 My fondest memories of building computers are when you do something like take a bunch of broken computers apart and turn them into two or maybe one even zombie computers that function quite well. Or when I take something that someone has officially declared as broken and make it awesome by either using it for something else or fixing it myself. Sure, six to thirty thousand dollar computers are fun. And when someone goes out and spends like two grand just on water cooling, their build log will look downright beautiful. And props to them, I'm sure their rig looks great. But the build logs that will always grab my attention are the scratch builds and the builds where someone didn't have buckets of cash, but they made something unique and awesome. That's what I'm gonna try to do today. Intel's Skull Canyon NUC features a sixth generation Core i7 processor and Thunderbolt 3. Learn more in the link in the video description down below. I generally find that off the shelf test benches are lousy, sacrifice functionality for looks, not useful for what you actually want to test hardware, or they cost way too much. We like our high speed PC tech stations, but there's still seventy to a hundred and twenty US dollars for these ones. A lot of money for essentially some admittedly static resistant plastic and a few screws. Even just buying a motherboard tray in order to DIY yourself a test bench isn't that cheap and then you don't really have great options in terms of component placement for drives, power supply and more. Sevitus, a buddy of mine and prolific Twitch streamer of much lulz and many funds, was recently looking for a test bench of his own and I couldn't recommend him. Anything that I truly believed was a good deal. I even tweeted out to the community asking what test benches they thought were a good deal. And the response to that question was a resounding cardboard box. That's lame and sad. And I want one that I can put drives on. I want one that I can actually mount my motherboard to. I want one that can securely hold my expansion and graphics cards. I want one to cost next to nothing or be free. I want one to be unapologetically made out of scrap materials. So jokes about Apple's marketing efforts aside, let's begin. First thing you need is a donor case. All it needs is an intact motherboard and I.O. tray and an intact left or right side panel without a window. This is a spare case from Scrapyard Wars that we have no use for and got for free. It's best to tear down the case as cleanly as possible and with consideration for how the various metal scraps can be repurposed. Things like mesh could be used for radiator or fan covers or something. So don't just go ham and risk ruining something that could enhance your final test bench. Begin by removing all the screws you can first and take out anything they were holding in. Then whip out the drill or a punch and start removing rivets. Very few cases are made entirely with screws these days. And those that are will probably be way too nice to be repurposed this way. So expect to be removing a relatively large number of rivets. When you get up to the front, put aside the front ports, activity LEDs and set of power and reset switches or even diagnostic speaker. If your case happens to have one, these can be used to trick out your test bench or even just a little bit. Once you've mostly stripped down the case, leaving the motherboard tray intact and as a note here, be careful because this required leaving a couple rivets in for me. Then it's time to whip out the spinning wheel of death, also known as the angle grinder. There are a number of ways you could do this, but personally, I think this one worked out quite well and sparks are cool. Decide at this point how much of the motherboard tray you want. It's a good idea to leave in cool stuff like attached hard drive mounting holes, but your case might be extended ATX when you only need an ATX test bench or you don't want those mounting holes because you just want to put your drives on the bottom. Whatever it is, this part is a judgment call. I decided to leave the power supply mount up top for convenience. Then I decided to axe everything else, sharpied off my cut lines and got to work. Doing this took some time, but not that much. Having a buddy to help you would be great in terms of holding things in the right places while you're trying to cut through stuff so it doesn't fall or bend or whatever. Safety first, wear protective goggles and gloves when working with metal. There's probably a few other things that you should do that I didn't, so do those as well. We did the cutting with this angle grinder, but I'd also highly recommend having a sharp metal file on hand in order to clean up your edges of your test bench so that it's actually safe for work and it isn't going to cut your hand up whenever you try to move it around because stuff like angle grinders can leave really rough edges. Next up, you need to cut up the side panel you chose earlier in order to make it more or less match the dimensions of your motherboard tray. This is pretty much the same procedure we did previously. I just put the part that I just cut out on top of the side panel, sharpied around it, then cut it up. Next up, I grabbed some spare 2x4 chunks from our wood scraps bin and made a set of legs and a set of feet. I drilled pilot holes and countersunk them as well in order to make the feet flush against the surface of the table and then just screwed everything together. This resulted in a virtually free test bench that I was able to construct in under two hours that is sturdy, durable, and very easy to mod due to its thin metal and wood materials. You can improve upon it by spending like $10 on some nylon motherboard mounting hardware from something like McMaster Car, painting it, installing additional mounts for radiators, drives, etc. adding switches, USB ports, those things that you harvest earlier, and more. It's your platform and it was free. Do whatever you want. So this one's mine and I'm kind of a functionality first kind of guy. So other than maybe a few switches, this is probably its final form, so to speak. But if you guys decide to make one of these scratch test benches on your own, please post on the forum the thread that's linked in the video description down below. That would be awesome. I would love to see it. I just love that kind of stuff. Doesn't it seem like they've got a subscription service for pretty much everything at this point? I mean, Blue Apron, why would you need a monthly supply of fresh Blue Aprons? Well, you don't because that would be stupid. What Blue Apron actually is, is a way to create delicious chef-designed recipes at home. They deliver, not aprons, farm fresh ingredients, everything you need, right to your doorstep in exactly the right proportions. There's no trip to the grocery store, no extra rotting food left in your fridge because when else were you going to use, you know, the six cloves of garlic that you had to buy because you just needed one, and they offer a couple of different plans. There's the two-person plan and the family plan. Recipes are delivered in a refrigerated box so the ingredients will stay fresh even if you're not at home when your package arrives, and they offer a large selection of recipes, and they're always adding new dishes to the menu every week. There is no commitment. You can skip or cancel the service at any time, and each menu is between 500 to 700 calories per person. All the meals can be prepared in 40 minutes or less, which if you do the numbers is less than the amount of time it takes to go to a restaurant and come back. You might as well make something better for yourself. And it gives you an opportunity to practice your cooking skills and learn to make new recipes. It's available in the USA, and again, it's at the link in the video description. And if you loved this kind of stuff, like the video. Get subscribed. If you hated it because you're like, don't use cases for interesting things, don't make things for free, screw you. You can dislike the video. That's fair. If you like our stuff in general, you can use our Amazon affiliate code to shop at Amazon. Buy a cool t-shirt like this one at the link in the description below. Join the forum, possibly become a forum contributor, and check out this video. What video is that? Node 202 review. There we go. Just thought of one. Brandon's laughing in the background. Don't know what that's about. Go check out that video. That'll make Brandon laugh. The more times you watch that video, Brandon will laugh more. 100%. No lie.