cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Mahogany Desk Pc build Art Deco inspired "dreambuild"

Koverhar
Level 7
Greetings,

This build has been in the works for the past 3 years and is within months of finishing. It's been a lot of work and I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

The idea was to make your workspace feel like sitting at a grand piano. I love old speedboats and the design of the first half of the 20th century in general. The design is heavily influenced from that era. Everything in this build is pretty much built from scratch. I've been blessed with having a building partner along the way who's helped me throughout the build, his name is Mikael, mine is Wilhelm.

Special shoutouts to Daniel at Singularity Computers for his effort in making the reservoir according to my design and to ICEMODZ for giving a good deal on the cables.

Here's a photo where it is at currently, below you will find the build from the very start and I hope enjoy this 🙂

72960

PC parts:

Motherboard: MSI BigBang Xpower 2, x 79 lga 2011¨
CPU: Intel i7-3930k @ 4.6Ghz
RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator 1866Mhz
PSU: Corsair ax1500i
GPU(s): 2xGTX 980s overclocked to whatever I can reach:)
HDD/SSD: 2xWD red 6tb+3xV-Samsung 500gb. 2 in raid and 1 as bootdrive

Watercooling:

Radiators: 2xmonstah 560mm,1xalphacool 360mm
Pumps: Plexitop EKWB d5x2
Piping: Iodized copper
Reservoir: Custom Singularity Dual loop acrylic reservoir.
Fans: Various Noiseblocker fans 25 in total.

In built audio:

ODAC 2 from mayflower for my Sennheiser hd 650's

PC parts:

Motherboard: MSI BigBang Xpower 2, x 79 lga 2011¨
CPU: Intel i7-3930k @ 4.6Ghz
RAM: 32GB Corsair Dominator 1866Mhz
PSU: Corsair ax1500i
GPU(s): 2xGTX 980s overclocked to whatever I can reach:)
HDD/SSD: 2xWD red 6tb+3xV-Samsung 500gb. 2 in raid and 1 as bootdrive

Watercooling:

Radiators: 2xmonstah 560mm,1xalphacool 360mm
Pumps: Plexitop EKWB d5x2
Piping: Iodized copper
Reservoir: Custom Singularity Dual loop acrylic reservoir.
Fans: Various Noiseblocker fans 25 in total.

Lets start off then.

Solid drawing

72961

Let's weld. Starting off with the basic shape. Table will be roughly 1800x780mm

72962

Radiator bay:

72963

Parts started to come in

72964

After a few more hours I have room for my legs and some placement for the fans

72965

Gonna want some monitoring

72966

The wood was ordered like this. Huge chunks of birch. The will be shaped to be the outer panels of the chassi. It's a really dense wood and it's been dried for years properly before being used.
Quite heavy actually. These 3 parts weigh about 50kgs or about 110 pounds

72967

After using different bits and sanding roughly down ending at about 320 grit paper I managed to shape them to the shape I desired.

72968
72969

Playing around a bit with some of the parts. That's an ST8 Motherboard tray from a caselabs pc

72970

So I contacted Singularity Computers and he luckily agreed to make my design of a dual loop reservoir come to life. The plan was something like this
72971

Then I needed some legs. Used 60mm hollow steel pipe and some 40x40mm steel for the upper bars.

72972

And the mounting for the screenstand was lathed by some shaft steel

72973

72974
17,667 Views
23 REPLIES 23

73110

73111

73112

And on the starboard side there's the 360 rad, the ax1500i psu as well as the custom mounting bracket for the psu, harddrives and ssd's

73113

73114

Had to level the reservoir. This was a bit of a headache but the solution was to cut a 3mm thick solid steelplate and have that as the reservoir mounting and at the same time leveling it perfectly.

73115

Bolts and bricks Cheesecake

73116

Decently happy with how the radiators are being hidden, but they are big. Hopefully the fangrills will clean up everything a bit

73117

That being said I can't wait to see these things in action

73118

Redid the back holes and added these hexagon nuts. they look better

73119

So I've been waiting for the watercut parts for a while and they finally arrived! There's a fair amount of sanding needed before I can send them to get chromed but I'm back on track now:)

73120

Temporary workbench:)

73121

Tested how they would look before they got screwed to the frame

73122

Pretty painful as we had to lathe the entire inner wood in about 2 mm's to fit these

73123

I will be updating more often again as I'm not waiting for parts now

73124

Test fitted some hard drives. I'll take away the stickers don't worry!

73125

Gotta have key ignition. This solution is a bit overbuilt but when in rome:)

73126

From underneath

73127

Gotta have an usb panel for the usb audio and especially the ODAC. So i cut some holes for the usb and then proceeded to measure out. Had some welding help from michael again. Thank you:)


73128

73129

This oughtta be strong enough

73130

Anyone know if I voided the varanty here?

73131

73132

73133

Will get this plate engraved with some stuff. You'll see later 🙂

73134

Well I can connect my headphones now but there's not a lot of sound yet:D

73135

There's some plans for decent audio outside the headphones too if anyone was worried. Gonna have to change the membranes on these and change the shells but they pack a hefty sound. More on this later too

73136

I'm currently sanding down the custom hinges but I really dont know how good it needs to get for the chrome to look right

73137


So after a lot of work which you will see later the table is finally getting the stain and varnish it deserves. I had to move it in order to get it painted because I'll be using some fairly toxic stuff.
That being said here's the painting rig and the color which I'll be going for.

73138


Underneath is a pingboll table frame:)

73139

Here's the color. However it will be really shiny and not "muddy" as in the photo

73140

Finally it's stained to the mahogany colour I wanted varnishing stars the following monday. I should have the table back by friday in it's full gloss and glory.The finish I wanted for this really pushed the amount of work.

For the ones interested here's how the wood has been prepared,

Dried inside for 2 years. several years before before taking it inside.
Then filed down to the desired shape.
Then sandpaper. Going through the different coursnesses. 120 grit 2 times (every step is dried in between with azetone), 240 grit 2 times, 320 grit 2 times, 400 grit 2 times, 500 grit 3 times, 600 grit 2 times and finally 800 grit 2 times.

After the first coat of varnish I'll sand it to 1200 grit and then to 2000 grit before the next coat and repeating this until it has 4-5 layers of varnish.

Mixing 2 different industrial strenght stains.

73141

Made the bottom of the corners a bit tidier

73142

Let's get staining!

73143

73144

The back panel

73145

73146

The rest of the table

73147

73148

73149

73150

73151

73152

I went through a riddiculus amount of rags and asetone. As well as an insane amount of sandpaper.

73153

12 layers of varnish on. I'll get this sucker waxed up and then we'll get a better camera but for now just a few pictures indicating that I'm still alive^^

73154

Chromeprepping at 2500 grit sandpaper

73155

Mobile phone pick, it's really hard to capture the gloss. I'll get back to you shortly:)

73156

73157

Started with some cablework:)

73158

My living room is a mess... 🙂

73159

Some radiator fan connectors being born

73160

And yeah btw I'll make a keyboard (after the table is done) using ebenholtz and moosehorn like an old timey grand piano.
That black piece is the wood from madagaskar

73161

I'll start off with some pictures of the table after the varnishing (yet to get nanowax treatment) and if you scroll further down you'll see some of the cablework.

73162

73163

nevermind the dust:) It will dissapear

73164

73165

73166

73167

73168

Now onto the cablework. Thanks again to ICEMODZ for chipping in and helping me out on this!

First things first I had to get everything out. My living room once again is a mess:(

73169

Just did a bunch of y-splitters for these cables and I run them on 2 different knobs on the fan controller

73170

Might be a tip for anyone new to this to grab one of these so you make sure you get it right without blowing any components up

73171

Then I proceeded to hide pretty much every fan cable in the actual frame.

73172


Sneaky sneaky cable management:)

73173

Had to heatshrink all the y-splitters

73174

73175

The 360 radiator fans did get sleeved however because they will be somewhat visible


73176

Testrunning everything. Worked:)

73177

This is just a temporary solution because everything will keep going in and out

73178

For those wondering the fan cables from the back radiators (the 560 monstahs) will be run underneath the side fans and completely hidden

73179

My first sleeved cable:) this one will run the fan controller

73180

And this is what comes out after the wood comes back down

73181

Well happy halloween, I dressed up as usual to my "homeless elf" costume and did some cablework:) This is pretty time consuming stuff I'm learning as I go but after 2 attempts on my harddrive cable this is what I ended up with

73182

73183

And by some miracle it worked

73184

Going off the rails here a little bit but I wanted something that suited the table where I could rest my headphones when I'm not using them so I made a custom headphone stand.

Plasmacut some stainless 4mm thick circular plates and lathed and treaded some 30 mm stainless shaftsteel. Then proceeded to make some holes and this is what the mounting device looks like.

And yeah It will get the same Birch style wood with 12 layers of varnish:D That being said I sent the wood off for some final treatment so it doesn't get scratched by the heavy use. So you will see it all together on friday evening but heres the metal at least 🙂

73185

73186

73187

Here's the finished headphone stand. It became a little bit overbuilt but I like it. Got 10 or 11 layers of varnish cant remember..

Pictures 🙂


73189
73188
73190

73191

73192

73193

73194

73195

73196

Soon I got a complete office:)

73197


Well finally prepped for chrome:) Or technically nickel-plating. Think is went a bit overkill but these are the hinges that keep up the glass:)
They're covered in oil atm to not get surface rust so it looks a bit weird but you will get more pictures as they're all nickelplated and shiny

73198

73199

Got the cabelholders watercut. Next up is sanding them to about 500 grit and then powder coating. I'm decently happy with how they turned out. I went with 8mm 1365 steel this time for some true strength.

There's room for 6 cabels ontop of each other in each opening and 6 satadata cabels in the wider hole. I'll drill true them and mount them with screws down in the table.

I got 8 of them so I can have 1 every 10 centimeters or so 🙂

73200

73201

And then the beast has arrived 🙂 49 inches of samsung goodness. Still in the box because we need to weld a new stand for this thing but it's all good.


73202

And lastly some more trivial things like 60 fittigs for watercooling, internal usb 3.0 extenders. 90 degree connections for sata ports etc etc. I got my work cut out for me!

Here's the mess^^

73203

Time to show what it looks with the screen on. Bear in mind I'll make a custom stand for it but I already love it.

73204

73205

73206

73207

73208

Time for some time consuming but neccecary stuff

All the harddrives and ssd custom cables have been done. Some small fixes to be made still but it's all there and it works

73209

My custom stand for it all if anyone forgot 🙂

73210

Not a fun cable to make:S

73211

All done just gonna tuck it a bit and the cables will flow perfectly

73212

And yeah the key ignition is up and running!

73213

Components are coming in a bit more rapidly now 🙂

Last night the 8 temp monitors. Had to make the weirdest cable for this. So I converted the ends from molex to 3 pin fan connectors and then rerouted a molex to not feed 12 volt (didn't realize this at first though so the monitors got some good ol' frying time:D) and theeen another molex end made for the pumps. But all in all it worked well and 10 components running off 1 cable seems very efficient and clean so I'm happy.

73214

Here's a list of what's happening and needs to be done:

-Drive to Sweden to get my chromeplated parts back (first week of february).
-Fasten those parts and get special glue to fit the hinges to the glass
-Redo the monitor stand and route said cables through the stand. These cables also have to be custom sleeved
-Route said cables from motherboard to the stand
-Get cableclamps drilled, sanded and painted.
-Order pumps and then make custom stands for them aswell as lathe new backparts.
-Slight remake of the top part of the legs.
-Get the new monitor stand, legs and a few smaller parts to chrome.
-In the meantime finish the cable work and install the watercooling.
-Do the lighting
-Make custom external ethernet and power cables
-Make internal AC power splitters to power screen, ODAC and computer

So yeah there's a bit to go but I'm getting there and I have a buildfriend thank god because some of these things are not fun to do alone 🙂

Got them cableholders done. Had to outsource the drilling because it was so incredibly tight. Needed 4 mm drilled holes straight through 5 mm of steel. They're ready for paint now.

73215

73216

Pretty happy with them but it was too tight. Next time I'll get some more margin to work with

73217

I got 8 of them

73218

Well I got a huge update coming in 2-3 weeks but here's a sneakpeak:)

This is what will become the new screenholder for the 49 inch samsung. And jesus christ it was hard to find someone willing to bend a 60mm pipe to my specifications. Had to travel quite far to get this done, wasn't cheap either:S Props to Mikael for the welding.



73219

Well here we go, the legs have been redone. They now have a more smooth and round shape at the upper part.

73220

Also increased the surface area and therefor strengthened the structure with about 150% more surface area.

73221

Obviously the legs will get sanded down and chromed.

73222

Time to get that screen onto this table then 🙂

73223

Screenholder getting bored and threaded

73224

Using a 65 mm thick shaftsteel to hold the screen in place

73225

Trown in place

73226

Tried to get the shape of the screen emulated and keep the same curvature of the wood

73227

And mounted in place!

73228

73229

It's a heavy piece now:)

73230

Testfitting the back wood panel.

73231

73232

73233

73234


Time to do a small update. Getting my chromeparts back the 17th of marsh

Got my cableholders back from powder coating. Each hole holds 6 MDPC 16 gauge wires and the bigger hole on the righthand side keeps 5 satadata cables.

73235

73236

Had to make a truly wooden pc to do the cables for the motherboard without ripping out my motherboard in my current pc
73237

73238

73239


Got a few layers of the key as well to keep the grease and dirt of my fingers away from the wood. The wood is Flaming Birch

73240

And here's my lamp that will be in the same room as my desk. Just for the luls

73241

73242


Let the games begin 🙂

73243

73244

It is time then. Second to last assembly. This time every single thing will be built into the table with the exception of putting in the water. Then disassembly one final time prep the parts and go to town and hope the end result was worth it.

With that being said here we go.

I just love how nickel plating looks and feels. I had to clean them up a bit with window cleaner but they were looking fantastic in general

73245


73246

73247

Starting from scratch again pretty much 🙂

1 LEG!

73248

73249

Had to change the type of bolt for aesthetic reasons

73250

73251

2 legs now and some interior panels 🙂

73252

Time for the radiator grills 🙂

73253

Portside

73254

73255

And Starboard