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This all started when my wife, Barb, needed a new computer to replace her old P.O.S. Dell. The old 1.8Ghz Pentium IV just wasn't cutting it any more. She has been interested in the steampunk design asthetic for a while now and that is the way we decided to go. She ordered a small wooden trunk from a company in Texas to hold the computer components. I headed off to Memory Express to pick up the computer parts.
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For all you computer techies out there, I choose the following hardware. I was going for a combination of speed, energy efficiency and resonable price.
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CPU: Intel Core i5-750
Motherboard: Gigabyte P55M-UD2Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD5770Storage: Seagate 1Gb SATA HDD
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RAM: 4Gb Cosair DDR3
Power Supply: Cosair 550wattOS: Windows 7 Professional | |
You may notice that there is no DVD drive. Barb said she rarely uses it, and on the odd occasion she does, she had a USB powered DVD-R that she also uses with her netbook.
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The next step was to take the lid off and cut holes for the motherboard backplate, video card, power supply and cooling fans. I ended up using one 120mm fan and one 80mm fan. I was a bit worried about the cooling, but in the end the internal temperature was just fine.
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Next came bolting everything in. And, I literally bolted it together. For the motherboard I drilled holes in from the bottom of the case. I pushed the bolts in from the bottom and used plastic washers to keep the motherboard about 1cm off the wood and then used a nut on top to hold it all together. The fans and the power supply was the same but without the plastic washers.
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I used a DVD-ROM plugged into the IDE slot (and just sitting on the case) to install Windows 7. Everything worked great. No install problems at all. Now that the hardware worked I could finish mounting the last few pieces.
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Next we added a small clock and thermometer to help with the steampunk look. There is also a place for a name tag. The knob in the center of the lid is the power switch.
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The hard drive was mounted on the lid using small rails and rubber washers. To the left side you can see to extra USB ports mounted on top the lid for easy access to things like USB flashdrives, etc.
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One of the hardest this to do was add the power switch. The knob at the front is pulled to turn the system on and off. It is spring loaded so after pulling it goes back to it's normal position. It is a mess on the inside, but, I think, quite elegant on the outside.
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The final touch was a couple fan covers. They were made from a disasembled Christmas star.
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All complete. As a homage, it is named the 'Babbage's Analytical Engine' in honour of Charles Babbage.
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Now with the computer complete, the plain black keyboard seem out of place. Enter phase 2. Step one was disassembling the keyboard.
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Each key was individually removed, glued with an antique typewriter top, and painted with copper model paint. The mouse was likewise dissasembled and painted with copper and gold-leaf paint.
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The monitor frame was painted with the gold-leaf paint too. (This probably voided the warranty, no risk no thrill.) I slid a piece of paper between the glass and the frame to stop from getting paint on the screen itself. We did cheat and only painted the front and the sides and ignored the back. No sense wasting paint on something no one will ever see.
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The finished mouse. The gold filigree stickers was the finishing touch.
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The finished keyboard
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The speakers
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The monitor
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The monitor stand was painted copper while the name was painted gold. A little more filligree finishes it off nicely
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