Watch This Engineer Create a Desktop PC Case Made Out of Concrete
Carter Hurd created the case, joking that a heavier PC would inevitably make it more powerful.
Ever wanted a PC case made out of concrete?
It may sound like a terrible idea, but a do-it-yourself mechanical engineer decided to create just that—a PC desktop that's practically encased in a large cinder block.
The creation comes from Carter Hurd, who works in the automotive industry. Last month, he shared a video of his concrete PC on TikTok, which has since attracted 2.6 million views.
Hurd originally shared his creation on YouTube in April, joking that he had found a correlation between a PC's performance and the weight: As a computer gets heavier, the machine gets more powerful.
“I really think that this is the secret to making my computer faster,” Hurd quipped in the video. Hence, his goal was to build a PC out of the heaviest easily available material: concrete.
“The real reason (I built the case) was because I was inspired by brutalist architecture,” he told us in an email. “My main goal was aesthetics, I wanted it to look like an artifact or a monument: like something you'd find on the spaceship of (the film) District 9.”
Building the concrete case first involved spending five hours creating a mold made out of whiteboard to shape the concrete. “You need to use something smooth like whiteboard sheets or melamine sheets, so that the concrete does not stick,” he said.
Hurd then had to get his hands dirty and place the concrete mix into the mold. For airflow, he planted a collection of 3D-printed plastic holes into the concrete case. From there he had to wait 48 hours for the concrete to set.
As for the PC itself, Hurd took to eBay and bought an old E32 ThinkStation, which was designed to slide inside the concrete case. However, the creation process did face challenges. After removing the mold, Hurd discovered that parts of the case’s concrete surface were initially cracked or falling apart. Fortunately, he was able to refine his creation by sanding the entire case off, and then adding some sealant to polish the surfaces.
Hurd also weighed his concrete PC, and found it comes in at 54 pounds. “This was just one of many DIY projects that I have done in the past,” he added. "I've made a robot that prints out pancakes, a PC made from a fish tank, a robot grown from fungi, and more."