BESTÅ PC Case (IKEA Hacking)
This is a story how I converted an IKEA BESTÅ TV stand into an ATX PC case, combining those 2 items into one!
Previously I just turned that case sideways and put it into the cabinet, however this had an undesirable effect of closing all the ventilation holes, and even with the slightest of loads, the poor soul was grumbling, all of its fans spinning furiously, doing double duty as a 800W heater and scaring the neighbour’s cat.
So after moving to a new apartment I decided to place the PC parts directly in the cabinet, making wholes where needed. I also wanted to go one step further, and add extra big and silent fans for the cabinet itself. In the end, when everything was put together the PC was actually working and was way more silent than before.
So lets see how that idea became a reality.
First off I dissasembled the case and its component parts, making sure to not forget where all the cables go. A normal PC case has waay too many cables. And if you forget and put a cable where you shouldn’t, you’re gonna have a baad day.
Next, because I really didn't have a plan how to do this, I started planing. Yes, that’s right, I started to think how to put it back together after everything was soundly disassembled. You would think that could never work, but I have a lot of experience figuring out stuff after that fact so I generally manage.
I already baught a large 120mm Noctura Fan and decided the best place to stick it was at the bottom. The idea was it would pull air from bellow the cabinet, as air tends to be coldest near the floor. And I would make a hole at the side so that hot air would have a nice place to get out of.
Other people’s projects that I’ve researched before have just screwed the parts into the wood, or bought some special casing for them. I was doing my PC BESTA case partly because of budget constraints, so I thought I’d go as frugal as possible and try to cut, saw and bang the parts and fastening I would need out of the frame of the old case. I was merciless, the poor fellow didn’t stand a chance!
But through its suffering and anguish I managed to bang up (literally) some useful parts to hold the electronics. And they had the virtue of being the precise size and fit.
Next I made some more openings in the cabinet itself for the fan and the outlet. Covered the outlet with a grill, salvaged from the remnants of the PC case, and while I was at it I also separated the start and reset buttons and the hdd and power diods. Had to drilled some more small holes in the side for them but it was well worth it.
Having built most of the “case” itself now I just needed to add a small casing to hold the storage disks and I could start putting the PC parts together. It was surprisingly easy to do that as the mounts from the case were exactly the ones used before, so assembly was just putting the parts and connecting the cables themselves.
And after some small mishaps with the cables I connected it to the TV and lo and behold the machine was alive and sending coherent pixels to the screen!
Great! All I need now is to wrap it all up put it on the wall. Easy-peasy. I was planning to put all of the other electronics in that case as well so it was going to contain an Airport Router, a Raspberry Pi, an Apple TV and along with the 800W PC and the TV. It turned out the power draw was so much that it tripped the breaker. I had to pull in a power cable from another outlet just so this whole monstrosity had enough juice to operate, but in the end it all worked out and I’m now quite happy with the set up. Its reasonably quiet, convenient, quiet, aesthetically and best of all, I still can replace parts / upgrade since its essentially a rearranged PC case. In fact I’ve already done a small upgrade by adding an SSD.
So was it worth it? Busting a perfectly working case and drilling holes in a nice BESTA cabinet? Well its now a lot more quiet, no exposed cables, no computer box standing on the side, and required basically no investment to implement. And it was very very fun to tinker with :)
