Computer Setup

Cost of Build: i3-3220 CPU: $109.99 GTX-660: $180.00 MSI Z77IA-E53 Mobo: $109.99 Crucial 1x8GB DDR3L FREE w/mobo Scorpio Black 7200RPM 500GB HDD: $62.19 SS ST45SF 450W PSU: $67.83 2x 80mmFan Grills: $3.75 On/Off Button: $6.28 PCI Riser Cable: $3.64 New 50 Cal Ammo Can:$27.99 92mm Fan: $11.55

What did you use to cut the ammo can? I've tried using a carbide tip dremel and had a hell of time and it looks like crap to boot

I used a portable jigsaw with a metal cutting blade. To get the blade started, I drilled a few holes that the blade would fit into. I finished up with a metal file.

Would you consider starting a business?

Building custom PCs for money would be a dream, but with college and everything I'm a little short on time. But feel free to PM me with requests, I am totally open to the idea.

I'd totally buy a 50 cal case! XD

To give yourself more room, consider getting a case for night vision devices. They're typically taller.

Or 25mm cases, their often available where you'd find cases for 7.62 and 12.7

40mm would be best, but maybe a little large depending on what you're looking for.

How many rounds do those hold? They feed the Mk19, yeah?

Man, this is big business. I know some people who would like a portable computer, but don't want a laptop. I would like to have one too if i had the money for it. Good luck.

Dude. make a section for requests and do them as you can :D

Nice, I can't afford them but good luck man, you have a pretty good talent.

This should be exactly when you realize you can make a lot of money fast and maybe even help pay for school and incidentals. Who knows maybe youll even start a business and dont even need to finish school because you obviously already have the skills you need!

I would pay a lot of money for something like this.

My mate Brent did this his IO Shield isn't as good as yours, well done!

You've got a temporary and huge opportunity here from Coolcomputersetups, jump on it. Also, shutupandtakemymoney.

I would be interested in commissioning a similar build.

Awesome, thanks for the follow up (from a fellow college student)!

College tinkerer here, always wanted to do stuff like this for the sake of doing it, too poor.

Thank you for helping with the readability of this post

That looks SO much worse on alien blue. It's over a screen and a half high. In portrait. On iPad.

Sorry! I kind of instinctively assume everyone's on a desktop... I've never had the luxury of having a mobile device myself. Rest assured that it looks better than a blob of text for those of us on desktops/laptops.

No probs, you had no way of knowing, and since the majority of Coolcomputersetups isn't on alien blue, you've helped way more people than you've slightly inconvenienced.

Budget? Why can't he just title it $600 budget build? $600 is not exactly cheap for some of us

For a gaming computer, $600 is budget. You really can't drop below $500 without severely impacting game performance, as you're usually skimping on the GPU at that point.

How well would the above run skyrim, for instance?

Whoa $28 for an ammo can? I literally throw hundreds of these away in the scrap bin every week.

I would love to have one or two or twenty! It would be nifty to store parts and fountain pen supplies and things in them.

Yeah I'd like to have one or two also as a lunch box or something, but that'd be stealing gov't property, even though they're just selling them for scrap metal.

Government wont miss one or two would they? :P

They're pretty useful. I have two by my desk that I store things in.

...you what. Can I have like...ten? There's a number of projects that I want to do that ammo cans are perfect for.

I wish, but it'd be illegal. Stealing gov't property n shit, even though they're selling it for scrap.

Well if you ever find a way to take some home, let us know...

Don't they have disposal stores around you?

Geocachers will gladly pay you for them.

Would you consider making an instructable of this? I have a few extra ammo cans laying around and need to build a new pc soon and would love to try this.

I was going to ask about the heat produced by the form factor, but 50 is not that bad I was expecting 60 or 70. Good job on making this build and being super creative.

That CPU temp is actually not bad at all. I would love to know the temps for the GPU though.

It's like the ultimate LAN rig.

I've never been to a LAN but I would walk in with OP's contraction and bullets around my neck.

Bullets being USB pen drives.

Watch out for the double sided tape, over a few months the heat cycling and temperature will cause it to lose adhesion, the hard drive will come loose and fall into the case.

That was actually a concern; it is really strong right now but I wondered what kind of impact heat would have. Any recommendations to replace the tape?

Small L-shaped steel brackets with screw holes for the mounting screws on the hard drive, attached to the lid with two-part mixture, 5-minute epoxy? Roughen the surface of the bracket and the part you're gluing on the lid first, let it cure for 24 hours.

Wouldn't the adhesive in the velcro have the same issue?

If you don't mind permanently attaching velcro to the HDD, you can use two-part epoxy to attach the "loop" part of the velcro to the lid, and epoxy again to attach the hook part of the velcro covering the top surface of the HDD. Let it cure for 24 hours before mounting.

Oh yeah. sorry I was baked earlier.

I have my SSD velcroed in my desktop. It's hanging from the top of the HDD Bays. I didn't have a mount for an ssd. It's been months and mine is still there. ^{I hope.}

Awesome! What are your temps like? Doesn't look like there's much air flow there.

40C when not doing much, 50C when gaming. So it does run hot, but it isn't the worst.

I would love to have those temps on my laptop when I game. I reach up to 88C after a while.

I suggest opening it up and cleaning out your fans

I clean it about monthly cause I have it everywhere anyways, but its also a single laptop fan trying to cool an i7 and HD4000 integrated while I play TF2 and Borderlands 2 a lot.

I have the same one, GT 540M except it has an i5. I paid the premium to get that GT 540, it was well worth it. The laptop doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles but it's solid as hell and I'm very satisfied with it.

Nice, I may fix the charging port and maybe even the screen, wipe the hard drive and just use it as a makeshift gaming rig until I can get a desktop built. Or, maybe even cannibalize the internals and rig up something similar to OP's ammo can setup. I was able to run Spec Ops: The Line on the highest settings without any issue and Saints Row the Third on nearly the highest settings without much lag, so I'd hate to let those perfectly good parts go to waste.

I wish I had a small dedicated card in my laptop. I had to rush to Best Buy to get one for school and the like so I just grabbed a 17 inch HP with a i7 which was their best and newest.

I was in a similar situation, I had to grab something cheap on the spot for work when the Acer stopped charging. I did a little research and ended up going down to Best Buy and bought an HP with a 17" screen, AMD A8-550M 2.1GHz w/ Radeon HD graphics, 4gb RAM and a 700gb hard drive for not a whole lot of dollars (but still more than OP's build). It works pretty well for light gaming, haven't tried anything from the past few months/year or so to really stretch it's legs though. Like I mentioned in another comment I may fix the Acer and use it as a makeshift gaming rig until I can get a desktop built or I may cannibalize the internals and rig something up like OP's ammo can setup. I'd like something small/portable like that to take with me since I travel a lot work work, and either way would be cheaper than buying a gaming laptop.

I have an Asus with an i7 and a ATi something 2gb, while raiding in summer it frequently cracked 100C, before I got a lap desk I got burnt on the thighs a few times. On the upside now no hair grows there.

Thats the exact laptop and gpu I used to game on before I got a desktop. Had the i5 though. I remember even after cleaning the fans it still kept crashing sometimes during playing Planet Side 2. I, too, pointed the fan at it.

My laptop was getting much hotter than his, and the inside of it has got to be melted at this point. You can hear the fan try and spin, but no extra air comes out of the side as far as I can tell.

I get to 90 just by watch you tube in 1080p on my laptop

Me too... Back before I made a cooling setup for it out of 4 blocks of Duplo and a usb fan it broke 100C a few times.

After going to a desktop, I'm never buying a laptop with the intent of gaming with it again.

I never went in with the intention of gaming, but I couldn't afford a rig soon after so I was stuck.

If it's an intel chip they will hit 100c before they go into thermal shutdown to prevent damage. I've hit high 80's and low 90's on my macbook 4,1 while playing portal, and minecraft or encoding video. I just prop it up so air circulates all under and it's fine.

Its an HP with a ivybridge i7 in it. The battery is designed as a bit of a stand already to prop it up, but the exhaust almost goes straight down, where the intake would grab it..

I don't think that should happen man

I've asked quite a few places and its able to reach 95c before I should start to worry, as long as I get good airflow. So until I can get Best Buy to finally send me a god damned Thermaltake laptop cooler, I got case fans to help regulate airflow.

I wouldn't call that hot. That's well within tolerance and actually pretty good for a computer that size.

Sounds a hell of a lot like my old Xeon x3360 that I'm running... Lol

WHAT IS THIS A FUCKING PEPSI COMMERCIAL

I'm sure it's for scale in some way, so we can all calm down. I'm wondering why the word 'can' is in the description since it wasn't used for any part of the actual build.

The box is called an ammo can.

Thanks for clearing that up, but why call a box a can? Rectangles are the same thing as circles, sure, but this seems incorrect.

You'd have to ask the military that.

Military here. We're stupid when it comes to names.

Lol, down votes for not knowing something. Typical coolcomputersetups. My grandpa was a ww2 vet and I asked him that once, he said that since some ammo came in wooden boxes and some in metal boxes, it was less confusing to call the metal ones cans.

Vet here, some ammo still comes in wooden boxes, and some comes in metal boxes, which we then call cans. To differentiate from the boxes.

You have no idea how much I appreciate that. Both the answer and the sympathy. Too much downvoting lately on some of my better comments for no good reason makes me feel like I'm the only person who never heard of something, and coolcomputersetups's supposed to be the place where you can always find that other guy who hadn't either.

I know that when I was in the military we called the ammo box's ammo cans.

Can is short for canister

Very cool. Where did you find that power button? And that fan guard thing bolted on the outside?

I found the power button off of ebay by searching "momentary LED switch" and found one that was meant to be something for a car. It's LED is labeled for 12V, but 5V from the mobo HDD indicator only makes it slightly dimmer. The fan guards are both bolted on the outside. The fan for the psu was super glued on the inside of the psu case and then the screws were removed. I then placed the fan guard on the case and screwed it into the fan (that is inside the psu). This also securely mounts the psu in the case. The guard for the gpu is just bolted to the case using stubby bolts.

Keep submitting the stuff you make. This is truly incredible and extremely affordable. I bet you could make some easy money selling creations like this to coolcomputersetupsors alone. Very nice work.

If anyone wants to buy it, let me know; I'm a college student so any profit lets me fund this hobby more! If not I'll just be playing Bioshock Infinite :P

You have a price point?

PM me with offer if you are interested

Sure! also a new coolcomputersetups subscribed to!

Sound great man! a little warning though read the rules!

A build of the highest caliber.

Now that, that is cool.

How did you get the power cable to the front of the power supply? Is the power supply sitting flush with the front of the case or is there a gap for the cord? Cool build. You have inspired me :D

Thanks! I opened up the PSU, removed the IEC (power) connector and switch and manually wired it up to another IEC power connector at the back of the case. Doing this allowed me to have the PSU mounted flush with the front of the case. The length of the mobo plus the width of the psu equaled exactly the internal dimensions of the case; if the connector and switch were still there, there would have been not enough room.

You modded a PSU? You got big balls, my man.

Is modifying the PSU safe long-term?

THIS WOULD BE THE SICKEST STEAM BOX!

My only regret is not getting a larger HDD, all my steam games currently take up ~400GB (and are, of course, installed).

I have a 500GB HDD and have for many years now. The one thing I dream if is installing all of my games. That's absolutely not going to happen though.

I've always wanted to do something like this ever since I saw one on Tech TV's "The Screensavers"

Can you put in links to where you got all of the supplies that u used for the computer

I have been wanting to to this with an 81mm Mortar ammo can for a few years.

Probably not to a 50cal lol.

That is pretty sweet.

Great build I love it!

This is really cool! Good work!

This is badass .. nice job.

Seems like it would hold a lot of heat

Nice build, I just had to check out a small 7.62mm ammo can I have and just can't fit a mini-ITX/Micro-ATX inside! Gutted.

That's really cool. I'm worried about the tape- it will work great, but heat degrades adhesives like that and could eventually give out which would drop the drive.

I really hope that doesn't happen, I'll just have to keep an eye on it. And it will only fall a few millimeters onto that nice soft comfy ribbon cable bed.

It was cool until i saw tape

The double sided tape or the aluminum tape? The aluminum tape is for ducting purposes to get better airflow throughout the case. The double sided tape was partially due to laziness, and partially because it would take maybe 10 more hours of labor + parts + shipping time to "properly" mount some items.

I have never seen anything like this. Truly creative bookmarkd.

Crazy idea to expand. Mount a small tv to one side, then attach a cradle to the bottom to hold a bluetooth keyboard like this and a bluetooth trackpad like this . Now you have a fully mobile computer setup that only needs 2 power cords and one video cable!

I'd love to do this for a home server build (mainly so I wouldn't have to deal with the gpu).

If there is actually enough interest I have the tools and free time, just need a source for the containers and then what size ammo container you want and specs, and of course money.....

The inside is so ghetto; i love it!

I generally don't like pepsi, but that first pick is really making me crave one for some reason.

Funnily that was the only can of soda in the house when I went home for the weekend. It expired 2 years ago...

So, can ya fry eggs on that thing or what?

Now you got me searching my dad's basement for his old ammo can. I really like this idea and I want to try it out. Any tips?

Don't use a dremel, things you assume are square aren't, and holes for mounting items never line up.

Im not sure if this has been asked and exp[lained anywhere, but if you had the option to use SSD, would you? Surely the harddisk was used due to cost factor yes?

Obviously price no object an SSD is way better than a HDD; my laptop has a SSD and loads games way faster. I totally forgot how slow a HDD was. That said, a 512GB SSD is in the 300 dollar or so range, and I would much rather sink that money into a better GPU and an i5 processor.

That's incredibly well done. I can't even wrap my head around how you planned/organized all this into everything fitting. Must have been a pain in the ass. Perfect for portability. Good job dude.

The biggest part of the puzzle was the power supply; I originally had a cheap 10 dollar after rebate corsair power supply that I decided and has at an angle inside the case, but I really didn't like the whole setup from a thermal and safety point of view. Then I found the silverstone power supply (which costed quite a bit more than I wanted to pay, 65 dollars vs what a 10 or 20 dollar power supply could do) that when modified fit perfectly in the case.

I going to stick with my Corsair C70 Green.

Now take this to the airport.

Damn OP, good work on this rig. Loving that you got it under 600 bucks lol. Mine came out to 900+ on Cyber Monday a couple of years. You have definitely inspired me to make one like this!

The thing is now I want MOAR POWER!!! I was a laptop gamer before this and I simply did not realize how much detail games have when you begin to crank up the settings.

Oh yeah, I know that feeling. The first game I played on my PC was Skyrim (As it had just came out the month I built my rig) and it suggested the highest setting for default. I have not looked back since! From what I could tell from your parts list, you have a nice little rig, so it should cover you for the next five years or so as far as graphics. If you upgrade though, you might want a bigger ammo can.

I am wondering if it is feasible to do a water-cooled version where you don't cut the can. Something like if you rotated the board and power supply 90 degrees to be accessible when you open the lid.

That'd be very cool; space is already tight so IDK if a small radiator would be able to fit; maybe some sort of mineral oil PC would be feasible?

This is so fucking metal! Badass!

Damn, this might be the coolest build design I have ever seen. Wish I had one. Great job man.

You should make some money doing this!

It is very crowded, but the main goal was to build a tiny computer that could easily brought to LAN parties and such.

But it does perform well enough? I could see a few people carrying those around it's about the size of a game console. What do you use for a display?

I'm kind of living in a bunch of places right now, so the screen is whatever is available, typically a TV (sucks, I know).

Did you have to build it out first and then put it in? Or are you that amazing that you can squeeze your hand in there and plugs stuff in.

Mounting the motherboard was the hardest part since I had to tighten the mounting bolts at the bottom of the case, but since it was the first component to go in it wasn't too bad.

How well does double-sided tape work to hold the GPU? I'd guess that it works for now but it seems like the kind of thing that would degrade over time, especially with the kind of temps that it deals with in its environment.

Love the build, but I have to be that guy.

I posted in both, I wasn't sure which to post in. Here seems to generally be completed builds with monitors and everything, but there are also just a lot of builds of just the tower. Buildapc is generally just plagued with people asking what parts to buy, but also has completed builds.

This place is the same. Like I said, love the build. Custom stuff is great, and you did an awesome job.

But dude.... It's on a table.

So, showing off a cool computer isn't allowed here now? Well, shit.

You know, your statement is exactly why coolcomputersetupss go down the shitter.

Thank you for being that guy. You are absolutly right about the whole "this is why coolcomputersetupss turn shitty" thing.

See ya in the frontpage! Congratulations to Pepsi for free ads

THATS SO SEXY!! Great build man! As a military buff id love to build something like that!

I've seen other "ammo box builds" and i still always like them. shit i think i have an ammo can slightly smaller than this. makes me wonder why i spent so much money an a silverstone case.....

Yes there is. He has already said, gtx660

Oh right. i guess that big gray cable is the pci extender.

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