Building an invisible PC

most people would assume that this is a normal wooden table it certainly looks like wood and is solid enough to be as well even a close inspection reveals that it is indeed made out of genuine hardwood however this is all an illusion as taking a quick look underneath we can see that this is no ordinary table it is in fact quite literally a desktop pc filled with high-end enthusiast level hardware and the best bit it's homemade and in this video i'm going to be showing you exactly how to build one this video is sponsored by kiwico more about them later the most remarkable thing about this desk is how thin and elegant it is which results in the pc being effectively invisible you just never know it was there unless somebody told you however as soon as a monitor is placed on top it becomes immediately obvious what it is and the illusion is broken so the intention is to make a hidden monitor system which i'll be going into more detail about later for now though we're going to be focusing on the table itself now the table actually measures only 50 millimeters thick which is about 2 inches and this is average for a normal desk however fitting high-end pc components into such a tight space is a real challenge and as such the design is uniquely catered around this single point to be as thin as possible while remaining strong so this is the first thing we'll tackle the outer shell so in order to get this as thin as possible we're going to be using aluminium sheeting to make the top and bottom of it as aluminium can be less than half the thickness of alternatives like wood while still allowing for a bend free design the corners are a little sharp though so the first thing we're going to do is round them off as this is a much more friendly shape for a desk using a jigsaw is ideal for this but feel free to use hand tools if necessary either way finish the corners off with a file followed by sandpaper for a smooth result now to join these two pieces of aluminium together and make them way more rigid as they're quite bendy on their own we're going to be using some pieces of hardwood now these are going to be visible so it makes sense to use a wood that looks visibly quite nice but the strength of the whole thing and the rigidity comes from the lamination of the two aluminium panels and not the wood itself so it doesn't matter if they're not super thick or anything the minimum height i recommend for these though is 44 millimeters which is one inch and three quarters as this is just about high enough to fit the majority of components inside before we screw these in place however they do need to have some 45 degree cuts made in them so that they can fit together nicely around the perimeter of our aluminium now we're going to attach these to one of the sheets permanently so for this we can clamp them to a sheet and flip the whole thing over so that we can drill some pilot holes through to the wood from the other side these need to be spaced roughly 10 centimeters apart to prevent any gaps showing between the wood and aluminium and must also be countersunk so that the screw heads can be flush using a good quality bit along with some lubricant is definitely recommended for this as it will be very slow and tedious to do otherwise now the eagle-eyed of you will notice that i'm using machine screws and threaded inserts here but i recommend just using plain old wood screws here instead to attach these pieces together as they'll never be undone again now flipping the whole thing over we can do a similar thing to the other sheet but this time it does need to be removable for when we want to access the pc components so this time we'll add only five screws along each side and here it is indeed necessary to use threaded inserts and machine screws now thanks to the lamination of these two sheets with the wood in between them the whole thing instantly becomes very rigid and will be made even more so later when we get to making some internal pillar block supports for now though we need to round off the wood to match the curved aluminium corners and for this i suggest using a surf form which is basically a cheese grater for wood this can be followed up by some sanding to smooth it out which can result in a superb finish if you take your time if you have any gaps like i have here you may want to use some wood filler as well so with that done it's time to start adding some mounting holes for the internal components now for this step we'll need to work on it upside down so we need to flip it over and as you can see this is the side with fewer screw holes so it won't take as long to undo [Music] as i mentioned earlier we have just 44 millimeters of internal height into which we can mount the components while this is fine for the most part when it comes to power supplies standard atx psus are just too big to fit inside by a long way so instead what we're going to use is a 1u power supply one upsus are intended for industrial applications and servers and as such can unfortunately be quite loud as noise levels are not a primary consideration in their development thankfully however this 500 watt seasonic l1u unit which they've kindly provided for this build on request is one of the few that is actually reasonably quiet and even disables its fan entirely at lower loads and temperatures there are other noises like coil wine to consider but we'll be checking this out later now for placement of this i suggest having it about eight centimeters away from the back piece of wood to leave enough room for you to plug the power cable in for the motherboard i'm using an msi tomahawk which they too have sent over for this build along with the graphics card which is an rtx 2070 now usually graphics cards are mounted directly into the pci express slots but we're going to use a special extension cable for ours so that we can mount it horizontally to keep it nice and flat more on that later so with the positioning of the components worked out we can start marking mounting point holes for them to help you out i've made a little printable template for motherboards which you can find a link to in the description just print it out without any scaling and then use a marking tool to mark the hole points this is a really accurate and easy way of marking these so it's definitely recommended each of these points can now be drilled through with a three millimeter drill bit and on the other side countersunk to allow some m3 screws to again be flush with the top surface the intention with these screws is to bolt them to some six millimeter high pcb pillar supports as this adds some spacing to lift the motherboard up slightly once all nine have been added we can give it a test fit nice to mount the power supply i used some quite long pcb pillars and screwed in place some custom brackets to hold it down lastly for the graphics card you'll notice that i've added yet more pillar supports that surround it you see most powerful graphics cards are actually quite thick with the fans protruding well above our 44 millimeter headroom this doesn't matter however because we can simply unscrew the fans and their shroud leaving us with the bare heatsink now don't panic we are going to sort out an interesting alternative to these fans in just a minute but for now we can cut out a piece of aluminium to fit over this heatsink with cutouts where the heatsinks fins are and then screw it to the pillar supports there are three major benefits of mounting it this way the first is that it raises the graphics card to the right height so that it's flush with the top of the surrounding wood and in addition it provides a small gap underneath the card through which our pci express extension cable can later be rooted when it's time to plug everything in so the final component part you might want to add is a platform for the hard drives or ssds this is designed to be modified through the lifetime of the case as it's easy to remove and replace just like the cover for the graphics card so with all the components now in place we can get a few wood blocks the same wood in fact that the rest of the surround is made out of and place them around the components these need to be screwed in place from the other side again with countersunk wood screws as they are to be permanent supports for added rigidity one thing you will have to do though is measure the position of each of these blocks so that you can drill through the removable piece of aluminium to add some threaded inserts for screwing it to them so with that done and dusted we can finally work on the top surface now as you can see as a surface it's fairly industrial looking and might suit some people's tastes but for me i want the desk to look like it's made out of solid hardwood so we're going to cover up the raw aluminium along with the many countersunk screw heads before proceeding however anything that sticks up slightly needs to be ground or sanded down so that it's completely flush which gives us a great surface to which we can mount our wooden top what we're going to use for this is veneer which is basically just a very thin slice of hardwood now usually you would glue this onto mdf or particle board to make it look a bit nicer but as we are gluing it onto aluminium the process is a little bit different and potentially a little bit messy so the first thing to do is add some masking tape all the way around on our hardwood edge just to protect it from any glue drips now the glue we're going to be using is just two part epoxy now it's very important the epoxy that you use has a working time of at least half an hour just to give you some breathing space and make sure you can get everything in position and not feel rushed now the epoxy i'm using has a ratio of five parts resin to one part hardener so i'm just going to measure it out using some jugs now we're not actually going to mix these together yet because first we need to prepare the aluminium you see aluminium oxidizes within about 10 minutes and if we were to glue onto this oxidization layer it would mean that our glue adhesion would be very poor because it's glued to the oxidization and not to the aluminium so it would eventually peel away and that would be a very poor job so the first thing we have to do is clean any grease from any fingerprints and also from any lubricant that we used when we were countersinking the screws we need to clean this all off the aluminium and for this we're going to be using acetone and this is because it doesn't leave any residue now this cleaning process has only removed grease and dirt the oxidization layer is still here so to remove it we're just going to expose some fresh aluminium by sanding it down i recommend using a disk sander for this with maybe 120 grit sandpaper this is just for speed but you can probably get away with doing it manually if you have a few friends to help [Applause] [Music] now the clock is ticking uh because this will instantly begin oxidizing again so we're just going to give it a hoover a quick wipe and then it's time for the epoxy now somebody has very kindly mixed this for me off camera so it's ready to pour on for extra tips and tricks about this whole epoxy process you can find some more information about it in this project's accompanying written guide with the epoxy spread equally over the surface we can now get the veneer and place it carefully on top i have three pieces here so as a result it's necessary to tape them together tightly so that there's no gap between them it's also super important to make sure that the veneer is squashed down evenly so i used some boards followed by weights now i wasn't happy with the pressure that these were exerting however so i ended up just getting everything i could get my hands on and piling it on top to avoid getting caught out like this i suggest getting properly prepared beforehand so it's been drying overnight and it should be cured by now but before i take a look and see whether it's worked because i haven't seen it yet it's time for a quick add from this video's sponsor kiwiko kiwiko is defining the future of play by making it engaging and seriously fun they make super cool hands-on projects and toys that are designed to expose kids to concepts in steam which is science technology engineering art and maths and they're a great resource for learning at home and just plain old having fun now every box contains everything that you need for each project so it's all self-contained with detailed kid-friendly instructions and an educational magazine filled with content to learn even more about each crate's theme now on a personal note i know for a fact that younger me would have been over the moon with kits like this as in fact doing little projects along the lines of these was the single biggest contributing factor to my skill set that eventually led me on to being able to run this very youtube channel so hands-on learning away from computers away from tv works and it's far more engaging so if you go to the kiwico store you can see that they offer eight subscription lines each catering to different age group brackets and also different topics and you can either go with a monthly subscription and get a new box every month which you can cancel at any point or a single gift which is great for birthdays and special events now if you go to kiwico.com diy perks which you can find linked to in the description you get 20 off everything in the store including subscriptions which is a brilliant value so thank you kiwiko for sponsoring this video but for now back to the project after which i'm going to enjoy building these things so with it fully cured it's time to take a look to see whether it's actually worked now this is my first time seeing it so fingers crossed yes that looks good the excess on the sides can be carefully trimmed off with a knife and then sanded down to make the edges nice and smooth and you may want to do a little bit of sanding to the top as well only don't take too much off here as it will start to reveal the aluminium underneath as you can see this has worked really rather well and definitely gives it the appearance of being made out of solid hardwood i really like the silver band of aluminium around the edge too as it makes it look very smart now to protect the wood and give it a richer appearance you might want to add a couple of coats of oil i find using satin osmo oil works great for this once it's dried you can see that it really does look fantastic and you wouldn't ever guess that it's actually aluminium underneath it looks like wood is as rigid as wood and even feels warm like wood the only sign in fact that it isn't wood is a slight hollow sound when knocked but there's not much we can do about that so with this top complete it's finally time to move on to properly mounting our components before mounting the motherboard you may want to install the cpu and add its cooler i'm using a noctua nhl9x65 here which i specifically requested from noctua as it's one of the few low profile coolers that's going to be adequate enough for this build just like the graphics card however we will need to remove its fan to keep its profile as low as possible and as i mentioned last time i'll be showing you the cooling method this is replaced by in just a few moments now it's a good idea to add the ram at this point too which in my case is 32 gigabytes of nice speedy xpg ram from adata the motherboard can now be sat onto the pcb pillars that we added earlier with the three leftmost screws being capped off with some dome nuts while the other six can be clamped down by some much taller pcb pillars these sit just about level with the top of the heatsink and the reason for using them is that even though we've managed to fit most of our components within our 44 millimeters of internal space the cpu cooler ram and io shield are all still slightly too tall so we will need to build a raised section specifically for this area the gpu can now also be mounted in place with its riser cable followed by the psu and all its cables this leads me onto the topic of airflow which is a hugely important part of keeping these components cool the plan here is to make a positive pressure scenario inside the table itself with the only place the air can escape being through the heat sinks taking away the hot air this should work quite effectively but we'll have to wait until later to test it out we're going to achieve this positive pressure by using many 44 millimeter sized fans and i've again got not tour to thank for these as they've sent over not 10 not 20 but 40 fans for this project the idea here is to glue as many of them together as will fit into the case which for me is 17 for each side during testing i found out that a block of nine of these small fans provides a similar airflow and pressure to a single 120 millimeter fan and does so at very comparable sound levels so a rough estimate is that all these fans are equivalent roughly to four 120 millimeter fans now this definitely costs a lot if you're using brand new noctua fans so if you're on a tight budget you can probably get away with using some used pwm server fans and under vaulting them to get them to be quiet as well it won't be noctua levels of quietness but it will be acceptable and a lot cheaper as you can see i've wired all mine up in parallel so that they can be controlled by the motherboard and graphics card respectively and they're also soft mounted with sponge to reduce any surface hum that might result from direct contact now an important thing to also do is use some strips of plastic or card to control the path of the airflow so that it gets directed to the right regions the bank of fans on the cpu side for example pushes air into this central area and the only way it can escape is either through the cpu's heatsink or a little bit through the psu on the gpu side the situation is similar as the air here can only escape through the gpu's own heatsink and it's going to be super interesting to see how well this performs for now though we need to finish the bottom aluminium panel as you can see i've been busy already making various cutouts in this the holes on each side are to allow air in for the fans and were made by carefully marking regular positions and then drilling them out with a good quality step bit the use of plenty of lubricant is definitely recommended for this and again go slowly to keep in control and lengthen the life of your bit these holes not only look neat but also preserve the aluminium strength as there's plenty of material contact around them you'll also need to make some cutouts for the gpu heatsink and motherboard area as well as some removable hatch covers for port access and you'll see how these work in just a minute for cutouts like this i recommend drilling holes in opposite corners of your marked area and then using a jigsaw to cut out your shape from these holes after giving the whole thing a sand for a more uniform texture and to hide any scratch marks it's ready for some legs to be mounted i'm using some 28 inch raw steel hairpin legs here which can simply be bolted in place these should really emphasize the minimalism of the build with absolutely nothing underneath the desk before mounting this in place though don't forget to include a push button to power the pc on with as you can see i've placed some blocks directly underneath where the legs go so that they can be directly screwed to them to give them extra support if you don't do this the legs will likely wobble about a lot now once it's all screwed down you can see that even though this is on the underside it still looks pretty cool which definitely satisfies my maker side even though it won't usually be seen another benefit of the larger motherboard cutout area by the way is that it's easy to access several of the main components making upgrades easy to achieve to encase this area we can just make a little cover for it bordered by wood for a similar aesthetic to the rest of the case it doesn't protrude too much either and looks very smart with the exposed heatsink looking quite interesting and with that the hidden table pc is complete with it now upright we can see that it has a great retro vibe to it and looks remarkably elegant even the band of aluminium around the edge looks superb giving the whole thing a premium feel the only hint that is anything but a table is seen by taking a glance underneath but even then it's not obvious and still looks kind of great it's pretty strong as well though i don't necessarily recommend that you do this yourself but it's not even bowing anyway i think it's about time we give it a test and see what the sound levels are like and also the thermals as i mentioned earlier all the ports can be accessed and plugged in through these hatches on the back because it keeps the table looking uniform externally from all sides and it's actually easier to implement as well compared to cutting holes in the back wood so the system has been running a fairly intensive benchmark for about 15 minutes now and remarkably the graphics card has only hit 81 celsius max and the whole time it's been really really quiet i've got a very high quality microphone off to my left here so i'm just going to boost the volume so that you can hear hopefully what kind of noise i'm experiencing right now so as you can hear the room is very very quiet and we can hear a slight transformer hum from the power supply which is a bit disappointing but there's not much we can do about that and then we've got a very low frequency hum coming from the graphics card but overall it's very very quiet and i'd say that that is brilliant performance especially considering it's basically air cooling not bad so the graphics card is kept cool really quietly and effectively but what about the cpu now on the cpu side it's not quite as spectacular i've got prime95 running here and the temperatures are about 85 degrees celsius and the fans are audible this time take a listen so that's clearly audible but it's not very often that you would slam the cpu like this it would only be when you're rendering a video or running a simulation or something and really the limitation is just that heatsink that we've used it's a small heatsink it's not rated for the level of tdp that this cpu is it's a 95 watt 8700k with a slight overclock but that it's doing this well is pretty decent i would say now i do wonder whether it would be possible to get an old graphics card heatsink and mod it onto a motherboard to cool the cpu i think that will do a great job but that's a video for another time so overall though i would say that this is really quite an effective cooling system i'm personally really impressed with how well it works and how quiet it is there's not much compromise here over having a full tower pc certainly in the noise department and just with a slight hit on the cpu cooling ability but overall pretty good now to really finish this desk pc off it obviously needs a much better monitor setup now obviously wall mounting it would improve things to no end but that doesn't really go along with the overall aesthetic of this build which is to be hidden and not look like what it is so the idea i have is to make a hidden monitor setup that can come down from a floating shelf and it's going to be awesome but unfortunately this video is getting pretty long so i don't have time to fit it into this one so get subscribed so you don't miss that when it's released as it'll be the next one i publish so other than that i think that this build has been a great success it looks like it's made of wood and i just wouldn't ever think it was a pc so mission accomplished now i do believe that linus from linus tech tips is planning a similar build in that it's going to be super thin um i think he's going with water cooling and stuff um the ideas were thought of completely independently despite being basically really thin table pcs um and when i saw his announcement video i was like oh no that's very similar so i got in touch so he knows this is coming out and he's looking forward to that i'm sure um but i'm looking forward to seeing linuses as well so i'll place a link to that in the description when he releases that as it will be very much more pc focused with cool water cooling and stuff so looking forward to that but if you want to see some more builds of mine you might be interested in the brass and leather pc that i came out with a while ago and if you want to see another desk pc then you might want to check out this video as it is quite remarkable and features some serious silence credentials as it has a sealed chamber in the back to completely silence the components so it really is the ultimate in silence but other than that i hope you've enjoyed this video um i'm matt you've been watching diy perks and i hope to see you next time goodbye for now you

Channel: DIY Perks

Views: 4,615,356

Rating: 4.9277167 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Perqf0dOGLk

Length: 27min 7sec (1627 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Put_It_All_On_Blck]

This guy has a good channel, I suggest looking at his other videos too, as he does put a lot of work into 'maker' projects that theoretically you could follow along with. And no, I dont have any affiliation with him, and was surprised to see this even posted here.

[u/dreiter]

This is a beautiful hidden PC desk. My favorite part is probably the use of forty 40mm Noctua fans.

[u/Samura1_I3]

This looks like a really fun project and I love how approachable it is.

[u/battler624]

Each video this guy does it great, I love it.

[u/GravitonNg]

That was the most amazing pc build ive ever seen. Even better than SFF! there's straight up no PC at sight!

[u/Twigling]

Excellent build, DIY Perks is one of the better YouTube channels.

[u/Cushions]

Good luck doing this with RTX 3000!

[u/ShadowFGy]

How much would this cost to build including tools needed