Introduction
“The Bugatti is quite the most stunning piece of automotive engineering ever created....It’s rewritten the rule book, moved the goalposts and in the process, given Mother Nature a bloody nose.”
- Jeremy Clarkson
The first prototype of the Veyron PC frame. Eventually this would be scrapped but I learned much about the initial design of the frame and how to make it as simple as possible.
Bugatti Veyron Super Sport
There are few engineered products that transcend form and function like the Bugatti Veyron. At 1200 bhp, an insanely beautiful body design and a $1 million price tag it activates the neurons in our brain that simply get us (read: men) excited. It is the fastest production car in the world and on a good day can rocket over 250 mph. Excuse me while I change my shorts.
If my memory serves my right, I learned of this mechanical wonder on the show Top Gear. My wife had to pick my jaw up off the floor and when I came to my senses I realized in a moment of inspiration that I was well...inspired. I was motivated to build something that was not only functional but stunningly beautiful.
Construction
Applying several coats of clear finish.
Materials
- 1/2" Medium Density Fiber board for frame/box
- 3/4" 90 degree bend aluminum for various mounts and paneling
- 3/4" aluminum strips
- Real Walnut veneer
- Dark smoked acryclic panel
Hardware
- ASRock E350M1 Motherboard
- 260 watt blade server power supply
- Silverstone aluminum storage drive bay
- 1 - 150GB primary SSD
- 2 - 1TB media drives (2.5")
- 1 - slot load optical drive
- 2 - Gelid Silent 50mm fans
- Anti-vandal power switch with led power light
SOFTWARE
- Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
- Plex Media Server
- Unified Remote Server
Design
Google Sketch-up allowed me to test fit my components before purchasing materials.
Final concept design with components and color.
I prefer "low-tech" in the preliminary design stage.
I started out with preliminary sketches to see how small I could design a case that would fit all the major components. The overall design size is 24" X 3" X 8" (HxWxD) and it houses the main board, power supply, 1 x 3.5" hard drive, 2 x 2.5" hard drives an optical drive and 2 cooling fans. The design itself is pretty straight-forward but engineering the parts to fit and having to create all mounts by hand would prove to be a real challenge. Also, scaling a computer down to this size involved some careful planning in regards to power to heat ratios. To solve for this I used an integrated motherboard that housed an AMD APU that consumed no more than 15 watts of power (less power=less heat). The OS hard drive is a laptop form factor and even the power supply is a smaller form factor originally used in much smaller server blades.
I also had to consider the decibel output of this system. Because it would be resting in the living room while watching movies or listening to music, sound had to be minimized. There are a total of three fans in this system and I've designed the internal components to create a sort of airflow path. This maximizes my use of the fans without having a cooling system for each component and cutting the sound down dramatically. Even the shape of the fan blades were considered in the design.
The external design has not changed much from the original idea. I wanted something tall, sleek and minimal. The idea was that it could match the components in my current home theater setup either laying down (stereo components) or standing up (floor speakers). The function was to serve and not to distract from the viewing experience of a movie. The power button was moved to the front on the final design but that also meant lowering the voltage so the LED was not blinding. The smoked acrylic gives it the final touch and balances out the more natural wood mirrored on the rest of the PC. I felt it would add that bit of "tech" feel without compromising the overall aesthetic of the natural materials.
