suitecase PC

When I was around 18 I had too much time on my hands, so I decided to rebuild a normal desktop PC into a suitcase. This is a challenge which comes with various difficulties. For this project I used the old PC from my aunt (900 MHz, 64Mb RAM, small graphics card, DVD player and CD burner) which I upgraded with parts I eighter bought, exchanged or just got for free.

I had used some ideas from a fellow classmate and a friend from scouting. In their projects I had seen some minor downsides which I wanted to overcome. I wanted for instance all the connections on one side, both motherboard connections and power cord. This came with the problem that the PSU (PowerSupplyUnit) had to be located on the upper right side of the suitcase, while the motherboard was situated at the whole left side because of its size. Therefore I removed the original euro chassis, extended the power cord of the PSU main board to the euro chassis and mounted the chassis at the upper right side of the suitcase right above the motherboard: One problem solved.

Of course an old PC is relatively large in comparison to the current computers. Therefore it was a pretty tight fit in the suitcase. I ended with a HDD (HardDiskDrive) in my hand instead of mounted in the suitcase. There were 2 ODD (OpticalDiskDrive) already squeezed next to the PSU, one DVD player and one CD burner. This took a lot of space, and the HDD did not fit on top of that. On top of the PSU blocks the air flow, for cooling, so that is also no option. There was only some space left above the upper half side of the motherboard, so I had to make a strong and light construction to mound the HDD there. I solved this by using metal bars of Meccano mounted on the top of the PSU in a way that minimizes the block of air flow.

Some other minor problems with grounding (because of the wooden case), air flow, noise, switches, build-in power sockets and weight needed to be solved. This went all well, as you can see in the pictures below.