Have you guys ever seen the Techstations on HighSpeedPC.com?

http://www.highspeedpc.com/Merchant2/merch...Code=TopTechSTD

I think they're pretty darn cool, and they come in handy, but I don't have $80 plus shipping to lay down on one. So what's a guy to do? Build one, of course!

I went to my Home Depot and bought some 5/8" square stock (2 x 36"), some rubber feet, a 4-pack of angle brackets and some nylon screws. I then popped over to my local Ace Hardware and picked up three packages of plastic bumpers. I used the assembly instructions from the HighSpeedPC site to figure out how big to make everything. With about 3 hours of work (including planning) I ended up with this:





I had the rest of the parts laying around the shop. I even put a screw in to hold the PCIe card in place :beer

Aside from the parts I already had, I spent about $12. I can't wait until I start getting some parts in to test it out.

Hey looks like you almost got it finished.

Yep, it's pretty much done. The only thing I might add is either some case dampening material or some of that foam sheet stuff they usually put in the bag with a motherboard, and that would go across each of the flat parts. I have the foam stuff laying around, but the case dampening stuff is adhesive-backed, which would save me the trouble of having to use some spray adhesive on it.

Very nice job. I might have to give that a try sometime as I'm running my computer caseless for the moment. It hadn't actually crossed my mind to build it myself. Just think, you could actually buy nicer wood and stuff and sand it and coat it for probably not much more at all and it would look REALLY nice. You did a good job and have given me an idea for something to do over the summer.

LOL I've got enough projects to last me the summer, but I thought this might help me out with some heatsink testing I will be doing over the next few weeks. I wanted to use as much stuff that I have laying around as I could. I probably would have used some masonry board instead of the plywood, maybe some nice 1/4" thick stuff. this was a "quick and dirty" job just to knock it out. But I'm glad I've prompted someone else to try and build one of their own.

did you build it with HDD rails?

No, I haven't figured out what to make them with. Do you have any ideas?

do you have an old HDD cage laying around? attach it to the underside of the top layer, and make a small shelf with wood for an optical drive...

and you've now inspired TWO people to make one of their own :-)

I'm gonna need something to hold my setup while the case is being painted anyway...

i have been meaning to make one of these for some time. i decided on this thick hard plastic material instead of wood but thats as fas as i have gotten. looks good though

I've have a couple of HD cages laying around if you want one of them.
They hold 3 HD's or 2 + a floppy.

I use a 3-bay cage pulled from a Lian-Li.

BTW - those aren't worth $80, they're made pretty cheaply.

I bet one of those heavy duty nylon cutting boards would work great for the 2 big flat surfaces...me tinks me's gonna have to make one

thats the kind of stuff i have, you can buy it in big pieces at store like lowe's home depot, etc.....

That's what the original ones use, but IDK where to get anything like that, at least until momoceio posted below yours.

I think I'm just going to stack everything on the lower shelf for now. I don't really plan on carrying anything around on this, but I did spring for the nylon nuts to secure the mobo to the nylon screws if I decide to.

I think you're paying mostly for the idea and the lack of competition in the market.


That's a great idea. Make sure you post some pics, OK?

In fact, if any of you other guys have a setup similar to this, go ahead and post what you've got. Maybe we can start a trend here of the DIY Street TechStation Modders Club. :beer

thats the kind of stuff i have, you can buy it in big pieces at store like lowe's home depot, etc....

For sure, the nice ones cost much, much more.

I bent some scrap sheet metal I had in the brake. Glued some padding on the rails from the same material I used on the base.

I can post a few more pics if you want but I didn't want to be cluttering up your thread.

you could do the whole thing out of square ally and some perspex,
theres some tubing that you can get called qubeloc i've made a case out of it.

I want to see some pics with your rig in it.

I would like to see more pics! Looks interesting!

Wow, that looks awesome. Puts mine to shame for sure. One thing I noticed though - does yours have any feet on it? You can pick up a pack of four rubber bumpers for a few $$. But yeah, go ahead and post your pics, and if you don't mind, go ahead and give a quick list of the materials you used.

Edit: Oh, and I do have access to a brake, but it requires me going back to my last job. That's something I won't do ATM...

I have some feet for it like you mentioned but I'm not really happy with them. Still looking for something else.

The list of materials:

3/4" Steel Square
Melamine Shelving
Socket Head Cap Screws
Bolts
24 Gauge Sheet Metal
#8 Wood Screws
6-32 Screws And Studs - Nylon and steel
Aluminum Thumb Screws
Knurled Brass Nuts
Fiber Washers
Angle Brackets
Commercial Drawer Liner
Plastic End Caps
Vinyl Composite Decking
1/8" steel plate
5/8" Nylon Circuit Board Standoffs

I believe that is the complete list of materials. The 3/4" tubing are pieces from chair legs. Using the tubing presented the problem of no way to fasten it because of being hollow. What I finally did was cut some pieces of 1/8" steel plate to fit inside. They were recessed in the ends, tacked in place with the mig, drilled and tapped.

The top and bottom is Melamine shelving I had left over from another project. All that was needed was to cut it to size and reband the edges.

The cross bar for the cards is a piece of composite decking ripped down.

I reamed the standoffs and tapped them to 6/32. One end has studs to secure them to the Melamine. 4 of them have nylon studs on the other end to secure the motherboard in place using the fiber washers and knurled nuts. The board just sits on the remaining standoffs.

The way it is set up I can use it with air, water or phase cooling. I probably have somewhere around $15.00 invested but way to much time.









Here is the ultimate test bench. Victor Wang made this one. Vic has already said that he would make one for me but I'm trying to get him to make some changes.



Edit: I don't know why his pic is saying 940x800. On his site it is 600x511. I'll fix the size tonight when I get home.

I love that thing but it wouldn't survive a minute with my 17 months old son which is very curious what his dad is doing and needs to touch everything! I had to disconnect the power on button on my stacker because he would put an end to my gaming turning the rig off all the time. God thanks for the mobo on button!

Praz, that is one heck of a build there. Did you notice the dual R600's in Vic's station?



I had that problem before with my little ones. I ended up using the keyboard power on feature since the case was closed up under the desk. Originally it was set to any 2 keys, but that got figured out and was pushed too often, so I think I had to put in a password. Now my Lian Li has a door on it and I can hear them trying to get in it before they shut it off on me.

I haven't talked to him about the cards since they have been released. That setup was pre-release so I didn't ask him much about them. He did say he was seeing pretty much equal scores with the R600's crossfired on the ICFX3200 in 3d01/05 compared to an equivalent setup with 8800GTX SLI. 03/06 was down but that might be driver related because Nature in 03 and SM3.0 in 06 was way higher than the 8800gtx.

I'm working on getting a pair of x2900xt cards to test in my ICFX but don't know yet if it's going to come through.

Here's another table. Dimas is building these.

Praz, thanks for the pics man. I have a tech station that I got a couple of years ago form Jabtech, so I built my own using cutting boards. It worked out but it was too big. You just gave me other ideas incorporating an H20 rig with it.

Thanks Todd for creating this thread. I had a 3' x 4' slab of granite leftover from a counter top at work so I took it. I tried to use it for the project but it was too heavy, he he he.

:shake:

There are a lot of great ideas out and about. I would have built mine differently if it wasn't for working with the scraps I had on hand.

Granite would be trick as long as it didn't have to be moved. I had thought about marbleizing some MDF but just don't have the time.

Well, I got all my parts in and can start testing. I hooked everything up to the Techstation. Here are pics of it in action:






That's an old power LED I have hooked up to the HDD activity header. The DFI CFX3200-DR on the station has most of the rest of the stuff already onboard.


That old 56X CD-rom drive is loud!!!! I really need to put some padding in there soon. I can't wait until my DVD rom arrives Friday.




Setting up WinXP using my Samsung 32" LCD HDTV for a monitor. Works very well

I did make one addition to the station, but I didn't snap a pic of it. When I finally got XP installed and running I found the chipset was running about 50C and the GPU was at 52C. I took a Tt Silent Cat 92mm fan I had laying around and attached it to an old radio backstrap I had (think 1/2" wide strip of metal, about 7-8" long with holes in it). I then used the screw for the vid card to secure it, and now it blows cool air down on the vid card and the chipset. After temps went down to 41C for the chipset and 38C for the GPU. :spam:

Looks good. Keep an eye on hard drive temps. They can climb fast with no airflow.

I'll have to copy over some software for that. I'm still setting it up, but I'll keep an eye on it. I don't want that Raptor to fry :eek2: :sweat: :sad:

Does the difference between the large and small size tech stations really make it that much more expensive? And what would you use that room for? If you're using them for testing how much equipment do you need?!?! :tooth:

Anyways, what do you guys usually use when you test? I'm talking like: I use a PSU, 2 CD-RW drives, a floppy, and 4 hard drives.

Just curious.

The extra size is mostly for testing Extended ATX mobos (server size, etc). However, as Praz showed us earlier you can use it for watercooling gear, too. Yes, they're more expensive, but the trend here is that even the regular ones aren't worth the price. Build your own and make it as big as you need it, and for a fraction of the price.

On mine right now I have a CFX3200, 3200+, nv6200 vid card, PSU, DVD rom, one HDD and a floppy.

Oh, and Praz, the HDD temps are pretty good when I had the HDD on top of the PSU. Software said 31C, and that was with the 120mm fan angled to blow across the top of the board and below the top shelf.

As long as there is some air movement everything should be fine. It's when there is no movement and the drive has to really start doing some work that it can heat up pretty fast.

I was thinking of making some and selling them. Just wondering. I have some cool ideas. :tooth:

Post some pics here if you build one.

Looks awesome, put a nice coat of paint on it.

I've got two TechStations and have really enjoyed them.

I swapped the top and bottom plates on one of them to put the motherboard on the top level. Once I transferred the drive rail mounting holes to the other plate the assembly went very smooth. You lose the rear card bracket but unless you really move things around a lot it's not an issue.

Some people complain about the cost of the TechStation but when you figure how much time you spend on the design, getting the parts and building your own it's a relative bargain.

If I had more free time and a shop to build things in I would definitely build my own but until then the TechStation is a great deal for me.

For the HDD rails and parts, http://www.performance-pcs.com.

I like my rails better. Cost = $0.00.

I started building mine today (took a day off work so I had to keep myself busy)

Started with some 18mm MDF I had leftover from building my Subwoofer Enclosure, some "whatever thickness it was" dowel, a bunch of "Wallgrabber" screws (really wide thread, 'bites' really well) and a shop full of power tools :-)

I cut the dowel to length (I already have the MDF cut to the right size, I'm quick like that):

using the top shelf as a square edge to get the dowels equal length.

Now I've srewed it all together after countersinking the screws for a clean finish. I drilled into the dowels and the shelf so that I don't split anything... this is supposed to be "On The Cheap":


Now I spent about an hour trying to find something to use as motherboard standoffs, toyed with a few things, but I think my best idea, and cheapest, was using a hacksaw to cut some synthetic wine bottle corks into equal sized pieces. I glued them to the board after measuring with my motherboard template (which is spot-on the ATX standard, I used an ATX standard diagram to draw it out) Later when the glue's dry I'll drill a small pilot hole in each one using my template so just about any screw I use will hold a MB in place.:



I'm still toying with some leftovers from other projects and find some 6/32 threaded inserts I was going to use on my acrylic case... screw that (no pun intended) I'm gonna use them for the PCI-Card bracket!


An now the PCI bracket (carefully measured by holding an old PCI GPU up to it and guestimating the thickness of the MB and Slot) is all clamped together and glue's drying. I'll use nails, staples or an L bracket to secure it tighter when the glue is dry enough.


Roomy enough underneath to fit a PSU sideways and some stacked drives, along with some of the watercooling gear... the Rads goes up top with the MB, Pump down bottom and I'll cut some holes with a hole-saw for cabling etc. I might even paint the whole thing black... or pink... depends on if I'm feeling fruity or not ^^



So what do you guys think so far? This was all done while most of you were fast asleep 6 hours behind us :-)

Ha, I only just realised I did most of it sitting on the floor too, even though there's a workbench in the garage... lol I'm a dork...

Looks great - in fact, much better than mine. My big problem was using 1/2" CDX plywood I had sitting around, so it sarted to warp a little. The only MDF I have is some white laminated stuff I use to take pictures on. That would have looked great, but I can't part with it for now. Maybe if I get a Home Depot gift card for Father's Day I'll use it for that and rebuild mine.

That would most likely be Melamine. Home Depot should have it. Being relatively inexpensive it's a good choice for building these. Pick up some banding for the cut edges and glue it on with contact cement. A roller needs to be used to get a good bond. Instead of buying one for one time use use your wife's baking roller.

I'm gong to do another one. It will only be a single shelf to mount the board on. It's a shelf I had l had left over from another project. A piece of 3/4" and 1/2" MDF glued together and marbleized. I'll post pics when I get a board mounted on it.

Dude, that's an awesome idea. I was wondering how I'd address that problem with my case. Thanks.

I will do that if I get the funds.


I used a spare mobo as a template, and I used plastic bumpers/feet (from Ace Hardware) that are meant for the bottom of small appliances.

I was going to go to the hardware store to get some of those t_ski but I was afraid I'd run into someone from work, and since I was supposed to be sick today I had to figure something else out, plus there's nothing like free! I'm actually thinking of Hacking an old case apart and mounting the motherboard tray to the top shelf, but that's a later project... I'll stick with what I have so far:



still gotta put the thread inserts in for the PCI bracket, (shoulda done it before I glued it, now I have to cut a piece of wood to fit under the whole thing so I can hammer the threads in without breaking anything ^^) This weekend I'll be transferring my rig over to this thing so I can paint the inside chassis of my Lian Li... fun fun

Oh, if anyone needs there are PDFs with diagrams on the ATX specs at http://www.formfactors.org I really found helpful cause I didn't have a spare mobo around to use as a template...

pretty sweet guys...I need about 4 of these...kinda watching all you ideas and getting some clues before I try my hand at them...