Recently I finished my latest project, building a wall mounted PC. This is something I have thought about for a long time, and I finally got around to doing it. I even went above and beyond by adding a wall mounted TV and some nifty LED lights. Even though I’m not the best handy man, I am pretty happy with how it all turned out. I put together the above video showing the final product along with some commentary on the things I learned when building it. I will go over those lessons learned here as well as link to so items that might help you with your own project.
- Mounting your PC: I had a specific place that I wanted my PC, but it did not line up with the studs in my wall. I chose to mount some spray painted 2×4’s across the studs which came me a lot of flexibility when mounting my PC. Be sure you have a good idea of how you are going to mount your PC before you get started.
- Mounting material: I chose to just use a piece of scrap wood from HomeDepot to mount my components to. I’ve seen people use things like acryllic boards, but those are really expensive and I like the solid black look once I painted the board.
- Mounting the motherboard: Typically motherboards use a M3 screw, but if you buy a traditional M3 motherboard screw, it will be to short to drill through your mounting piece to secure your mobo. Check out the links below for the screws I used. They are long enough to go through the wood and along with three hex nuts, I was able to mount the board a safe distance from the wood.
- Securing the video card: Typically what you want to do here is use two PCIE risers to mount your video card separate from the motherboard. I chose to instead build a bracket to support my card. This is kind of the lazy approach, I will admit, but it worked fine for me.
- Securing the power supply: This is another very important task. The power supply is heavy, so you will need to be careful when mounting this item. I chose to use some L brackets to create a kind of shelf to hold the power supply. This along with some twine secured the item to the board. I’ve seen in other builds that if you were careful enough, you could line up the L brackets so that you can secure the power supply directly to them. If you go this route, be sure to get a type of screw called #6-32. This is typically the type of screw used to secure power supplies.
- Mounting the hard drives: At the back of the hard drives, you will find mounting holes which your M3 screws will fit just fine. It was pretty difficult to drill and get all four holes lined up, so I chose to instead secure just two screws per device. This seems to be just fine since these devices are not very heavy at all.
Items you may need (referral links)
- Power Button: http://amzn.to/1Raldz6
- Remote controlled LED lights: http://amzn.to/1RallOQ
- M3 screws: http://amzn.to/1SpfxDO
- M3 Hex Nut: http://amzn.to/1Ggl9Yt
- M3 Washer: http://amzn.to/1JVa6v0
- PCIE Riser: http://amzn.to/1J4GzP7
- L brackets: http://amzn.to/1Rap3Iy
- #6-32 screws: http://amzn.to/1GgnX7U
