Man of Many Builds

[dieseldog49]

Ok i have been AWOL from the forums for a couple weeks due to black friday and the surrounding fire sales/great used deals. And I have a ton of new stuff from mouses to mobos to play with and 4 builds I need to get underway but first I needed to address my work area as I had been working in a sort of adhoc space mad up of a wooden desk and some plastic folding tables which had a bad habit of conducting static . So I needed something new and cheap. Specs would be as follows

8ft x 3ft and a counter height of aprox. 38 inches

Budget: Cheap!

For materials I opted for a 4x8 piece of white melamine particle board and had them cut 12 inches off the top at Home Depot to be used for a backing. Cost $35

For the frame and legs plain old 2x4's at $2.50 a whack Bought 14 of 'em so another $35 ( I had to go through about 70 to find good ones that weren't bent or twisted)

Screws were 2.5in square drive wood screws that I had left over from a previous project

Here is the space the bench will be occupying



Please dont comment on the carpet it came with the house when I bought it this summer and I am not replacing it till I get another puppy and house train him

Next up is building the legs which were made by clamping 2 2x4's together and the screwing them together and cutting to length
Also a huge thanks to my brother in law Tanner for helping me with this project!



The end result


Next up is joining the legs


Nothing is more important than square when it comes to this stuff!


A great way to check for consistency between legs



Next was getting all of this stuff into the basement and throwing it together




Then it was just installing the top and a shelf put at a height with storing cases underneath in mind


After all of that with just store bought lumber the whole thing is just under a 1/8 of an inch out of square I couldn't be happier for $70 and a days worth of work!
(Also sorry for some of the out of focus pictures these were taken with my Evo 3D, a proper SLR is on my to get list though)
Ok now onto the builds

Build 1 is for a buddy and it was kind of a challenge for me, I wanted to see if we could build a 2500k gaming rig for under $500 and it turns out you can!

Specs:
2500k i5 SB Proc
Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3 Micro ATX Mobo
Asus 1gb 5830 Video Card
OCZ 700 watt PSU
Samsung 7200rpm 1tb HDD
Corsair H50 Self Contained Liquid Cooler
Antec P180 Steel case
8GB OCZ 1333 Ram (2x4gb)
Asus Wifi Card


Obviously alot of this stuff is used (and he is using Ubuntu for his OS) but man I am still super happy with the specs of this system for the money its just awesome.

Build 2 is for a client who wanted a great office PC to run deal monitors and multitask alot but he wanted something custom and quality.

Specs:

AMD 1055T
ASUS M4A89GTD Pro USB 3 Mobo
OCZ Fatality 550w PSU
MSI 2gb N430gt Video Card
1.5tb Seagate HDD
8Gb Patriot 1333 Ram (2x4gb)
Lian Li PC-7fn all aluminum case
2x23 inch 1080 p monitors
Win 7 and Microsoft Office ect...

3rd build will be a new graphics design computer for the family buisness

Specs:

AMD 1090 Thuban Black
Gigabyte M68MT-S2P
8Gb Gskill 1600 Ram (2x4gb)
Antec White P180 mini case
Seasonic X750w PSU
Video Card is still undecided, Suggestions?
2x250gb 7200rpm HDD's (one as a clone)
Dual monitors (once again undecided on which models)


Then the last build....My build Since I got a offer for my last build that I couldnt refuse I have been running on my laptop for the last 3 weeks and it isn't cutting it so I have been collecting parts and I wont post the full specs yet as they are not concrete but here as some highlights

2700K (should be int he mail monday)
My Ninja Lane Asus z68 Deluxe Mobo
16 GB of Gskill 1866 (4x4gb)
Corsair 1000HX PSU
Water Cooling (this is part of whats holding me up)
Video Cards unknown (waiting till the beginning of the new year)
Case, well heres a hint

[Redmax]

Very nice. reminds me of when I built my workbenches in the garage. Granted they aren't freestanding but they are strong.

[dieseldog49]

Yeah the wall behind is concrete so it had to be free standing plus I wanted it to be moveable if need be (also woo for my 100th post on ninjalane!)

[dieseldog49]

Small update had a nice photo opportunity

[Redmax]

Nice. you got your 2700K finally

[utnorris]

I am liking that work bench. Looks pretty simple and yet does the job quite well.

[dieseldog49]

Ok so I have been planning on building a new desk ever since me and my brother in law built me a new PC work bench (Pictured above)


Using Just 2x4's and some melamine we built a super sturdy bench for about $120 and I couldnt be happier with it. Since then I have been looking at my current work/play station with a little bit of disgust, its made up out of 3 seperate desks none of which are exactly the same height. Further more due to my affinity for eyefinity and large PC cases I am finding that my little work nook is getting more and more cramped and cluttered. Heres a pic of the space I am working with please excuse the mess.





So the new plan is to gut the whole thing and create a desk that wraps around the entire area Like so (sorry for the small paint image)



Then I am going to wrap the top of the desk with custom printed Mechwarrior themed vinyl using my wide format digital printer. So on to the construction phase. I have to give a ton of thanks to the two guys working with me (these or their online handles), Talster91 aka my old room mate and Dreyco Valentin who is my brother in law. With out them theres no way I could get these kind of projects done with the quality and speed we do together, We are also building Talster91 a new desk for the gaming rig I helped him build. So here is the start today, we are using birch plywood for the top and kiln dried 2x4's for the frame, using a overlapping design to interlock the tops and frames together. So today we ripped the plywood and tomorrow we will build the frames.



Dreyco



Talster91


Also this arrived today



More updates tomorrow!

[dieseldog49]

Day 2

Ok Most of today is dedicated to Talsters desk build Which is specced to be L60xW30 with a 30 inch height

For legs on both desks are a L shape made of two 2x4's screwed together gives great stuctural support.

Next up us cutting and laying out the lower braces and the leg spacing.


When building your own desk its important to have the imagination and vision to know what you want as Talster demonstrates

Next up is setting up the top box


Next up is checking to see if the frame is square.

[dieseldog49]

Damn its a inch out but dont worry theres a easy way to fix that!
Tie Downs are like duct tape for woodworking


Next up is cutting the top to length, we will be anchoring to the top to keep the desk in square.


For everything to look good he mapped out his screws and is pre drilling then using a cone bit for pre seating the heads.


Next up is taking a router to all the edges for that smoothed finished look.


Ready for sanding and staining

Also these showed up on my door woo!

Throw some stain on and thats all for today

[dieseldog49]

Ok guys sorry I was down a day more than I expected ( the multi-player demo of Mass Effect 3 may have had something to do with that :rolleyes: ) Ok so first off I want to thank Dreyco again without him this desk would not have happened and the next stage wouldn't even be possible. Ok down to business, to start with I happened to snag a great deal on a 720p projector which I had been wanting for the launch of ME3 for Xbox 360 (yes I play it on console thats where all my saved games are) so we will be starting there. Parts involved are

Optoma 536 720p 2700 lumen projector

Elite Screen 100 inch 16:9 manual screen

Ceiling Mount For projector

Plan is to recess the screen into the ceiling and then re-route the surround sound and video/console equipment.

First off got to get all electronics out of the room as sheetrock dust is not good for electronics.


Next up is measuring the screen housing and cutting the hole


That done we just put some hooks in the floorboards and time to try a test pull

Threw the projector up and time to see how it looks

[dieseldog49]

Ok that done on to the desk, Cleared out all of the old stuff



With a blank slate its time to get to work



The key to building a desk with lumber like this is to never pre cut, make each cut to the specific spot so its always spot on and you can compensate for imperfections in the wood.



With the first section built (it will be the only complete section with 4 legs each section after this with be missing at least one leg to create a open front for chair and legroom)





Now we are joining the crossmember with a T bracket



We are double butting our legs for extra support



To limit flex we added a cross support.

[dieseldog49]

Frame is complete



Cutting the tops to fit.



Test fitting the tops and monitors







Next up we mark out the monitor slots and our wire slots

[dieseldog49]

The mounts slide into the slots and get 4 lag bolts into the 2x4 below







Next up we router the holes and screw down the top.





Time to start putting things back together







The next stage is the vinyl top but I have to wait until we change our machine out next week also the other part of the project is being drawn up in CAD I will post something up soon enough.

[dieseldog49]

Ok so the next phase in the build involves incorporating a built in gaming PC plus my surround sound, Xbox360 and PS3 plus cooling all of it in a efficient manner. but in the mean time I scrounged a WinTV Card from Haupage off a old PC and ran the antenna and bam I have a DVR and HDTV to my projector!


Also my longer cables came in so cleaner desk!

You will notice Craig Feurgeson from the late late show (DVR FTW!)

Ok so when I installed my projector I was left with a 42 inch Vizio 1080p LCD with no where to go, I sure as hell wasn't going to sell it as I would eat my shorts so I decided I didn't need a whiteboard anymore and used a old wll mount I had kicking around and BOOM



It kinda feels like I am living in a sports bar now.

[dieseldog49]

Sorry for the day late update my new wide format printer showed up a day early so it's been a little crazy here but it means vinyl day is moving ever closer (gotta get some actual work done with it first though) here is a preview of some stuff to come



This just came in I will be posting pictures and a full review of it later

Annnnd then theres this addition to my monitor setup















Psych! thats just here to complete another triple monitor setup in the house