As [Matt] from [DIY Perks] was about to assemble a new PC, he decided to take a unique direction when it came to building a case. Despite the appearance of a woodworking piece with weird industrial radiators, there is actually a full-fledged, high-end PC hidden inside.
Those radiators are a pair of almost-the-biggest-you-can-buy heatsinks — one of which has been modified to fit the graphics card. Separating the graphics card’s stock cooling fan unit cut down significantly on noise and works with the stringent space requirements of the build. Those fans however keep other components on the card cool, so [Matt] cut pieces of copper plate to affix to these areas and joined them to the heatsink with a heat pipe, bent to shape. The elm wood case then began to take shape around the graphics card — cut into pieces to accommodate the heat pipes, and sealed with black tack to dampen the ‘coil whine’ of the GPU; it turns out the likely culprit are the MOSFETs, but close enough.
A similar plate and wood covers the compact motherboard; squashing the assembled motherboard into the confined space and connecting the myriad of tables took some doing, but [Matt] triumphed eventually, installing the CPU heatsink at the same time.
Thick aluminium shaped the main body of the component enclosure, and to create the smooth, curved look of the case’s front, [Matt] had to reinforce the corners of the central piece and do a substantial amount of sanding to get it just right. To support this beast, [Matt] cut four pieces of plywood into l-shapes and glued and screwed them together, bolting the central piece to this new support rack. A 500W power supply is hidden behind a few more pieces of elm, just under a custom backplate with only the necessary port holes cut into it.
But, what about those gaps on the front face and central tower? Thick flax rope complimented the elm nicely with a rustic, natural look and allowing just a bit of airflow to the aluminium brackets around the PC components for a bit of extra cooling. The end product is a whisper-quiet piece that is more than meets the eye. Some case mods, however, are the same inside and out.
[Thanks for the tip, Itay!]
I’m looking at it and thinking that the upside down heat sink has no gravity to move the liquid coolant to the source of the heat. Am I wrong ?
Just watched the PC parts advertisement, and the heat pipes have internal wicks to overcome bad orientation.
I’ve never seen a heatpipe without an internal wick.
Use convection.
The pc is warmer than the heat sink. As long as the hot coolant is less dense than the cold coolant.
Maybe go crazy and make the Einstein refrigerator.
Beautiful work. Always wanted to build a wood case for my computer.
What a fantastic idea
Came for the woodwok. Was disappointed.
Sort of reminds of a drip filter coffee machine .
Looks nice though
A computer that’ll wake you up in the morning, and get you going.
Is the “Woodwok” reference in the title a weird pun, whose deeper meaning was missed due to my lazy skim of the article.
Or is it a typo.
Definitely a pun. Just read the article thoroughly, I laughed for 5 minutes.
lol – first glance I thought it was a wooden coffee machine !!
Everything this guy does looks amazing and it’s pretty clever. Check out his YouTube channel.
Looks good, only nitpick in the video: “It is capable of driving even the most demanding of headphones” *then proceeds to plug in HD650s which are widely considered to be a pretty damn easy load to drive.
It looks like you could run a continuous CPU/GPU benchmark application and use it as a room heater!
Now I feel silly for saying “Cool project though”.
I stoped watching the moment he needlessly covered the ethernet port. Shame to confine such an otherwise awesome PC to wifi.
This is really a weird looking case.