Mr. Franzen's Projects

Mr. Franzen's home office area

I am always working on a project, some big, others small. Here are just a few I have done in the past that you may find interesting to check out.

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i7 Computer Workstation Rebuild
Poker Table and Chairs
White Box Server
Work Bench Design and Build

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i7 Computer Workstation Rebuild

Now that my Quad core workstation is getting old in the teeth and my personal school workstation motherboard stopped working, I used the case and power supply to rebuild and update, but ended up having to update the power supply as my old 650 did not have enough power. The following are the details for the new Haswell-E workstation build:

Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor
Asus X99-DELUXE/U3.1 ATX LGA2011-3 with G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 RAM memory
cooled by Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 CPU Cooler
MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card
Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
Samsung 850 EVO 2TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Antec P182 Atx Black Mid Tower Case
4 Noctua NF-S12A PWM & FLX type case fans
Corsair AX860i 860W 80+
LG G-H20L-S10 Black DVD+RW
Multi-Function Media Dashboard Front Panel All-in-one
Corsair K70 RGB Keyboard, and a ROCCAT TYON Wired Laser mouse
Belkin Backup and surge protection
SpaceMouse Pro Wireless

i7 Computer Workstation Rebuild Pictures

Parts

Parts close

Motherboard

CPU Holder

CPU

Motherboard

Coming together

CPU Cooler

Graphics Card

Cables back

Built

Pwr sup update

Pwr sup installed

All together

Poker Table

Another summer project, starting with some old chairs which were restored and re-apolstered A common design was used starting with standard 4*8 plywood, stain, and clear coat. The mechanical shuffler, by Shuffle tech was built into the table along with a flat touch screen monitor. Rope LED lights were mounted under padded wrist rest, while LED disks were put in cup holders to provide indirect lighting. I designed the logo and had it screen printed on the custom material I picked up from a local fabric store. The material was used for both the top and the chairs. Tournament Director software run on a near-by computer with a customized layout template for easy view from all directions and built-in speakers for audio cues from game software during play. It continues to be a popular table to play on as it has all the bells and whistles which make it a joy to play on.

Poker Table Build and Chair Restoration

Old Chairs

Primer

Painted

Remove Covers

Race Track

Centre Piece

Staining

Shuffler

Monitor/Shuffler

Top

Bottom

Drawer

Padded Rest

Rest Done

Centre Padding

Red Cloth

Centre Done

Holes Cut Out

Bottom Hardware

Putting Together

Table/Chairs

Chair Close

Speakers

Speaker Hole

Speaker Fit

Speaker Mounted

Lights

Drink Holders

The Fun Part

Season Win

White Box Server

When I received the data server box, I right away got rid of the fans to put in larger, quieter, and quality cooling fans. Replacing the centre wall fans required new mounts, so I created one from sheet aluminum, and used my left over piece of aluminum to create aerodynamic curve in front of power supply. As this was one of many computer builds I have done, the finished system turned out really solid. The term white box server, means that it is built to a set of strict hardware standards to be able to run a virtual environment that can be used to create multiple OS systems running at the same time, which is very powerful. The Rack also holds a punch receptacle for network connections, a hardware firewall, 24 port switch, and a couple of older NAS storage drive. The server system major components include:

ASUS P6T, Intel Core i7 920, 12GB Triple Channel DDR3-1333 Corsair Memory
Noctua NH-C12P SE14 Heatpipe Cooler and fans NF-P14, 3* NF-P14FLX, & 2* NF-R8
GeForce 8400 GS, Intel PRO/1000 PT Quad & CT Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter
3ware 9650SE-12ML SATA II hardware RAID controller
8* SAMSUNG Spinpoint F2EG HD154UI 1.5TB & HITACHI Travelstar 500GB
NORCO RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Server Chassis, Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Netgear ProSafe FVS336G Dual WAN Gigabit VPN/Firewall,
Netgear GS724Tv ProSafe 24-Port Gigabit Managed Switch
Blackbox server rack-RM820A-3F-R2
Vmware ESXi 4.01, Openfiler-2.3-x86_64, Ubuntu 10.10 64, WinXP Pro SP3 32

Server Build

Norco Server Case

Back View

New Components

Fan Replacement

Fan Layout

Fan Cut-out

Fans Mounted

Fans in Case

Power Supply

Motherboard

All Parts In

Drive Bays

Server Built

Server in Rack

Server Running

Work Bench Design and Build

This was a summer project. Work bench design was done in Inventor, drawings were printed, then all parts were cut. Next all parts were stained and clear coated, then work bench and hutch were put together. It was very satisfying to see all the components fit, as creating a 3D model and a set of drawings, allowed no issues with fit or complications, and was able to build it very quickly as all of the smallest of details were resolved before even one piece of wood was cut.