anything wrong with not using a case?

[luv2liv]

i plan on building a pc completely without a case. the motherboard will be bolted on the underside of the desk completely exposed. anything i should be worried about?

 

[figment_]

A number of things, yes.

First would be the fact that you've got completely exposed electronics in a place that I have to assume is going to have nearby moving objects (you). Bumping a video card or CPU heatsink with your leg or arm can have very bad consequences.

Next up, unless your desk is metal and you're grounding the motherboard to it, you've got a nice potential for static discharge to a running motherboard, and that's generally bad news. I've seen plenty of motherboards survive it, and I've seen plenty of them damaged by it.

Cooling probably won't be an issue, but you won't get optimum performance of most coolers. That said, if you load the CPU much, you may have a cooler that is at 70C near your legs. Handy on a winter night, perhaps, but it's not my idea of fun.

Noise will be an issue. Lots of PCs use the case as a primary sound dampener. Without metal or even plastic to block some of the sound waves, you'll be much more likely to hear the very high pitched sound that would normally be eaten by a simple plastic shell. The desk might redirect some, but you'll certainly hear more than you would in a properly isolated case.

Finally, there's EM radiation. No, it won't give you cancer, but it will put out interference that could negatively impact local WiFi or cordless phones, possibly cell phones, and possibly even induce interference in nearby electronics. Normally, the grand majority of the EM radiation would be absorbed by a metal case.

 

[luv2liv]

oh man. thanks for letting me know. the large desk is made of wood so it should be fine with your #1 and #2.
but #4 and #5 is definitely something i hadnt thought of. thanks!

 

[Tifosi248F1]

One thing I could think of is support. Were you planning to build something similar to the expansion slots at the back of a traditional case? Also, you could be looking at having components in an orientation they're just not meant to be in, i.e hanging upside down. Gravity is the one thing you should worry about first.

 

[taq8ojh]

As long as you don't have any animals at home, I'd say it's fine. Also you must not be clumsy. I once spilled half a bottle of milk into opened running PC...

 

[piasabird]

There are probably some other people who have done similar things. For instance, some times they use a ribbon connector to go from the PCIE16 video card slot to the video card so they can get both the video card and the motherboard on the same horizontal plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49u1rHfurVc

Here is an interesting video looks like they built the desk from scratch. I think it would be feasible to find a desk with nice large drawers and use remove the drawers take off the door fronts and find a way to just fasten just the drawer fronts on and put the PC vertical where the top desk drawers are. You could bevel out the top and lay in a piece of Plexiglas or real glass.

Probably lots of used furniture stores and yard sell item you could buy cheap and destroy.

 

[ClockHound]

Or you could build something like this:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8159/computex-2014-lian-lis-dk02x-chassis-that-is-also-a-desk

But, get a server 1U or 2U case and build it into the desk.

Or a from-scratch desk case, built right here in the forum: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2397988 (Well, the build was described in the forum, so close enough for DYI)