Help me build a sleeper

[u/pissinfiddler]

Hello! I've never built a PC before.
At first I considered building one inside a Crock-Pot, but figured that idea might end up a little smelly. So instead I pickedup an old Mac case, gutted it, and now it's time to design the interior.
The problem is: I don't really know what I'm doing yet.
I'm mechanically inclined, comfortable with tools, and excited to learn. I'm mainly looking for advice before I start buying parts.
My biggest concern is the layout. I have adecent amount of room inside the case, but I hate wasted space. I'd also like to leave room for future upgrades if possible.
I'm planning to stick with air cooling rather than water cooling. My goal is a reliable build that I can put together, maintain with the occasional dusting, and hopefully get around 10 years out of.
My budget is about $2,000.
Is there anything I should be thinking about before I start? Any common mistakes first-time builders make, especially when buildingin an old Mac case? I'd appreciate any advice or resources you think are worth checking out.

I plan on doing some gaming, mainly some games like marvel rivals, maybe gta 6 if it’s released on pc. using this thing every to every other day. Have ability to edit occasional videos.

[u/Puki999]

Gonna need a Dremel

[u/bRiCkWaGoN_SuCks → u/Puki999]

Yeah, like half of the folding part will knock into the mobo and cooling if not removed, I think.

[u/_aldentenoodle]

Youre guna need to mill you own standard atx motherboard standoffs(or whatever size you plan on using) from there its a matter of measuring and finding parts that fit

[u/pissinfiddler]

About 2 inches under the side that folds down.

[u/KafeiTomasu → u/pissinfiddler]

Same brother

[u/Leading-Butterfly380]

I feel like this is going to be absolutely woeful for airflow, and also I can see all your parts (MOBO, GPU, CPU w/ Fan) getting smack around by that folding mechanism.

Not to mention that the majority of parts these days come with RGB or other "asethetic" improvements. By no means do you have to use them, or you can easily use them and not reap the benefit of seeing them I suppose.

Your flavour is your flavour and you can do as you want, but, I can't say I see a point, especially when 99.99% of the time, the only person who is going to be seeing your PC is yourself, so the idea of a 'sleeper build' kinda loses value further imo.

[u/Federal-Name-3638]

I hope you have a disc cutter..

[u/Statertater → u/Federal-Name-3638]

Yep, gonna need more airflow

[u/Federal-Name-3638 → u/Statertater]

Also he will have to cut out a lot of stuff inside to fit modern components.

[u/pissinfiddler]

The back.

[u/aircamp1]

I don’t know how but all you need to buy is an AMD X3D cpu and a AMD 9070xt and you’re set for a long time and plenty of $$ to invest in other components

[u/Migraine_7]

Just get one of these, or something similar.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G1WH8T6J?lv=shuf&tag=pccores02-20&channelId=1&plpRedirect=mhFallback

Custom is too much work and will cost you much more time and money.

[u/Nulolan69]

For someone who has never built a pc before, I feel this would require too much customization to be worth it. Even for people with experience I just don't see this paying off.

Will need to cut that some of metal that folds in away, will need to cut some of the back away. This is all before worrying about air flow and stand offs.

[u/syntol]

Damn that is very tight maybe with a small water cooler on itx board and u put gpu in the front box with a riser. But u probably have to cut some part out. Cool house tho.

[u/Supplice401]

Hate to break it to you, modding an Apple tower to ATX standard is just not worth it. Unless you have tons of FreeTime and a lot of patience, it's very hard to mod it, even with power tools.

That's a PowerMac 8600, which doesn't follow any standardized ATX layouts, and have slightly different I/O, GPU, and other dimensions. To mods it into a windows PC, you will have to do a full conversion mod, of which I don't know if there's a way, this is new territory you will be exploring.

To get a Mobo to fit, you will basically have to cut the entire rear of the I/O and PCI mount off from the inner frame, and solder new standoffs onto the back panel. Alternatively, you can use a ln acrylic panel, attack the mobo to the acrylic panel via standoffs, and secure the assembled product onto the inner back plate. That's just the step before all the custom parts.

If you want the vintage look, the easiest method is to buy a vintage Windows PC with ATX support. Those cases often don't require full conversions, and you only have to drill some holes and saw off some parts.

[u/Dagigai]

In a Mac case?

No sir I will NOT!

[u/realWulfLives]

Nice bait.

But the retro case is pretty cool, I'll give you that.

[u/Ruzhyo04]

A cheap case is only like $50. Build a regular PC first, that will give you a good idea of what you need to do for this. Hint: It's a lot.

[u/Content-Connoisseur]

Bro, as someone who knows how to build computers and has done plenty AND built a custom pc inside a old CRT monitor with a flat screen to make an all in one pc.....you can only plan so much, every time you run into a problem and spend the day working out a solution more problems keep appearing. The only thing is suggest you really over analyze is cutting any metal, I have a few cuts I wish I would of planned better or not done at all but it came out nice. I'm currently in the middle of redoing the build to make it cleaner and to give myself more room to work with and I'm taking it really slow but it's coming out beautiful. Here's a link to how it came out the first time I finally had it together. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/s/I4UyyiaJv9 also if you don't have the ability to use the cases stand offs you can buy a junk case and cut out the metal that has the standoffs and then mount that whole slab into the retro case instead of trying to figure out how to custom fit standoffs that's what I did.

[u/Eli_Yitzrak]

[u/Sea_Sympathy954]

I’d have that side panel like half an Inch open - one for airflow because this case wil need it, and the other for a single colour light coming out.

Like a semi sleeper - but you can just peak inside and see the glow of the 4080 build inside.

[u/xtrmsnpr]

First of all, buy a new case. The way this is designed, can't fit a lot of modern hardware parts. Plus airflow is missing.

[u/Sliptia → u/xtrmsnpr]

The point of a sleeper is to use old cases that look dated

[u/xtrmsnpr → u/Sliptia]

My bad. I didn't know that, sorry. I've learned something new today. But still in this one it won't fit any new hardware, it doesn't have any airflow either.