I made a thing! (unfinished) - What to do with an old Intel CPU?

[Vince]

I have a load of old server kit laying around and sometimes you just cant be bothered with all the listing, shipping and messing about selling the kit. Or you have Intel CPU's laying about that once were powerhouses but now are nothing more than rubbish, worth a couple of quid if you are lucky. I have been playing with the idea of making some little one off bits for my office out of this old junk rather than shipping it to a new home.

This weekend I had a bit of time on my hands and a couple of server cpu's on the side (xeon E5345's to be precise), I also have some epoxy, some moulds and am in the mood to get my creative head on. I was planning on just encasing a cpu, then I was going to make a little circuit board inside a cube by removing bits from a motherboard. The juices were flowing and then a realised I could use a couple of moulds and try and make a little pen holder type desk ornament. Plus I want to get some experience as I have this old engine crate thing that I picked up years ago that I want to make into something for the man cave so where better to learn than on something small.

Time to shut up and show you guys what I have got so far:







As you can see for a first time it's not shocking but there are quite a few small bubbles in the surface, the plan here is to sand back the surface until you expose half the bubbles and then do a thin layer of epoxy over the top, small sand back and polish and it should eventually be pretty much bubble free.

After that I plan on making a little plinth out of wood that it will sit on top of with some blue LED's and im thinking ill make a little circuit board with a micro usb that will power the leds. It's just a little something to do when i'm bored but hopefully over the next few weeks it might turn into something half decent.

Short description I was bored and had resin!

 

[darael]

Do you take orders? I've had an old AMD Duron or something sat around doing sweet nothing for ages now!

 

[Gary*]

Nice work! Once you've done a resin pout, get a blowtorch on it to get rid of the bubbles

And thanks for the toes

 

[Vince]

Nice work! Once you've done a resin pout, get a blowtorch on it to get rid of the bubbles

And thanks for the toes

Believe it or not i did use a hot air gun and a lighter at the end but should have poured a bit, used the gun, poured a bit etc. I didn't do that though.. lesson for the next one. I did a load of sanding by hand and got one side looking sweet but it will take an age doing it that way so tomorrow on my lunch break ill find the dremel and sand all the bubbles out. Once the worst is away ill do a fine sand and possibly a final layer of epoxy. I might even start putting together the base and thinking about LED's and making a little circuit. Im thinking ill use a micro USB type wired to some sort of switch and a few resistors or something.

Also... sneaky feet can't be helped. I didn't even notice them and had to go looking

Do you take orders? I've had an old AMD Duron or something sat around doing sweet nothing for ages now!

Id find somebody who actually knows what they are doing This is just a bored bloke looking for something to make.

 

[darael]

Id find somebody who actually knows what they are doing This is just a bored bloke looking for something to make.

I actually quite like what you've done to be honest. I think the only thing I would change is to make it taller. But I don't have the mouldings to do this.

Anyway, in case you didn't realise by now, I like what you've done. Looking forward to more pictures. I have a few old 72 pin memory modules if you want something different.