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🔗 I Built a Portable Computer Inside a Hard Case

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First published: .

To the naked eye, this looks like a totally normal hard case filled with innocent power drills and jigsaws, but it's actually a portable PC.

I've been assembling PCs since I was pretty much a kid. I learned mostly by watching my father do it. Before he became an Apple fanboy, he had never bought a fully assembled computer, and always assembled by himself. Thus, when I started assembling computers, it was giant SCSI cables, serial ports, parallel ports and other sharp multi-pronged cables that seemed to be specifically designed to pierce the skin.

I've never really gotten the hang of laptops. I've definitely had quite a few through the years, but I hated them all. Laptops may be highly and easily portable, but they are uncomfortable as workstations and only become somewhat useable when docked to external monitor, keyboard and mouse. At work, I either had a PC, or a laptop that was docked 99% of the time. Laptops are also difficult to fix, impossible to upgrade, and weaker than PCs.

Once I became self-employed and started working with multiple companies, I bought a new laptop to serve as my take-to-the-customer computer. I had my PC at home, and my laptop for work. One day I opened the laptop to find the screen cracked and the keyboard damaged. I had no idea how it happened. The lab wanted pretty much the entire cost of the laptop to fix it, so instead I smashed it with a hammer and threw it away. I decided it would be my last laptop.

For a while, I took a small ASUS mini-PC to work. It's small and portable, and surprisingly powerful for its tiny form-factor. In fact, my PC at home was so old that the little ASUS was stronger. But there was still a problem: I had two computers. Keeping them synchronized was a nightmare. I hated having to go through the Internet to do that, and definitely didn't want to use some synchronization software made by a startup I wouldn't trust with washing my socks. I tried various open source solutions with my own server, but nothing worked like I wanted it too. Eventually, I decided that the best way to go was to just have one computer.

I started toying with the idea of building my own portable computer case from wood. One that's small enough to carry, so probably a Mini-ITX motherboard, and no dedicated GPU. I haven't had a dedicated GPU in my computers for years anyway. I have the PlayStation for gaming, and I don't do GPU development. Integrated GPUs have gotten much better over the years so that should be enough. I looked for several days for good options for pre-existing portable cases, but didn't find anything appropriate.

I also wanted the computer to have its own monitor. I have a unique way of working. At home, I have an ultra-wide monitor. When working, I have about 60% of my screen dedicated to the work itself (mostly meaning NeoVim and Firefox. I use the Xfce terminal in dropdown mode so it's not taking up any part of the screen when not in use). The remaining 40% are taken by SMPlayer, which plays various TV shows I like. I prefer having a good sitcom on than listening to music while working. I don't know why. I don't actively watch the show, I just need it to be there.

At work, however, I often only have one monitor, and not a particularly large one, so I listen to music instead of watching shows (or block background noise using the wonderful myNoise website). With this build, I wanted to have a secondary monitor even at work that I could use for the TV shows, and as a sole monitor in cases of emergency. I figured I would buy a laptop panel and mount it to one of the external faces of the computer case. I found an ASRock Mini-ITX motherboard that came with a built-in eDP connector, which is rare, and bought it.

I am an amateur woodworker, so it seemed natural to pick wood for the case material, but I knew it wasn't the best material for the job. It's easy to work with, so cutting out holes for the various components would be fairly easy and accurate, but it'd be heavy and not particularly damage-proof. I figured I would use angled aluminum trims on the edges to strengthen it, and decided to try and see how it works. I started gathering material and new computer components after coming back from my trip to the United Kingdom in mid-2023, but then the October 7 attack happened and I couldn't continue.

When I finally sat down to start working on the build, it was mid-2024. Quickly, it became obvious that a wooden case would not work. Natural wood would be too heavy. Plywood is hard to work with. MDF is basically cardboard. Instead, my father recommended I use a plastic hard case. These will be harder to cut, but lighter to carry and more damage-proof, and I won't need to find a way to create a lid. I found a good hard case with the right dimensions on Amazon and bought it.

More compromises had to be made. There was a problem with the monitor. Laptop panels use LVDS or eDP as connectors, and getting something like that connected to a PC motherboard is difficult. These days, most laptops use eDP, and every panel seems to have its own specific eDP cable, with a different number of prongs and settings. Although I bought a motherboard with an eDP connector, it simply wouldn't work with the random 17" panel I bought on AliExpress.

Thankfully, ASRock has their own eDP panel that works with their motherboards. It's only 13.3", and is meant to be mounted on the inside of the computer case, facing out, so it needs the side face it is mounted on to be clear (so, probably Acrylic). I bought it instead. It also became clear that I wouldn't be able to mount it on the outside of the case, at least not well or in a way that would not leave it vulnerable to damage. It would have to be on the inside, which meant that when I want to use it, I need the case to be open.

The first cut I made was for the motherboard's I/O panel. I used a dremel for that, which was a slow, painstaking work, and definitely not accurate, as can be seen in this photo:

The hole I cut for the I/O panel is awful, but gets the job done. Power and reset buttons also visible.

With my father's assistance, I cut the next holes (for the PSU, fans and "front panel") using a jigsaw. This was much quicker, but still not particularly accurate:

The hole for the PSU is also not particularly accurate, but it sits in place very firm. For the intake fan, we drilled a bunch of holes to allow air in. The PSU, one might notice, also takes in air from the outside.

To mount the motherboard, I drilled several holes using a specialized drill-bit meant for plastic, which did beautiful work. In the holes I placed threaded inserts that stay in place using pressure. To these, I screwed nylon spacers, and to these, I mounted the motherboard. I would learn a few months later that using nylon spacers was a bad choice, as they are very brittle. I should have gone with metal.

I went with an AMD Ryzen 9 7900 CPU. This is a 12-core CPU with a 3.7GB base clock speed and an integrated Radeon GPU, and comes with the AMD Wraith Prism CPU fan, which is surprisingly quiet. For memory, I got two Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR5 5600MHz sticks, for a total of 64GB of RAM.

The CPU fan is the highest part of the computer. When the case is closed, it is somewhat close to the monitor, but it doesn't warm it too much.

The PSU was ASUS ROG STRIX ATX 750W Gold Aura Edition, which may have been overkill. I should have gone with a smaller form-factor PSU, but they don't sell these in Israel, and the ASUS was on sale, so what the hell. Too heavy though. I also got a 3D printed bracket to help mount it to the case, which worked very well.

To serve as a front I/O panel of sorts, I bought this very good GRAUGEER panel that had SD and Micro-SD card readers, two USB-3.0 ports, and two USB-C ports, one Gen 2 and one Gen 2x2. This panel was mounted on the top of the case, below the handle.

The front panel sits on the top of the case when it is left standing, or the front of the case when it is laid down and opened.

I got three Noctua NF-A8 ULN 8cm fans to help keep the computer cool. Two would draw hot air out of the case, and one would blow cold air into the case. Finally, I got a 16mm power button and a 12mm reset button from Amazon.

The power and reset buttons. Like standard PC case buttons, the power button glows while the computer is on, and the reset button glows during drive access.

I bought a new Western Digital Gen 4 NVMe drive (at a whopping 8TB of storage space). The motherboard can take Gen 5, but there aren't many Gen 5 NVMe drives available, and none that reach 8TB. I formatted the drive and simply copied all the data from my current PC's old Gen 1 NVMe drive to the new one. I use Arch Linux BTW.

The monitor panel was the last thing we mounted. The panel comes with two metal sleeves that are meant to be mounted to the internal face of the case, but facing outside, while we were going to mount it facing inside. This was a bit problematic, because the cable is meant to go the other way, towards the back side of the monitor, and we needed it to go towards the front side of the monitor. To allow for that, we had to cut the bottom metal sleeve with a saw to create a slit through which the cable can go, as can be seen below. A minor issue is that because the sleeves are mounted the wrong way, the upper sleeve is covering a very small bit of the panel itself.

The internal 13.3" monitor at work.

We've also made some mistakes when mounting the fans. We made the cuts too close to the PSU, forcing us to drill into one of the bottom legs of the case to be able to screw one of the fans.

The bottom exhaust fans. You can see the cut we made to one the legs in order to screw the fan because we mounted it too much to the left.

Still, in the end I got a very powerful and capable PC in a portable hard case. It's heavier than I would have liked it to be, but portable enough for my use case.

When it was done, I was just about to leave for a two month trip in the United States where I was going to work as usual, albeit remotely. I was debating whether to take the new computer or the older ASUS Mini-PC. I usually don't check-in bags and only take a large carry-on backpack. This time I decided to take the new computer as my carry-on and check my luggage.

I was worried about two things: the temperature inside the case, and looking suspicious at the airports. Both worries quickly dissipated. I've gone through both security and customs with no problems (although a security agent in Israel and a customs agent in the US were very curious to see how the computer looked on the inside and said it was really cool). As for the temperature inside the case, it seemed that the CPU fan, the PSU fan, and the three Noctua fans were properly doing their jobs, and temperatures inside the case were good even with the case closed. I've yet to see the CPU temperature cross 55 degrees Celsius. If I could find shorter PSU cables I could probably get it cooler as air circulation would be better, but for now it's fine.

The computer worked wonderfully during the trip, and ever since. It's been in daily use for about 5 months now and I love it, despite mistakes made during the build. In the mornings, I unplug it, put a power cable, a USB-C cable and an HDMI cable inside it, and take it to work, where I plug it to a monitor and use whatever keyboard and mouse are available. I keep it open at work and use the internal monitor. When the day is done, I unplug it and go back home, where I plug it in, connect it to my large ultra-wide monitor (which also supplies it with the keyboard, mouse, and webcam), and leave it closed. I love having just one computer with no need to synchronize, and for development purposes it's an absolute beast, while being very quiet.

The computer when used as part of my home setup. As my monitor is quite large, I do not need to use the internal monitor and thus keep the computer closed.

The only issue I had with the computer was when I came back home from the US trip. Right as I exited the taxi, I grabbed the case and accidentally dropped it. This broke the nylon spacers on which the motherboard was mounted. So I took out the threaded inserts and simply screwed new metal spacers to the case from the outside, without any inserts.

One day I'll clean up the outside of the case a bit to make it less worn-looking. I still haven't erased the measurement lines from the assembly process and a few scuffs and scratches that I can smooth out.

Here's a few more pictures of the complete assembly:

Notice the PSU cables take a little too much space. Shorter cables could free up some space and improve circulation.
Because the computer is often used with the case open, things can get dirty quite quickly, but it is also very easy to clean.
Annoyed elderly cat for scale.

Complete list of parts: