Apartment Therapy Unplugged | DIY Supercomputer Found in Office Lobby

DIY Supercomputer Found in Office Lobby

Woah! Guess how many computers are in this one wall-mounted case. Six! Found in the North Carolina office of designer Fredrik Perman, the acrylic case also holds six batteries, upward-blowing LED-lit fans to keep everything cool (there are no sides or a top to help with ventilation). The monitor on the right shows off Perman's company's render farm. More shots and deets from Perman after the jump...

The inner back of the casing is covered in sheets of diamond plate, the frame is aluminum and the cover is a custom cut sheet of acrylic.

We left the bottom, top and both sides open for ventilation. We mounted 6 LED fans inside the casing blowing upwards (since heat rises). We originally had 6 Intel Pentium 4 processors on the motherboards, which were later updated to Intel Dual Core processors.

We excluded the PCI/AGP graphic cards and used the internal motherboard graphic processor to save space in the case. There were no need for extra strenght [sic] graphic processors anyways, simply processor speed and RAM.

We added 10 X 12" Blue Cathode light strips hidden behind the aluminum frame. We wall mounted a 15" LCD screen, along with a keyboard and track ball. We built the 8 port KVM switch into the wall (which also controlled our file server and phone server on the opposite side of the wall — our server room).
via Device
Photos: Frederik Perman