lose the case, surface mount pc?

[tony.silveira]

hi all,

i'm thinking of surface mounting my motherboard in my cab, lose the pc case.  i could potentially mount the power supply and hd's along the side panels, it might save me a ton of space and help the air flow.

wondering if anyone on here has done so and if so, could you share some pics?\

thanks

[syph007]

It's much better for airflow for sure.  Lots of people do this for that reason.

You can see my pc mounted in my thread here.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=95768.msg1017800#msg1017800

[DrumAnBass]

The only real advantage to having a case is sound management, if you have a noisy graphic card fan or power supply etc.

[tony.silveira]

thanks for the responses guys, appreciated.

i already have the cover off of my case so noise isn't an issue for me.

quick question on the cpu cooling.  my power supply is RIGHT over the cpu.  the ps has an intact fan that is positioned VERY close to the cpu and an exhaust fan at the back of the case.  so the ps draws heat away and exhausts it out the back.

won't pulling that ps off of the cpu increase it's temperature?  fyi, i have my core 2 duo 8500 overclocked to 4gh so they run a bit hotter than out of the box

[DillonFoulds]

http://www.arcadeemulator.net/cgi-bin/shop/cp-app.cgi?usr=51F7736081&rnd=2289793&rrc=N&affl=&cip=&act=&aff=&pg=prod&ref=P.C.+Board+Holder&cat=Accessories&catstr=HOME:Accessories

I got one of these in my upright mame, can't really be beat!

[tony.silveira]

nice!  you have the board mounted to the side of your cab?  curious as to how you support the video card, if at all.

thank you for the link!

[DillonFoulds]

Integrated Nvidia 6600. Had to find a motherboard with a video card that supported Soft-15KHz, but if you stick to ATI or nVidia and steer clear of Intel GPUs, you should be okay. The only expansion card I have connected is Wifi, but I have a very slim card, with the bracket removed, so there's not much weight involved.

Edit:

[kegger]

I have basically done this both ways as I built a portable box such as arcade in a box and I found it much more challenging to mount everything seperate and keep everything secure. A stripped PC case with the sides off works fine and is easier to deal with as you can remove the whole PC should get some type of hardware issue and need to trouble shoot.

[bkenobi]

I don't agree that decasing a PC fixes heat issues.  The only true solution to heat problems is to remove the heat from the enclosure.  If you have no case but no ventilation at the top and bottom of the cab, you still will have heat issues given a long enough period of time (assuming you have a wooden cab).  If your PC case has a good cooling system (well designed air flow), you are actually going to be better off than just surface mounting everything without the case.  I won't get into technical details, but it has to do with forced convection being more efficient for cooling than natural convection especially with a lower delta temperature between the ambient air and the component temperature (especially if you have poor cabinet ventilation).

If you force air through your cabinet (draw cool air in the bottom, vent out the top), then you probably would be fine without the case since the ambient temperature will be fairly cool (unless it's a hot summer day of course).

[zafdor]

If you force air through your cabinet (draw cool air in the bottom, vent out the top), then you probably would be fine without the case since the ambient temperature will be fairly cool (unless it's a hot summer day of course).

Spot on.  I love it when I see designs with several fans and air flow willy-nilly.  Set the air flow up so it comes in one end, is forced to go over the hot components and out the other end and you are done, it is surprising how little air flow it takes to keep the unit cool.  Use your mobo temp monitoring or buy an el cheapo thermometer at radio shack to verify your design.

I don't have a dedicated game room, so my goal is always to keep the cab small.  putting a cased PC in the cab was never on the radar.

[Dazz]

Right now I have the PC in a PC case inside my cabinet, but I'm thinking of getting another test station to use in my cabinet.  This is what I have in my pincab and it works great.

[Franco B]

Very nice Dazz

I was going to decase my PC and put it one of my Naomi's along with my 360 and DC. The thing is I want to hook some other stuff up too (Saturn, PS2 etc) and there is no way I can fit everything in so I think I'm just going to leave everything outside of the cab and have a master video/sound/controller port that I can connect each system to.

I do have a nice acrylic mount like yours planned to mount PCBs, MVS Mobo/Naomi shizzle etc.

I would love to be able to fit it all in but as you can see space really is a premium in them

[orchidius]

I'm having the same question and have been considering many options (most of the above included).

What are your thoughts on passive cooling? My graph card has passive cooling, so no fans to worry there. Processor is an old P4 (775 socket i think), so i'm not sure about heat issues and possibilities on passive cooling...

Any experience/advice on that?

[spacegoogie]

Right now I have the PC in a PC case inside my cabinet, but I'm thinking of getting another test station to use in my cabinet.  This is what I have in my pincab and it works great.

Dazz that's bad ass. That would be perfect for my cab. I have never used a case inside my cab.
I have cool air blowN in from the bottom and  fans on top pushing hot air out. The test station looks like it helps keep things organize. Please share where you got this from.

[Dazz]

I actually got this one from NewEgg.com.

Sunbeam ACTS-T Transparent Clear Acrylic ATX Desktop Ultra Tech Station Acrylic Case - looks like they are sold out though.

It does do a very clean install though.  Here are a couple more pics of my install.




The final resting place is on a slide out tray on the backside of my pinball cabinet.


It looks like HighSpeed PC has some nice Tech Stations as well.  I think I'm going to get one of their standard stations to go inside my MAME cabinet.

[spacegoogie]

Thanks Dazz. 

[DrumAnBass]

I'm having the same question and have been considering many options (most of the above included).

What are your thoughts on passive cooling? My graph card has passive cooling, so no fans to worry there. Processor is an old P4 (775 socket i think), so i'm not sure about heat issues and possibilities on passive cooling...

Any experience/advice on that?

In regards to passive cooling; some passive cooling still needs some airflow to function. For example, the passive CPU coolers meant for 1U rack servers are built to take advantage of the case fans that will be pulling the air through the cooling fins.

But there are passive CPU coolers that would probably be fine in a cab, as long as there is a small amount of airflow. You could consider on the low end a Thermaltake GeminII or on the high end a Thermalright Ultra 120.

[Smeghead]

+1

Passively cooled components often rely on the case design to channel air over the heat sinks properly
Not sure how you would make the PCI/PCIE/AGP cards stay in their slots either without the case

[zafdor]

+1

Passively cooled components often rely on the case design to channel air over the heat sinks properly
Not sure how you would make the PCI/PCIE/AGP cards stay in their slots either without the case

At least the MB I am using on my present project has a retention clip for the AGP that is part of the MB.  If you keep the loading off the cable into the card, even the friction from the card to MB connector will keep the board pretty secure.

True convenction cooling with modern CPUs & video cards is pretty much impossible.

[bkenobi]

True convenction cooling with modern CPUs & video cards is pretty much impossible.

Explain please.   

Convection is the transfer of heat from a solid surface to a moving fluid at a different temperature.  The only way you can say that would be impossible is for the fluid to not move (even through buoyant forces), the temperature gradient to be zero (technically unlikely), or to put everything in a vacuum (ummm, no).

Perhaps you mean passive cooling (fins without fans).  If so, then there are certainly solutions available that do this, however they do rely on the case fans to provide some form of forced convection.  The only other type of cooling that's available in the main stream is liquid cooling, but that's just a different fluid (air, water, etc are fluids).

[zafdor]

My bad.  My use of 'convenction' would be what you call passive cooling (natural convection).  If the fluid is mechanically moved (i.e. a fan blowing air), that I would call forced convection, so we are in agreement.

Water cooling a PC while novel, is not of practical benefit that I can see.  Once you get the heat from the processor into the water, you now need to get it into the atmosphere.  If you have a chilled water system and cooling tower in your house, you're home free, if not, you'll probably be blowing air through a radiator to get the heat from the water to the atmosphere, so you're back to fans blowing air, albiet in a different spot.  Direct compression refrigeration has been used for processor cooling ( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3751/is_200405/ai_n9388151/ ), extremely painful to do, but possible.

[DrumAnBass]

Not sure how you would make the PCI/PCIE/AGP cards stay in their slots either without the case

I have built a few machines with "cab mounted" motherboards and haven't had any issues with the the cards staying in their slots. But I wasn't using big heavy video cards; and the cabs aren't being moved around at all.

[leapinlew]

I've built several cabinets and when possible I leave the PC in a case. If they aren't in a case, I mount them to the side of the cab. I wouldn't buy a computer case just to mount it to the floor of a cabinet.

Air flow hasn't been a major issue since these are full sized machines and I'm not using components which require much cooling. We can debate the heat issue all we want, but in practice I have several machines running for years.

[tony.silveira]

thank you all for the input.

i just want to be sure as i have my cpu overclocked and the power supply has a fan right over it, drawing air in off the processor and then out the back of the case.  so i'm just a bit concerned with it being overclocked.

thanks, tony

[DrFrag]

Not sure how you would make the PCI/PCIE/AGP cards stay in their slots either without the case

At least the MB I am using on my present project has a retention clip for the AGP that is part of the MB.  If you keep the loading off the cable into the card, even the friction from the card to MB connector will keep the board pretty secure.

Zip ties work too.


Regarding temperature issues, can anyone cite a single occurance of a standard non-overheating PC, overheating in a standard upright unventilated MAME cab?

The closest thing I can find to it ever happening was a guy running a Dell laptop (which already get so hot they can burn you) inside a half-height cab.

I think the overheating MAME cab is a myth.

[bkenobi]

I had a PC mounted in my first cabinet with no real cooling.  It was nothing fancy (Athlon XP 3200+ with basic video card).  I had issues with locking up for a while until I added a ducted vent and fans to drive flow into the case.  I had vents in the top of the cabinet that were installed by Atari, but the TV blocked most air flow to the top.

Anyway, I haven't had a lock up in quite a while, so I assume the cooling was the resolution.