Feedback on my MOC: Detailed Buildable Computer

[uturnitoffandbackon]

 

Hello EB'ers

I've been working with computers for ~20 years now and realized (while explaining how to build a PC) how awesome it would be to have something build-able to demonstrate. It started off as close as possible to a real PC, but morphed a little into something more retro, more compact, and more lego-ish.

I submitted to LEGO Ideas in hopes that with enough support, one day it becomes a real set. And while I'd love your support (please feel free to hit the support button), I'm posting here because I really want to get feedback, both on the design as well as (if you're a PC builder) the setup.

I started with a whitebox case - very common for 20 years ago - and made it yellow (since all the whitebox PCs of that era have aged that way).

The motherboard is a mixed bag of accuracy - it's not a square/rectangle but I wanted to fill more of the case - so it's a L shaped board. I included visible traces, capacitors, dies, and more. Mounted to the case at 9 places, just like a real custom build these days. The motherboard has 2x PCI slots, although I'm almost thinking to change one to an AGP for more accuracy. Lastly I included a serial (DB-9) port, but no PSU ports. I may revisit that decision as well.

There's a CPU, with a much beefier cooler on top of it (and fan is on the back, not top) then you would find done in the Pentium 3 era. It just looked better that way, so I sacrificed a little accuracy here. It has a mounting brackets and attaches to the mobo via 4 studs.

Hard Drive (not SSD) is super detailed. We got platters, the head, and a logic board. SATA connections were uncommon back then, but trying to build an IDE port was... not easy.

There's a PSU that has coils, caps, and more inside. And there's a GPU that's made up of a board, chip, heatsink, plastic cover, and some fans.

So, what do you think? What areas would you improve or change on?

More pictures on the ideas thread (link: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/80133e0b-f6ec-4a9f-882e-e2666191b364)

[Shiva]

Quite nice.

Nice HDD :)

Cooler is nice too. As is the Case.

But why the L form of the motherboard? In my opinion, not needed.

DVD placement? You could switch place with where the Poer buttons etc are and have the DVD next to the HDD?

What is the black box, at the bottom of the case? The front grey has the minifig,

mDP's ? Maybe DVI and HDMI instead? Or what decade are you after here?

Memory would say -+1999's, GPU closer to 2020. Cooler? Last years to now.

[uturnitoffandbackon]

Great feedback, thank you.

I'll likely make some of these changes as I thought about it these past few weeks. L shaped motherboard to have more Lego was the sole reason, but for sure not accurate. I have to think about how to handle this, making the board as big as possible but still being accurate.

DVD placement might move. I might actually build a full blown DVD player, similar to the HDD. In fact, it might become a 52x CD player :). But I do want to keep the little guy inside the computer where it is, but maybe the power button goes to his little desktop tower.

The black box is me being lazy on the power supply. I plan to flesh that out a little bit and remove the box and build the back of the PSU. Also plan to build the internals of the PSU (again, level of detail like the HDD).

I think for the GPU I will switch the ports to be VGA and DVI. I really like the GPU design of a modern GPU and I know it's not accurate to the time period, but it's so good looking, so I'll likely keep it. Same with the CPU cooler.

I was going for the early 2000's with this build, but just a small amount of modern design.

[Shiva]

Regarding CPU and GPU coolers.

You could do so that you have a few different generations to show up?

https://www.sapphirenation.net/history-graphics-card-coolers-part-iv , this is part 4 of 4, you will find the links to part 3, 2 and 1. GPU cooler history. There should be similar articles for CPU cooling history?

The PSU, beef it up :) those things are quite big.

Your minifig? Maybe have it being in a HDD cage instead? Less height on the minifig box.

[Vitus_SK]

Wow this is a cool build! Would you be willing to publish and sell instructions for it? I've been looking for cool PC MOC sets as a present for a friend, and this is by far the coolest. Definitely supported on Ideas.