Milk crate computer project: Lots of zip ties
Once I verified Linux would work on this old machine, I went ahead and powered it off and unplugged the network, power, data and video cables. I brought it back onto my assembly bench and got mounting everything with zip ties. Since they are made of plastic and cheap I use them alot in my builds. You can do alot with a few zip ties.
I attach a laptop hard drive to the inside of the milk crate for the operating system. I use this drive because its not important to have a fast hard drive for its use of live streaming. Yeah it takes longer to boot up but I expect that, takes about ten minutes.. lol
The power supply is up next to be attached to the milk crate. I attach all of the power connectors first and make sure the power supply will not be resting on the ram. That could cause flex on the motherboard and cause the tiny wires inside to break. The zip ties are really useful for this as they allow me to adjust the exact size. Sometimes I would need to cut them and start over as I go too tight. But not a big deal.
Mounting the power supply with the power port facing up is the only way I could get it to fit inside the case. Otherwise if I faced it power port facing down it would be blowing hot air from the power supply onto the RAM which is not preferable and could cause reliability issues. Also the power supply wont be venting properly, so having the pigtail sticking up was the only way I could fit it. Maybe if I had a smaller video card I could have fit it to the side but I only have one extra to use with this computer.
The 650W rating should be more than enough. I could have used a 500W PSU or less but I did not have any that small on hand. The modular design of the power supply connectors were nice, so I only had to connect the ones I needed. Like the main 24pin connector, aux power, video card, SATA power and an extra molex for a fan that cools down the mosfets.
LBRY Video Link
Previous parts to this project:
Addresses below to help me buy better camera equipment and support me to travel to locations to do photo and video and overall great blogs in new places.
| Coin | Address |
|---|---|
 BTC: | bc1qhfmvd2gywg4fvrgy2kkkkyqta0g86whkt7j8r7 |
 LTC: | ltc1qdyzm5cwgt8e2373prx67yye6y9ewk0l8jf3ys9 |
 DASH: | XkSqR5DxQL3wy4kNbjqDbgbMYNih3a7ZcM |
 ETH: | 0x045f409dAe14338669730078201888636B047DC3 |
 DOGE: | DSoekC21AKSZHAcV9vqR8yYefrh8XcX92Z |
 ZEN: | znW9mh62WDSCeBXxnVLCETMx59Ho446HJgq |
Those power cables are long. Doesn't look too bad overall. Ten minutes to boot is slow though. I am used to a few seconds with my Linux on SSD.
Yeah they are meant for low powered computers like the one I built. I'm using spare parts here so it's all good. My SSDs are in more important computers.
Well done, good luck!
Hah thanks alot