Yes! It's the cardboard PC! Green is the new black, or so it seems. So an enterprising designer’s inked plans to build a desktop PC that does away with the traditional metal and plastic exterior, in favour of… er… cardboard. Recompute_01 Recompute: sports a cardboard body The Recompute PC would – if it ever makes it to the shops – have a body …
I've had components on motherboards fail, overheat, and set the component and MB on fire - to the point where the CPU and heatsink had burn marks from the flames. The case itself provides a "fire shield" of sorts, so imagine if the case was cardboard ...
Flames ... for the burn.
There are problems enough for the fan motor collecting dust and inhibiting the movement of cool air. But dust + cardboard fibers clogging the fan motor?
It appears that the cardboard case has corrugations to allow vertical movement of cooling air, but the securing straps appear to get in the way of that. Also, the cooling fan pulls the air to the bottom of the unit, near the power supply. Which is where all of that cardboard dust will collect. And overheat the computer.
Interference shielding? Pah!
I used to live near a MW transmitter and I never, ever had a problem running naked PC guts in the open air, without any RF shielding. Of course, this was in the days of many volts and few megahertz. Modern kit may be more sensitive to RF interference.
How could we go green? I know, let's replace the only fully recyclable (as-is, no treatment of any sort needed) part of PCs with parts which need an expensive (and pollutant) recycling plants. Way to go!
Recycling an old metal box is as easy as screwing new parts in. Repeat as many times as you wish (or until makers change the standard dimensions for components. B*stards.). Estimated lifetime: infinite (on a human scale). This cardboard stuff will need frequent replacement, and used ones will need to be sent to recycling plants, to be recycled 2-3 times max I guess. Estimated lifetime (including recyclings): what, 5 years, 10 maybe, if you're very careful.
Kill Mother Earth, buy a "green" cardboard PC!
I rather think you have got this backwards - emmission laws are about stopping electronic equipment emitting unacceptably high levels of EMI, not to stop the equipment being interfered with (of course designers do include shielding in sensitive areas for that reason, but for technical, not legislative reasons), It all adds to the background levels of interference which can affect the legitimate use of radio communication. The reverse is not true - an office full of unshielded PCs could quite easily affect things like WiFi reception and mobile phone reception.
Of course MW waves work at radically different frequencies to PCs and the conductors in a circuit board are a tiny fraction of the length of radio waves at that frequency so it was extremely unlikely that it would have suffered problems. Also an MW transmitter, by it's very nature, transmits over a relatively narrow band of the EM spectrum - of much more concern is "wide band" inteference than blasts out over a wide range of frequencies.
Incidentally, whilst strong interferences at MW frequencies won't interfere with a PC, it can be highly problematical to ADSL. Faulty equipment (although, not usually PCs), can cause severe local problems with ADSL and that is clearly perceivable on MW radios.
<QUOTE>Interference shielding? Pah
By A J Stiles Posted Thursday 5th February 2009 18:11 GMT
Flame
Interference shielding? Pah!
I used to live near a MW transmitter and I never, ever had a problem running naked PC guts in the open air, without any RF shielding. Of course, this was in the days of many volts and few megahertz. Modern kit may be more sensitive to RF interference.</QUOTE>
Metal cases are as much, if not more, for preventing the computer from causing interference to other devices as they are for protecting the computer from interference.
Mine's the one with proper shielding built in.
cardboard is good up to 233 degrees C (not counting any safety margins), people build solar ovens out of the stuff (not to mention packaging designed to cook food in)
naked flames are a lot hotter than this, so yeah, it can burn quite well, so no candles.
but if youve got anything on, near or in your computer that is likely to hit those temps (like say, the rest of your house being on fire, or phisically placing the box on top of the heating element of a space heater), you've probably got other things on your mind...
It looks kinda cool but cardboard will do more harm than good. It's a protective shell for damagable parts that aren't so easily recycled.
Cases are easily re-used, and they aren't subject to the usual rules of obsolescence. I ditched my 1st ATX case at the end of 2007, it had been in service since 1997 and I've plenty more machines running in cases of a similar age. The one I'm working at right now is a 1998 model. With the exception of monitors I don't think there's another area of kit that stands the test of time so well.
IMO cases would be better improved with easier access and replacability of the power switch and any front panel controls as they're about the only parts that ever get damaged beyond simple repair.
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