't bring the
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no we no no that's fine because we want no we want to hit the top of it so we go
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up to the top of this pump then how are
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we going to oh we have a right angle thing um but there are still there's
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still the challenge of IO so power button I think is pretty I think it's
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pretty straight forward we just need to find like a couple cool LEDs and power
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buttons that we can put in the wood at the front right or we could just do we
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could just do a hole and then just have a piece of have a piece of wood that
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covers that just comes out to cover the cables that are plugged in yeah okay and
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we just make it that simple so basically we would just glue a piece of cables in
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but right here yeah it would be a little tough but
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honestly it would be once it's
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mounted okay so if that's the case then we'll do the exact same thing here mhm
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and then and then we'll do the exact same thing here so actually would we
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okay so how about this then would we just cover okay so we have a plan now and it
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only took until after the desk was already basically finished being
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constructed planning anyway so IO is
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going to go here that's good cuz I'm right-handed and it's good because the
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user is going to sit right about here is
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kind of back a little bit you won't really see that so we're going to just bring our power button front USB blah
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blah blah Etc couple LEDs right up there
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then CPU and GPU are both going to have
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two going between them and then over
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across here we're going to we're going to try and do Hardline tubing wish me
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freaking luck with this one anyway the point is uh you're going to get over to
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these radiators they're going to go to their pumps and both of these pumps are
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going to be able to draw air directly from a reservoir meaning that we're not
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going to have issues with bleeding the loop um something that I have definitely
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had to deal with in the past these fans are going to have White chromax Corners
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so we're going to have like a black and white color scheme kind of thing going
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on in here and in terms of power we're
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going to use custom cable mod cables to go up over to here over to here over to
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here similar to my last desk PC and then we're going to have um we're going to
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use this lip under here see that it goes
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all the way around the outside to run power to these drives and we're also
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going to have cable mod SATA cables over to these drives from this direction and
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then we're going to run power over to the pumps and fans over here hiding them
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under the lip as best we can the other thing we're going to run around the
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entire outside is RGB LED strips though
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don't worry we're not just going to go one solid strip around the whole thing
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and make it like a like a light show inside uh we're going to use extensions
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to create gaps so we're just accent lighting the right pieces that was my
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idea uh Jake was not responsible for that at
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all and uh I mean yeah oh right right
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right last thing so shroud um my dad says it's pretty simple to kind of go
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over here and then down and then over so all we're going to do is put some holes
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in the side so you can access your IO that makes this setup a little bit more
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flexible for the future like oh I don't necessarily want to use DisplayPort
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anymore like if we used extensions to get over there or something no no no
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we're just going to have holes you can reach in you can do whatever it is you need to do now the Keen eyed among you
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are probably asking yourselves ginus well you've got a bunch of exhaust
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fanss where are you drawing air in to
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which my reply is don't worry about it we have taking away the top we're not
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going to put a piece of glass on it anymore new idea monitor balance is here
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okay keyboard goes kind of right here kind of across here for stability while
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gaming mouse get this you are going to
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use the top of the water block of the video card making you the world's
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biggest badass that's stupid isn't it yes okay
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so no the piece of glass is still going over top but what we're going to do is
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we're either going to use like these uh Silverstone filters or maybe we'll do
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like a custom sort of larger mesh and we're going to do one intake right here
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so because we're using High static pressure fans over on the other side
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we're actually going to have a pretty decent amount of air flow sucked through
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that filtered intake across the motherboard down towards the power
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supply and over here and then out down
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here over on the left and that is how we do it
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when we plan everything after the fact oh yeah I didn't even explain the
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disaster almost that was the radiators
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so not having given my dad any guidance
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in fact I said specifically I didn't care he did these cool angled feet under
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the desk that almost made it impossible for us to mount these radiators over
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here that's why they're kind of offset like this but it it ended up looking
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like yeah we meant to do that so maybe we'll just leave this clip out and then
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you'll never know that we didn't mean to do that cuz that's how video works
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kids so the last thing here is we're doing a quick test fit of the glass you
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can see the uh the4 in uh extra that we
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have around now at this stage in the game you would have a couple of options
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you could rebuild your table or you can
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actually just get glass that is custom
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made to to fit exactly um but we're
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probably not going to worry about that for the purposes of this video video what I did want to say though is now
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that we've got this on here we've realized you know you can even with
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paint and even with sanding like you're going to see some of this so an optional
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step at this stage would be to put some kind of a veneer over top of here so you
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don't really see all these joins um might make it look a little sharper and
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then to keep the glass from slipping uh and moving around you might also want to
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consider putting like maybe like a roll on clear silicone around the edge so
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that once you put it down it kind of sticks in place we'll let the silicone
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dry first so it's just a grippy like a grippy texture around the outside so
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you'd actually be able to lift it straight off you just won't be able to slide it so this this chair is a little
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tall that's not how high the chair will be but check it out the knee Gap is
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right there boom that's freaking awesome okay
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so we're going to cover some of these
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imperfections like right there so this is optional you don't really need to do
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this because you could just painted that and once you put the the sort of
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friction surface like silicone or some rubber surface you wouldn't see these
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little marks anyway but we decided to go with a little bit of an ear so that's
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optional so anyway the test fit with the glass looks awesome other than the
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calculation error with the outside edge so the next step then is to see if we
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can get around our half-ass planning and get all the components actually mounted
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inside stay tuned for part
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two I did say it was going to be a multi parter but maybe you don't want to build
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going to squarespace.com then when you decide to sign up for Squarespace make
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sure you're using offer code LTT so you can save 10% off your first
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purchase thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do
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but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured I
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mean MDF at Amazon in the video description maybe we'll put the hardware
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that we're going to put in the system in there anyway also linked in the description is our merch store which has
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cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally join now that you're done doing all that
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