What I did was build a hutch for the back of my desk, and it houses all my routers, modems, monitor, usb ports and dvd drive.
I was planning to install the motherboard and power supply in the hutch, but I screwed up and should have made it 4 inches deeper, right now it will not fit. But maybe in a few months I will redo the hutch to include it.
I was going to use a remote power and reset button for the motherboard that would mount next to my dvd drive. That way my entire system would be hidden.
Heres what I planned for the motherboard setup. Behind my monitor (but inside the hutch) all of the following would be hidden.
I was going to buy a motherboard tray from one of the after market suppliers and mount it to that, then I was going to use plexi to enclose the mother board and cards with 3 120mm fans, 1 intake and 2 exhaust. The power supply would be mounted out sidethe case with it's own case to keep it quiet. The hard drives are also mounted outside the case with their own 80mm fan in a custom hard drive cage.
Everything would be mounted to a piece of aluminum with thumb screws for easy removal.
Keeping the power supply separate from the motherboard aids in keeping things nice and cool, so there was less need for more fans. The dvd drive would be a sata drive hooked up to a esata port mounted underneath my monitor along with 4 usb ports and the power buttons.
Here is a pic of what it looks like now, (without the motherboard and such behind it) but I need to rebuild it to fit the parts I want to add. Plus I hate the way the part under the monitor looks right now, so that is going to be scrapped and rebuilt. But it's a start.
And heres a pic before I installed the doors and other things.
After I took this picture I highly modified the monitor setup, moving it forward and using a swivel mount so that I could adjust it. I had to hang it from the top inside of the hutch to give me clearance for the dvd and usb hubs underneath the monitor.
