Wall Pc

Cheap custom Pc for game developers.
If you are making your game is better to have a case so that you do not loos time.
But if you have little money and you need to upgrade or change hardware often, then you can make your own Wall Pc.

Just fix the door from an old case to a wood melamine board.
Since early day I dream for a wall pc. Then the wall pc was a school project in the 90. And some customs one since them. There are not to much at the moment. Is not popular.
But the idea cames as solutions of sam common problems of the traditional desktop pc. And the Wall Pc has a lot of interesting characteristics.

• Faster to connect and disconnect
• Faster switching GPU.
• Faster to upgrade.
• Faster inspecting errors.
• Very cold (5° colder) since hot air go up. And is not trapped in the case.
• Clean and faster to clean. It do not pick dust from the floor.
• Cold long terms. Dust do not deposit to blades reducing airflow.
• Better for overclocking.
• Educational.
  
• Enjoyable.
• Can be nicer (only in same cases).
• Cheapest.

In my case here it is a used cheap motherboard H61, i3, ati 7970, 64SSD (64 is too small, better 256GB SSD for windows 10), 1Tb HDD, perfume case as reset and power button.

Little Baby 2012-2016

 

Its also far easier for some curious toddler, pet or rodent to chew on a critical cable...

I have used wall mounted machines before. The case was built with fins like a radiator. The device was orientated such that it created its own cooling current. There was no fan. And other moving parts were kept to a minimum. But the goal was reliability, rather then performance.

 

Clearly you don't live in a very dusty house.

My computer would be totally dead in about 40 minutes if I tried that.

 

Dust can come from multiple sources with the floor being only one of them. My room, for example, has old fashioned ceiling tiles that constantly release a small quantity of dust into the room. My filters develop a thin white film from this dust and must be cleaned regularly.

Yes, hot air does rise meaning that the higher up your case is the closer it is to that hot air.

Only if your cooling solution is actually holding you back. Some processors simply overclock better than others and some will be held back by their own electrical design long before the cooling solution holds them back. Besides air cooling was never the most ideal solution. Water isn't either. Do you know what's far better?

 

I never try mineral. Can be silent?

Yes, now with big passive cooling and the new big ssd probably is posible to think about a completely silent PC if you do not need GPU. The problem is the power supply.

 

Are you sure? My engineering senses are tingling.

Heating and cooling is bread and butter chemical engineering. But I'll admit I have no direct practice with cooling systems for computers. Between 10 C and 80 C water is one of the best fluids out there for both heat capacity and heat transfer. And if you wanted refrigeration you wouldn't use mineral oil either, its boiling point is way too high.

Running computers at lower temperatures then water can provide is problematic as it is. One of my colleagues built a rig to cool using liquid nitrogen. After a few minutes water started condensing all over the system. Fortunately he shut it down before it could do any real damage. But to go that route you would need to make sure the air in your system is very dry. Probably worth just sealing in the whole case completely, but that does make it harder to upgrade.

Edit: Unless computer components regularly get above the boiling point of water. If your component temperature can get near 100C then switching out from water to a mineral oil does make sense. You don't want water boiling inside your cooling system.

 

Basically the design is a sealed container with the electrical components as well as their cooling systems submerged in mineral oil. The oil itself is constantly pumped out of the case, passed through an external radiator, and deposited back into the case.

I don't know if it would be completely silent but it would be very close to it.

Lucky.

It's been feasible for a good while now.

I haven't attempted anything myself. I've just read up on the process now for a number of years. I believe the earliest example is from a decade ago by Tom's Hardware when they sealed a computer case and filled it with cooking oil.

These days we have at least one company offering a mineral oil cooling solution.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php

 

Unlikely... Case fans will cool a LOT more than ambient air cooling.

 

The first thing I think about is how easy would it be to accidentally break off GPU slot if you somehow manage to bump into it with your shoulder or something like that.

I saw some folks build "submerged computer".

This might not work well with water.

 

Yeah, I've seen these fishtank computers before, I feel like it would just be more of a mess than it's worth

Phase Change cooling is the newest thing I've seen recently, it looks truely insane. Basically making your computer into a refrigerator

 

You'd definitely be far better off with a chassis that is designed to keep the components rigid while being open air.

 

Of course non conductivity is the desired property. In which case mineral oil is just about perfect.

In my head I had someone running mineral oil through a heat exchanger, which is silly.

 

They definitely do run the oil through a heat exchanger. Most of the aquarium designs don't show the back where there is a massive radiator that the oil is being pumped through to cool it down again.

 

Do this on an oil filled system and you avoid the condensation issues I mentioned earlier.

 

Yeah, you'll need to cool the oil down. But I was thinking of running oil through tubes/plates to get the heat out of the CPU, which is inferior to using water. But if you get rid of the tubes then oil works.

 

The one I saw used this putty clay stuff around the CPU socket to prevent that

It was keeping the CPU hovering around 0 celcius, it was insane.

 

Why stop there? It's pretty straightforward to get down to -180 with liquid nitrogen.

 

AMD managed -268.93 C with liquid helium.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...kes-bulldozer-the-fastest-computer-processor/

 

Might be wrong about it, but with continuous nitrogen cooling could be danger of asphyxiation.

http://www.monash.edu/ohs/informati...heets/handling-and-storage-of-liquid-nitrogen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation

The gas is odorless, if o2 concentration goes below certain thresold, it would be lights out. Helium at least would go up once it turns into gas form.

 

This thread reminds me of the computer system cooling tanks in Sunshine (one of my favorite movies ever).

 

Well, from the liquid nitrogen I've seen, doesn't that basically require you to pretty much be constantly pouring liquid nitrogen into a bucket ontop of the system?

Or I guess you could fabricate some crazy rig for running the Nitrogen over the CPU block in some sort of loop, though I feel like that would cost a fortune just in regularly replacing the liquid nitrogen alone, let alone all the crazy part fabrication for like, insulated hardline tubing for the loop or something, and you would have to run part of the loop outside to exhaust the nitrogen gas.

Oh man though, if that worked, that would be madness.

 

Both nitrogen and helium are an asphyxiation hazard. But you are right, nitrogen is particularly dangerous from this point of view. Wherever we use it in significant amounts we tend to install oxygen meters. You might get away with it in a small enough curciut, nitrogen is non toxic mixed with air. On the other hand nitrogen is much cheaper then helium.

Now that's getting pretty cold. You might go slightly colder with very sophisticated laser arrays. But 4 degrees off absolute 0 is probably colder then we'll ever need.

It does work, with a fairly standard refrigeration curciut. It's just not practical for civilian use.

If you really want to get crazy, and we are at these temperatures anyway, we might as well start using super conductors. No heat generation at all.

 

Really? Thats fascinating

Do you build like military supercomputers or something?

 

Laser arrays?

 

Not really. At the moment it's not practical to use super conductors, except for lab work. Eventually someone will discover a room temperature super conductor. And that will be as revolutionary as the semi conductor.

You can get close to 0 kelvin using lasers precisely aimed to bounce photons off of individual atoms. The record is something like 0.06 kelvin. As far as I know it's pretty much useless for anything other then saying we did it.

But 4.2 kelvin using liquid helium is pretty darn close to zero. And it's achievable on a lab scale.

 

Plasma crystals?

 

Oh, I thought you had built one of these things before

It seems like at a certain point cooling something down that low would no longer be good for performance, considering how things start to like slow down when they are that cold at the molecular level

 

Not me. One of my colleagues tried to build a liquid nitrogen system with a regular cooling system, however it immediately started producing condensation across all of the components.

 

The only way to avoid condensation would be to submerge the system in liquid nitrogen. But that would be ruinously expensive, as the container could not be sealed. Liquid nitrogen boils at room temperature, and the constant expansion caused by the conversion to gas would prevent you from sealing off the unit. So you would have to be constantly pouring fresh liquid nitrogen in to keep the components submerged.

And while having the components lowered to such a temperature would likely improve their conductivity, it would likely damage everything else from the contraction caused by lowering the temperature that much. Complicated circuit boards aren't going to bear up well without being designed for such conditions.

 

With this title you, probably, was expecting something submerged in mineral oil, refrigerate by nitrogen, and photons laser 3d cpu crystals space PC :


You can disagree but in my experience about dust in the room, a desktop case is more like a Vacuum cleaner that sucks and draw in all dust around. You need to clean it more often the filters and the interior. Plus usually is on the floor or on the desk (where a flat horizontal surface capture dust deposit). You can´t use a vacuum cleaner or air aerosol cleaner to clean in a simple way . I do not what to make a discussion here but I use much less aerosol air with the wall pc. I can look when there is dust and there are not that much horizontal surface where dust can sit. Is in a cleaner atmosphere because is higher close to the wall and dust falls down. I clean it more often and faster. With a desktop case i do not clean it often because I do not look into it and is quite dirty (you need a special place and moment). Also with a complex specific refrigeration you can't change often the video card. I mean each month or so. I often look in the use market if there is a new and better used hardware. Is quite simple to upgrade.

So If you do not like the poor art tech that is behind my wall pc without condensation , let see if you like new cool style (rendering joke)

 

I think people who try to turn computer into glass box with leds have a good idea, but I bet those leds are very annoying at night.

 

What on earth is that??

 

"Art" ?

 

If you intend to game in a brightly lit environment they wouldn't be too bad but for just about every other situation they will stand out obnoxiously. That's why when I build a computer I always choose from cases that look like the monolith from a certain space movie. A black unlit windowless chassis.

My most recent chassis has some very good features too for a very affordable price.

 

I love me some Fractal Design cases.

I find most "gamer" cases obnoxious. Fractals cases are subdued, but still look nice and classy

 

What about a ceiling computer then?
And while you're at it, you might as well mount the whole thing to a ceiling fan to get that extra cooling!
I'm not even kidding.

 

Hot air goes up.

It would make more sense to install it inside the floor.

Then again, cooling fans and leds within floor might not be the best idea.

 

You obviously don't have rodents in your area. So wall mounting might not be a problem.

Ceiling mounting would also suck for heat dissipation.

 

Funny thing, every PC I've ever owned has at some point been run with the case off, usually near the end of it's lifetime

 

@neginfinity
@BoredMormon
Yes, you're right. Ceiling itself isn't the best choice for keeping something cool.
I just thought mounting onto a fan could be a good idea because the parts are actually moving, thus receiving airstream. Also, heat won't easily "build up" when the emitter is moving. I guess it's very energy inefficient, though.
And installed on the floor, it's probably dangerous.

@BoredMormon
Do rodents really climb around on the ceiling? Or did I understand this incorrectly? I haven't seen any rodents inside buildings yet.

 

IIRC if the building is wooden, there will be empty space within floor "plates" and within walls where rodents can live or chew through. IIRC american houses often constructed with lots of wooden parts in them or entirely out of wood while in EU stone and concrete would be more common. If the building has dropped ceiling, then there will be a lot of place for rats there to have fun and run around. Quick google search shows that ceiling rats are a common thing.

Of course, if you building is constructed brick, stone and concrete, and if you have a rat that can chew through that, you'll probably have bigger things to worry about.

 

Depends. My parents live on a farm near a significant patch of natural bush. Pest control is difficult at best. Its not so much rats running around on the ceiling as inside the ceiling. We have had occasions of rats falling through the ceiling. Rats can also climb pretty much anything. So I wouldn't put it past an enterprising rat to be able to make its way along the power cord to the components.

Of course if rodents aren't a problem in your area this is a moot point.

 

@neginfinity
@BoredMormon
I see! Thanks for clarifying! I didn't know about that. Over here, the concrete seems to be rat proof, though. There will be the occasional squirrel on the window ledge, but it has yet to climb inside.
You'd probably have to install something like a small fence, then? But either way, it's going to be risky if they actually get through the wood. They could as well get through at the inside of the fence causing ultimate havoc because they have nowhere else to go.

 

Actually, you know what? I just checked few articles, apparently rats can chew through concrete and the only rat-proof materials are pretty much glass and iron (they apparently can chew through lead/alluminium as well). The infestation pattern is that they start living in basement (even in apartment block), then reach living quarters. They can also swim into your apartment through plumbing.

The good news is that a brick wall doesn't have empty space inside them, and concrete ceiling has less space for rats to run around.

....

Why are we discussing rats on gamedev forum, again?

 

Some people have houses constructed out of other materials (metal shipping containers are becoming a popular base for creating a tiny house) but the most common way to build houses in the US is a wooden frame with drywall boards (gypsum with heavy duty paper backing for those unfamiliar) covering the interior of the frame.

I had a hard time finding a good illustration for it, but this should give you a basic idea. There is more than enough space in the walls for all manner of insects (usually roaches but brown marmorated stink bugs are prevalent too) and rodents.

 

I think I saw a video on USA house construction, that was a long time ago, though. I think it also featured transporting an almost finished house using a flatbed truck. Basically, lots of wood, some sort of "filling" material within wooden walls. Then again it sorta explains how it is possible for a car to drive through a house.

 

That's the typical construction method for Australian residential (suburban) housing. Here it's called "brick veneer". Every house I've ever lived in here has been of brick veneer construction.

 

I like wooden hoses like the north ovest of europa. But old cities try wooden frame without success. Wooden cities burns or fly out. The stones city was the only to survive after wind fire. The first pure stones cities are around Eze because of strong Mistral. That is the reason why today houses and buildings are build in stone, bricks or cement. Unfortunately there are exceptions or good examples.

Why not recicle hot air and dust! Let @hippocoder cat play around @Shushustorm ex case off pc transform in a fresh new Ceiling Pc.

 

Just don't forget metal. Check out some examples of homes built from metal shipping containers.

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They don't have to be expensive either. Below is a link to one that only cost about $40,000 for a thousand square feet.

http://www.benjamingarciasaxe.com/containers-of-hope/

 

Nice and Cool !
Here are more like this...




And containers are used more for commerce.