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Mounting the computer in the cabinet -- case or no case?

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Chris:

--- Quote from: sofakng on July 27, 2004, 10:39:53 am ---A bunch of great suggestions, thank you.

L-brackets for the power supply sound like a great idea.  As for the PCI cards I'll have to fool around with this a bit...

I might order PCB mounting feet from Bob Robert's... If I remember correctly, he quoted me something like $8 for a set, shipped.  Shipping was $6 though (3x the price of the actual part... ouch).

What about looks?  (case vs no case) -- What do you guys vote for?

--- End quote ---
No case will always look more like a real arcade cabinet.  For me, I went caseless because it was hard to work around the case.

Ghoward:
I thought about this one a lot too but in the end came up with the following idea....

I installed a pull out draw above the sub woofer and mounted a rack mount pc on it. It looks really nice and keeps all the pc parts safe inside a case.

Gary

Wade:
It might look cooler to have the MB mounted loose in the cab, but it is far smarter to use a PC case and mount that inside the cabinet.  Cooling is likely better, and it is much easier to work on if you have problems.  Just remove the entire case and plug it into a monitor and keyboard somewhere else.  Otherwise, if you are trying to diagnose problems or what not, you have to fiddle with it all inside the cabinet, which in my experience has been a real pain.  I have Mame cabs set up both ways.

Wade

sofakng:
Good point about diagnosing problems if you don't have a case in the computer, but I kind of like the idea of having the circuit boards to look at instead of a big ugly computer case.

I'm still not 100% sure yet, but one more question...

How do you mount the hard drive?

The motherboard would use pcb mounting feet, the power supply could use l-brackets, but what about the hard drive...?

sjgrover:
In my mini I mounted the MB on the side with the PCI slots at the top.  I bent the lower tab of the PCI boards to wrap around the edge of the mother board - this prevents them from pivoting out of their slot which was what they were tending to do.

All of the drives were secured with pieces of industrial strength velco - I'm amazed at how much force is required to release a 2"x4" section of this stuff.

I'll admit that I used leftover parts and wasn't overly concerned about damaging or otherwise shorting anything out, but the parts have remained secure and the system is stable.

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