Building an open air computer

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Normally PCs are enclosed in a case, with good airflow pulling cold air from the front and blasting the hot air out the rear. But there are other types of computer cases that are completely open. It is mostly for looks, as its pretty cool seeing the computer on and running while everything is exposed. Needing a new rig, I took my Lian Li case out and got to work setting it up.

I got myself a Lian Li Pitstop PC-T60A open computer case. They also refer to them as test benches. This one is black, but they also come in silver. I added two 120MM fans to the front of the case as well for better airflow. I may use this rig in the winter for mining so I will need some good fans blowing on the cards.

Using an older Ryzen 7 CPU and motherboard I just needed some RAM and a m.2 drive. I tried building it with a HDD I had laying around but it was very slow making ubuntu take five or so minutes to boot up. With an m.2 nvme drive it takes around thirty seconds or less now.

With a 750W power supply mounted, a fan controller and the two 120MM fans it was ready to install the motherboard.

Stand offs make for easy installation of the board, there is also bottom access, maybe to help change heat sinks without removing the motherboard from the case. Or maybe it just helps to keep the bottom of the CPU and motherboard cooler.

To install the motherboard I needed to lower the back plate where the video card is attached. This will allow me to slide in the motherboard.

Since all I had was a motherboard and CPU, I bought 32GB of RAM and a 500GB m.2 drive.

With the RAM installed and the drive screwed in it was ready to be mounted in the case.

Now that the motherboard is installed, I can start attaching power cables and such.

Just about everything is attached at this point, just enjoying the views of the open computer case. Its like seeing whats under the hood, all the time.

The weakest link in this build is this GPU, its a Radeon R7 card with a missing fan. I had to remove it after it starting squeaking real bad. So now it runs with a passive heatsink..lol I have been running it this way for a few years now and the card is still alive.

Those 120MM fans I mounted to the front of the Lian Li case will help to keep the card cool. Along with the memory and maybe help the CPU a little. Though mostly the GPU needs some cooling with its missing fan.

I boot up the machine and get to installing Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) on it.

With the fan controller I can change the speed of the fans on the fly, without needing to go into the BIOS to adjust fan speeds. I think the 120MM fans in the front will really help, especially when mining in the winter. I just hope I can fit my full size Nvidia GTX 1080s in it. Will be a tight fit but if it works they should work well on this machine. I may need to reformat, or attempt to change the video drivers as it was built with a Radeon card and not a GTX. I may just reformat to save myself the troubles of dealing with weird errors. But thats many months from now since we are in the middle of the summer right now.

Posted with STEMGeeks



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29 comments
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Is it noisy? You might be able to run it as a Hive witness node as that is not heavy on processing.

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With the fan controller it is not loud at all. I can keep the fans spinning at a low RPM. And then crank them up if something appears to be getting too hot.

Many motherboards have fan control on them as well, so as long as your motherboard supports it you should be able to set the fans to 20% speed and will be near silent.

Nice, that would be a cool build.

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I was just trying to check the temperate of my Ubuntu system. Installed lm-sensors and hddtemp, but not getting much. It's about 30C in here, but it shows some at 10C. The drives are at 35C and 39C, which seems more realistic. Just wondered how my CPU is doing, but there's not much load. It's in a case with sound deadening and a dirty great CPU cooler. I only have onboard graphics. Anyway, I can hardly hear it.

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If you were running windows you could install your motherboards utility software which would probably show the temp of your cpu. Otherwise you need to find a driver in ubuntu that can talk with the motherboard and pull that data. Unfortunately I have not done this yet, only used windows when monitoring temps.

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I have restarted the PC since I tried setting up the monitoring and now I get a lot more readings. It's not doing too bad considering ambient is around 30C. I would need to figure out what all those values relate to. Some readings are definitely wrong. Nothing in there is at -8C.

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hehe yeah I feel ya, all you can really do is run a cpu stress test and then notice which temp starts spiking.. then you will know what is your CPU value there.

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Nice rig. Reminded me to invest into making computers again. I ran out of funds after a few life changing situations. But I loved doing it. Any websites you recommend where I can get great deals in parts in bulk buys?

I think still get discounts from Newegg for being a member since 2012.

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Thanks alot, yeah I really enjoy building them. Normally I buy my parts from Amazon. But I have used Newegg in the past.

Best of luck with your next build.

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Hahaha... you're a tech geek alright!

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Lol.. yes I am

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In between all the planting, and the bees... computers!

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I do stay quite busy, with all my projects I find my days quite full.

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My four vegetable pots are giving me lots of produce, and my orchids are so beautiful ... I' enjoying them while they are in bloom; the many houseplants that I have are thriving; and I have my housework to do, and my regular 9 to 5 work, and then Hive... and oh, my gold and silver is something else, hahaha!!!

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Oh very nice, everything is blooming around us as well... Do you move your houseplants outside in the summer time? Many people around where I live do, as the winter its too cold for them. But during the spring/summer/fall they can be outside.

Orchids are a plant just a little too north of us to grow, they do well in Florida but not where I live.

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I have outside plants as well. I am enjoying my only rose tree. which got fried last week!
My house plants remain inside, even during the summer, especially the orchids!

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I just cobbled together a bunch of old parts into a mining rig since I had a couple 1050ti laying around gathering dust and ended up just putting it all in an old milk crate. It works great, but looks like hell. Your open air case looks so much better!

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Hehe cool, what can you mine with a 4GB video card? I could not find any altcoins that I was interested in with a DAG size that small.

The milkcrate builds are awesome, just make sure you have enough air blowing on those cards.. Normally a case would have airflow but sometimes the milk crates need a box fan pointed toward them.

thanks alot, it sure is a cool case.

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I'm mining Ravencoin with them. They don't make a lot at the moment, but I'm hodling and hoping for better days ahead. I added a 120mm fan to help move the air around. The GPUs run a little hot, but not hot enough to be a problem.

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Oh okay, I see their DAG size is 2.85Gb so a good fit for your cards.

Mine and hodl is a good plan.

If your cards are getting real hot, turn up their heatsink fans to 100% Sometimes you need to download an app like MSI Afterburner to do this.

Normally cards dont run fans at full as they are very loud, but if your mining you may need to. Along with a fan blowing on your cards like the 120MM fan you have.

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Thanks for the tip. I'll see what Afterburner can do to help. Since it's in the storeroom, no need to worry about the noise.

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Ah nice, yeah best of luck with it. Its not the ambient temperature that matters as much. More important is airflow.

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I'm a computer and technology enthusiast and your post created a big problem for me: it made me want to buy and assemble a new computer :) :)
!BEER
!PIZZA

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Ah nice, and hehe I feel ya. I see others posts and want to build what they are working on as well..

Best of luck with your build.

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