Thoughts on strange pc build?

[mildgamer001]

I was bored today, so i started thinking about what to do with my xbox360 that i never use. I have no money currently but figured when i have some extra cash, i might rip out the parts in it and buy more to make a small pc in it. maybe trick it out withg plexi-glass windows and green LEDs, some extra small fans. but the problem is that i dotn really have much space in it to do anything in. i have an old ibm think centre, and it has a specially mounted pci-e slot SIDEWAYS on the right side of the case. this would be perfect if i could find a retail mainboard that can be hooked up like that in the xbox case, which simply isnt wide enough to accomidate a normal sized GPU.

The IBM has no useful patrts in it, i got basicly a shell from my school's tech department, no memory, no hard drive, no OS, no optical drive. it is also sodered to a pentium 4 so i know i cant recycle that board, i want to use a current pentium g840 in it, then use a small video card to make a basic gaming pc out of it.

Does anyone know where i can get a motherboard with the separated pci-e slots that is modern enough to have an lga-1155 socket? i kn ow i will have to do some serious mods to the xbox case but thats all in the fun right? Anyway this isnt something i wil be doing that soon, as i have to save up the money for all the parts hopefully not going over 400 at absolute MAX and also i have to find an operating sustem somewhere i dont really want to try to game on ubuntu, i think that would sorta like... be an "epic fail".

I am interested in the posibility of this though so any thoughts would be awesome.

 

[mildgamer001]

by the way if i ever get around to doing this i will be butchering the IBM case for parts of the pci-e mounts/panel, fans maybe, possibly tha hard drive mounting bay or ill figure out how to get a hard drive that will fit into the case that the xbox hdd was in. any thoughts?

 

[diellur]

I don't think you're in the right section of the forum for this. You're talking about modding a PC here...not sure if Toms has a section for that, but I'd have a Google for a PC modding site and ask there.

 

[mildgamer001]

i would, but im more looking for peoples ideas on the subject, like what they think i should do, what they think would be cool, any build advice other than that would be appreciated as well, but it isnt really just asking for help. also, your avatar/profile pic is amazing lol.

 

[diellur]

Thanks very much.

Cool...I think it's a great idea. All I'd advise is to watch out for cooling in the XBox case. Other than that, I'll let others more experienced than me say their piece.

 

[Fug Laro]

Iif your xbox360 is working, you should pick up a faulty one instead. It would be a shame to destroy it when you could sell it and use the leftover money for parts. Im planning a similar build but for a smaller old console and i think ill just have enough space for:

A8-3850
F1a75-i delux
Skythe kozuti
Pico psu 150

Im saving a tonne of space with the APU instead of a discrete graphics card but youll have more space in an xbox360 so im not sure if you can get a discrete card in there. Its going to be tight though with cooling also. I wonder if you can use a rieser card for the graphics. There are low profile cards out there but i dont know if thetly will fit.

 

[mildgamer001]

Fug, i just thought of that today, i will be looking for a broken xbox 360 elite for the build when i have the money, and if we dotn have to switch to Hues-Net internet then i might sell my xbox for some extra cash, but what i will be doing with the discreet graphics, i found a 14 dollar riser card for single gpu, this will put it at an angle so it can fit into the case, but i have to get a very small mobo, hopefully a micro atx wont take up all the verticle space in the case, but i will use a radeon 5570 for the gpu, small card, not overpowered/head producing, and cheap as i can get for a card that can get the job done.

I plan on using an intel pentium g840 for the cpu, 5570 for gpu, 320gb hdd (2.5") and 4gb ddr3 ram. i have an old computer that i will take the two small fans from and mount them somewhere as well for added cooling. i may have trouble woth the power supply thugh, any ideas? im hoping the 5570 is short enough to put th psu inside the case, but i need a very small one. would i be able to use the 360 power supply on a regular computer?

 

[mildgamer001]

the power supply in my computer shel that i will be butchering for this has a very small power supply, it would fit, but the wattage is only 200w max, that isnt very power ful could it run a low end computer like i hope to build?