Gallery: The all-in-one dual-core VESA Stand PC mod

Last week I had The poor man's all-in-one PC for $380 and The 22" dual-core all-in-one game PC for $765. Last weekend I bit the bullet and labored 2 full days to build the all-in-one dual-core VESA Stand PC. This piece of oak board in the photo was sacrificed in the making of this PC because your's truly is an absolute noob when it comes to wood working and thought he could do this project with a jig saw. I ended up buying a table saw and spent 6 hours assembling it (3 hours wasted because I got a defective unit). I had to exchange the table saw because the lifting/lowering mechanism was jammed. Once the saw was up and running, it didn't take long to cut the wood.

After 6 hours of hard labor (most of the time figuring out what to do), I cranked out this box. I learned the hard way that this type of real birch wood is hard to work with and I used the wrong saw blade for it.

I should have gotten a nail gun but those things aren't cheap. I also didn't counter sink the screws which made them stick out a little. I didn't have enough clams and I didn't use them properly. Oh well, I did the best I could since I've never really done any wood work and next time I know better.

This was a $20 VESA LCD mount that supports tilting and quick release. I had to get something that didn't make the LCD stick out too much and tip the entire box over.

Just finished mounting the motherboard and power supply. I screwed up the screw location for the PSU so I need to fix that. I haven't decided where to permanently mount the hard drive yet so that's just held there by tape and a single screw.

The back plate was made of thin wood since it's not load bearing. The fact that "1/4 inch" wood isn't actually 1/4" thick also threw me for a loop when this board was 1/16th inch shy of 1/4".

I used two one-foot long power cords to power both the VESA Stand PC and the LCD display. It certainly helps reduce cable clutter.

Looking at the entire PC from the side, it really doesn't take all that much room. While it's certainly no work of art like the Apple iMac, I can load this thing up with inexpensive standard components with higher performance and I have more usable desk space.

I've got a small Wi-Fi antenna hiding behind that LCD stub on the bottom (visible in first photo) that I'd like to get rid of but can't thanks to Acer's poor design

I probably could have made it cleaner if I used a Blue Tooth keyboard and mouse since that only requires a small USB dongle like this Microsoft Wireless Entertainment 7000. Those are a bit more expensive and they use 2.4 GHz which may degrade Wi-Fi because of signal leakage.

For more details, see George Ou's blog.