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Behold the Lego PC!


Reaif
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Anyhow, I was sitting around last night wondering what to do besides try uselessly to sleep, so I pulled out my old Legos and decided to get creative with an extra mini-itx motherboard I had lying around. Here is what became of 6 wasted hours.

(Bit of a disclaimer here: Looks can be deceiving. It really is a computer.)

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More pics

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One Thing I would like to ask anyone who sees the pictures is which character on the chassis is your favorite? This project was somewhat of a walk down memory lane for me and the nostalgia was running high.

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It's OK, I guess... I know it's made out of old random parts, but the rainbow warrior effect is kind of strong here. Sorry, but it's really off-putting.

Now this is a LEGO computer case, or if you prefer, there's this nice little building-styled one.

Me? If I was to go for a LEGO computer case, Technic frames would be the way. Totally customizable, capable of holding pounds of weight per beam, and completely compatible with all other pieces, so I could make it anything I want.

If only I knew enough about putting computer parts together... :|

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The ventilation is actually pretty good. I have the power supply's vents completely isolated so that it actually is very cool while running. As for the rest of it, it have some technic blocks that are open enough for it. The motherboard was designed for cramped little cases with little ventilation. You can see the via M series board for yourself if you like.

As far as anti static, no. It doesn't have any of that kind of stuff. Mostly it is just exactly what you see.

Lastly, I realize it isn't pretty lol. When I was starting it out I attempted to make it look pretty, but I realized shortly that I don't have enough blocks to really do the one color thing. I was thinking of tearing it down again and trying to reorganize the existing pieces to look better. The original purpose was to make it as slim as legos could be. One thing I've noticed about lego cases in general is that they are huge. This one is pretty small considering that most blocks are super fat.

When I first had it finished before putting some dudes on it, my wife was saying that I should spice it up and have a castle battle on top. Figured because it has s-video on it that I might hook it up to my tv... Course, if I put an extra nic in it I could use it as my router instead...

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Ahem. I was thinking of how mugly this thing was, and seeing as how I had already done tons of searching for pieces, it would be fairly easy to deconstruct and reconstruct it to look a little nicer. So here it is. Basically the main changes are that it has more empty space inside, it looks better, and the power button is way better. It's the little clear block with lights in it. I have a picture with and without flash so it can be seen better.

An interesting fact about this, is that while I was building it, my wife saw the thing on the side and told me it resembled a metroid. I was a little surprised at first, but if you really stretch your imagination, you can kind of see it. It was just a random design I was putting in to make it less boring, but hey, I'm good with that.Do enjoy.

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The colors are still kind of "eek" but the overall structure looks much more organized. The best part is, you can still put a little activity on the top, like your first version. Might I recommend a Metroid theme, with a Samus Aran mini-fig fighting Ridely? There are quite a few dragon and dinosaur parts you could use.

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Thanks guys. Once again I did run into the problem of not having enough colors to do everything I wanted, but alas, I'm probably not going to buy any more blocks. Perhaps I will try to redo the top half and put something else there like a picture or spelling out a word or something.

My most favorite part of all is that because I didn't cut any pieces or glue anything, I can tear it down and build it up again as many times as I want. I'll probably call it quits for now, but maybe if I get bored again I'll whip up something better. The one thing that make this the hardest is the fact that I've been using a standard sized hard drive. If I had an extra laptop one to spare, The overall size would diminish significantly.

For example, see that red section on top? That would be gone entirely with a smaller drive.

Edit:

Hey Prophet. You put together computer hardware, right? And I can put together LEGO structural frames, so...

Collab?

I know this wasn't directed at me, but I can definitely see why Prophet would say no, even if the original offer was in joking. It would be really hard to put the hardware into a case that was designed without having the hardware on hand. Even if you had the exact measurements, it is still quite difficult to see where it would need to go. Of course, that is assuming that you want to be as conservative with space as possible. If you were to just make an atx case like what was in one of the other pictures posted, it would undoubtably work for quite a few configurations, but there would be loads of wasted space and bricks.

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Yeah, I guess it wasn't too obvious a joke, but I though I'd give it a try.

So, Metroid battle scene on the top? That sunken part where the fan is would be perfect for putting Ridley in. Have him face to face with Samus.

That's a pretty good idea, though I have to admit, I don't really have anything that could qualify as Ridley... or Samus for that matter. I would have to buy more parts, which I can't do at the moment.

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Also The Damned, give him some credit! I think it came out looking really snazzy!

I'm used to trying to run with guys like this, this, this and this, which tends to force you to be more critical of your own and others work. It wasn't being harsh with him, but honest and forthright. In the end, he decided to improve upon it and he came out with a better piece of work for it. It's like all the musicians here not really giving any honest comments about each others work: "Hey, awesome, I love it!... (it's actually terrible, but I don't want to hurt his/her feelings)".

All this lego is making me nostalgic for OCR's Blockland sessions.

I remember that. Did we ever save any pics of that huge house I built on top of the dresser? It took me an hour to make that, and I still wasn't done by the end.

And yes, where is Silverwolf these days?

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Man blockland was fun. I remember the space setup with the infinite road (or was that a different server?).

I kinda wish I had the money to go and buy the newest version but I doubt many people here would be playing it anyway.

Of course we could just find a old version and play that way. ;)

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