Building an "open air" PC?!

Has anyone ever built an "open concept" PC, like on a board or piece of wood or something?

Sounds like a pretty neat idea, but I worry about cooling and air flow and such....but if it's open, wouldn't the heat just sort of dissipate into the atmosphere instead of building up inside a case?

Talking about things like this, except maybe not with water cooling (though eventually I'd like to make that jump.

Or this

Pros?

Cons?

Also, do you lose anything with those PCI-E extension cables?

You shouldn't lose anything with PCIe extensions up to a point.

You would def have more dust maintenance with an open design vs a properly pressurized case with filters.

If you are water cooling, you really don't need to worry about heat build up unless you are doing something weird. My water cooled build takes air in through a radiator on the front and discharges it out the top through another radiator. The GPU rarely gets above 50C. The case is designed so that the fans pressurize it so air gets exhausted out of the cracks and only get in through the filters. Built it in JAN and just opened it and cleaned it a week ago. Almost no dust inside. The filters were absolutely clogged though.

You are always consuming the same amount of power and thus the same amount of heat is dissipated, regardless of the temps.

IMO there is not a real benefit one way or the other, just aesthetics. If you want an open design I'd say go for it.

I have never attempted anything like that. It's cool though. Definitely the way to go if you like showing off components. My only concern is the lack of cooling on things like the VRMs. Sure, the heat will dissipate into the open air, but is that enough when doing some serious OC? I would feel better if they were taking on some air from a fan or something.

@mrbojangles25: It's a cool idea, my local PC store has one built and working for those guys - BUT the only worry is that you'll need to daily or as often as you clean your house (furniture etc).

Thing is - when you have PC built into a case the case filters most of the dust using dust filters built inside the case, when all the hardware is out in the open nothing to avoid dust except buy daily cleaning it.

Thermals should be even better not having them all cramped inside a box, you could try to put dust filters on your GPU, CPU cooler and PSU or buy water cooling for both GPU and CPU. (doesn't have to be custom water loop)

A valid concern. Those are also the components that have the highest temp threshold tho.

It may be a concern inside a case where heat can build up (for example if you have a separate radiator cabinet and no fans in the main case). I think for an open design it would be okay. Just the heat difference from one end of the room to the other would cause air to circulate naturally.

I feel like one of the youtube tech channels did some tests around this and found that a case with a well designed fan configuration is actually cooler than an open air pc.

I mean it sort of makes sense, you can essentially turn your case into a wind tunnel, having air move across/through the components and then removing it just as quickly.

Sounds like it is negligible, though, based on what I've read here and elsewhere.

Thing is, I never clean my case :( but if my components were just out in the open, I'd have no problem taking a can of compressed air to it or whatever to dust it off every other day lol.

Yeah, if you look at rack mount servers they are practically jet turbines, drawing in air through the front and pushing it out the back. Not creating an enclosed space for heat to build up is one thing, but actively replacing the hot air inside the case is generally better. You also need to factor the placement of your components, since heat from some components can rise and affect the thermal performance of other components.

Open air as those wall mounted ones do need a bit of airflow as well. The passive cooling on the mobo might not get enough air ironically enough.