The MK3

The Mark 3.

I had been collecting more parts and finally got some stuff I though I could upgrade the MK2 with and then accidentally destroyed it.  I don't even know what happened.  I couldn't get any of that old hardware to work.  It was all just fried.  Can't find my photos of it...

 

MK3 was already in the works by this time and I had planned for it to be my PC so it got re-planned as MK2's replacement.  It started with an old case and a Core 2 Duo.

I got it up and running like this and was very dissatisfied with the poor cooling performance.  It was also pretty heavy and a pain to move around.

So I added caster wheels.

It had a 7.1 sound card in it, but the outputs were all weird so I got a 5.1 with Digital Optical because I know that would hook in to the theater's sound system without a problem.

Then I upgraded the CPU cooler to a level of ridiculous.

 New RAM and a PCI slot mounted fan finished off the hardware.

All that was left was to tidy it up and install an OS.

I became obsessed with airflow and air cooling while building this tower... you'll see more of that in later builds.  Cool hardware runs better and lasts longer.

The airflow is so good that the CPU would stay at about 5 degrees above room temperature during load.  My dad bought a copy of Win7 and it's been serving in his theater ever since.

Here we see the MK3 in the aftermath of cannibalizing yet another donor computer.

I believe 6 computers gave their best hardware to assemble this single tower.

Final Specs: 

Asus P5BW-LA MOBO, Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.133Ghz, 2x 200GB HDD, Asus 210 GPU 1Gb, DVDRW x2, 4gb DDR2 RAM.

End.