Mr. Chillum's PC Grow

I stumbled across these forums a couple of weeks ago after I began looking for a cheaper homemade alternative to the advertised Grow-Box PC's. After dedicating myself to the task a few days ago, I have finally finished. I wanted to share it with everybody because I know how much it helps to see others grows firsthand, no matter how similar it is to anyone else's. What what I can see so far, almost no grower does everything exactly the same, so it goes to show that maybe we can all stand to learn a little bit from each other. Well, enough of that after-school special talk, here's the pics:




This is the case I found in my basement. I'm unsure of the measurements off the top of my head but I'll be sure to post those later.



Here is the same case, post-demolition. It took me the better part of 3 hours to screw, rip, bend and pry all of the internals out, but the site of the smooth metal underneath, full of potential, was rewarding.



I found a couple of these adapters in my basement a while ago, but forget about them until I saw a post on here about using them along with a powerstrip to mount CFL's. Being a little low on the funds, I thought this would be a great idea to make use of some things I have lying around the house and save a buck or two. I also re-used two fans that came with the computer for the intake and exhaust, which I wired up to an old 12v adapter.



Here is the case, all finished! After securing all the wiring to the case and covering the bottom with a waterproof piece of plastic, I covered the entire inside with Reflectix brand reflective insulation which I purchased from my local Lowe's. On another trip to the same store, I purchased the 2 23w 6500k spectrum CFL's you see in the picture. Does anyone think adding another CFL with a lower spectrum will be worth the cost of the bulb itself? Also in the picture you can see that the 12v is attached to the bottom side of the case (and subsequently a shortened extension cord). This is because it was way too heavy to mount on the strip.

Thanks to everybody who helped me with my grow by displaying their own or commenting on someone else's. I hope some of you stick around to see what happens next with my little PC case. I'm currently germinating some great seed I got from a friend's grow, but I'm unsure of the genetics so I'll have to post about that later too. No matter what strain though, I'm sure this grow is about to get a hell of a lot more interesting.

very clean setup. very nice indeed can't wait to see what you get growing in there.

that is VERY clean setup, i shapp be watching this day by day.

tight clean setup man.
puts mine to shame.
its probly gonna werk great
k+ for you

Very nice, very clean looking setup Mr. Chillum!
You did quite a nice job there

But if you don't mind a little friendly advice, there are just a few things I would really recommend doing to insure good growth and safetly...

The first is getting another CFL and socket in there. Your case is pretty small but it's still going to be difficult to get decent results off just those two 23 watt CFLs. If you can get another in there it will tremendously help your plant/s grow bigger and better buds, and the cost of the CFL and socket will deffinately more than pay for itself when harvest time comes around. Also, once the plant actually starts flowering you'll get the best results by switching to some 2700k or 3000k CFLs. Those 6500s are great for vegging and will keep your plants really short and stocky, but you'll really need the red spectrum for good bud growth once flowering starts.

The second thing I would recommend is to get a simple thermometer mounted on the wall in there somewhere so you can monitor the temperatures inside the case. I'm guessing you shouldn't have any temp. problems but for $3 or $5 for a thermometer it will really be a worthwhile investment for the safetly of your plants and monitoring of your grow.

The last thing I would recommend is to go over to this thread ---> http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=48949
and follow the guide to build a very cheap, simple, and highly effective carbon filter that should fit over your exhaust fan at the top perfectly. Once flowering gets started you will need to control the smell somehow (because there's no point in growing if it gets you busted!) and I've yet to find a better, cheaper, and more effective way of controling odors in a PC case than Suga_Bear's carbon filter design. I've tried at least 10 different designs for carbon filters for PC cases and this is the only one that I think works really well and will last the entire grow, plus it's dirt cheap to build!

Edit : I just realized that if you do decide to put a carbon filter over your exhaust fan you'd probably have to either remove the intake fan and use a passive intake system or go with a lower powered intake fan. The carbon filter will restrict the airflow from your exhaust fan a bit and if your intake fan becomes more powerful than your exhast fan than all the air in the case will start getting pushed out all the little cracks and seams in the sides instead of going out the exhaust through the carbon filter, which would be a quite a bad thing. So if you do put in a carbon filter than your best bet is to either remove the intake fan and go with a passive or install a much lower powered intake fan.


Anyway, fantastic looking setup man! It's super clean and looks like it will make a really effective growing machine with a few little tweaks
Best wishes and keep us updated man, I'll be watchin

yeehaw. another pc grow in the makes! the box looks real nice and clean. sure to put out something nice.

Thanks everyone for the great responses. It's nice to hear that people think it's a clean setup, because that was my primary goal for this box. I was especially glad to see your comment Mr. Micro, since your Nanomachine was a huge inspiration. I'll be sure to pick up another 6500k CFL for the strip. There were a few things I was planning on putting off until I got some more funds, and they became a little more necessary, such as the extra 2700k bulbs for flowering and the carbon filter. As for the thermometer/hygrometer, does anyone know where I could pick one of those up relatively cheap? Would Wal-Mart have something like that, and if so, where might I find it in the store?

thermometer/hygrometer = $5 at wally world



edit: mine was located near outdoor/indoor thermometers

thank you very very much rkrone, i'm headed out to pick one up right now

Okay, I need everyone's help on this one. I'm just beginning to see some good germination from my seeds and I'm about ready to get them all planted. Before I do though, I want to make sure everything is good with my case. I don't want to have to disassemble the whole thing halfway through the grow for something stupid. I ended up purchasing a nice thermometer/hygrometer from Wally World for about 8 bucks and after I took it home found my case with 2x23w CFL's to be running at a relatively okay 84 degrees. The problem is I want to put another 23w in but I'm worried my temperature will shoot up like crazy. Should I add another fan to increase airflow and hopefully decrease temperature? If so, should it be an intake or exhaust fan? The logical part of my brain thinks that adding another exhaust fan (or at at least a bigger one) would be great to pull more hot air out, put somehow I remember reading that your intake should always be twice the size of your exhaust. I imagine that the old PC fans I salvaged aren't exactly moving the kind of air they should be for their size (80mm), so I guess I could just replace those. I'd really like a cheap solution and I know if anyone could come through for me it'd be you guys.

my guess would be to purchase one NEW 80mm fan, or get some WD40 and pull the sticker back, oil lightly and then let it set and see if that improves.

As for the outtake to intake question, I also know that you want the out take to be roughly as you described, but I would imagine that pushing air in wont be as effective as pulling it out as the air would just be pushed around if the outtake can't remove it fast enough causing the intake to not be effective. That is the problem I have in my cab now, out take not strong enough to empty cab fast enough 4 regular PC fans pushing air in, I would wager 40% of that air is getting pushed back out because it has no where else to go.

Looking good so far

your intake should only be twice the size of exhaust if running passive intakes, active intakes should be pushing lower cfm in than the active exhaust.


when in a pc case i find that its a lot easier to maintain negative pressure when running passive inakes as opposed to active as i have done both in my pc.

i would say definitely switch those 4 intakes to outakes, and that should take care of the heat and allow for another bulb.

The problem continues...

I feel like such a noob today because no matter what I do, I can't get the temps in my PC case down.

First, I added a new exhaust fan right below the old one which you can see in the following pic



After that, my temps went down like 1 or two degrees to 83-84. I did notice however, after checking the maximum temp reading on my thermometer that at one point today it was up to 93! So then I decided to follow rkrone's advice and try using a passive intake instead of an active one. I took out my intake fan and what was left was the hole in the bottom of this next picture



I waited a bit for my temps to equalize and I still didn't get any significant change. I'm at a complete loss right now. Any help, with specific references to my case, would be more than appreciated.

Until then, I'm going to chief on some nice homegrown bubblegum I got from my buddy today and ease my troubled mind...

if everything I read is correct, you need to get a dremel and make your intake larger. Its still not bigger, and not 2x bigger then your outtake. I am not a vet though, and I would really like you to get advice from someone who is with pc growing, but thats the first thing I would do if it was my case.

clorox's trick for low temperatures:

put it in a room with central air conditioning

but seriously, my in box temps nary get above 75

enlarge the intake, and what are your ambient temps in the room where your pc is?

Soooo yeahhh.... I'm an idiot. The room temps I had the box in were right around 80-83 degrees so I shouldn't be too disappointed with a case only running a couple of degrees higher. I removed some more of the front of the case to allow for a larger passive intake, so hopefully that'll be good for now.



This is What the case looks like when the front cover is off. There are small slits in the cover to let the air flow through, I only hope it is enough to keep the temps down when I go get a new bulb this afternoon. I think I'll get a 42 watt 2700K CFL to mix it up a bit. Once I can get the case setup all finalized, I can worry more about lightproofing. I want to move to 18/6 or even 12/12 relatively soon after my seedlings get going because of the limited space.

As always though, comments/questions/concerns are appreciated...

I apologize that it's taken me so long to post again on this thread. It seems that I too have succumb to the typical PC Case grower lack-of-posting syndrome. Well anyway, here's an update.

I'm still going strong at 24/0 (its been about 3 weeks now with my biggest plant and a little over a week with my other ones.) Things are going great so far. I've added another 26 watt 2700K CFL to the mix which gives me a total of 72 watts for my .9 ft of growing space. The result of this is that my biggest plant has become incredibly bushy. You can see by the pictures below that its leave structure is incredibly dense. I already started LST'ing it a bit, and its worked great. Does anyone think I should trim some of the fan leaves back to improve airflow, or will that just hinder bud production when I switch to 12/12. Speaking of flowering, I plan to make the big switch sometime next week. I wanted to let the two little ones in the case catch up a bit before I did, but they are taking forever IMO!

I'll do my best to keep up with this thread, here's hoping somebody's still reading.



This is before I added the new light



You can probably see the little pieces of hanger I used to tie this plant down. It's taken really well to the training. The plan is almost flat against the surface of the container now. I can't wait to flower it though

Lookin great Mr_Chillum!

I'd say go ahead and flower anytime you like, since those little ones will catch up pretty quick once the flowering stretch starts. Wait too long to flower though and your big girl is gonna take over that case in no time flat. It always amazes me how much more plants grown in PC cases seem to stretch compared to full size plants once flowering hits... most non-PC grown plants will double in size once flowering hits, but in a PC case your plants will often get as much as 4 or 5 times as big as they were before flowering!

But as far as pruning goes, I'd leave all the leaves intact and just let it grow naturally until flowering really gets under way and the bigger leaves start blocking off light to lower budsites. At that point it would be alright to trim some, but for now I'd recommend just letting the plant do it's thing and grow as it pleases.

Anyhoo, great looking grow man! I'll be watchin'

So here's the case after a couple of 12/12 cycles...not too much growth but still exciting



I did notice that my largest fan leaves on the bottom of my biggest plant are starting to turn a bit yellow and brown near the leave edges. I've only been watering with distilled water so I figure it must be a nutrient deficiency (maybe N or Mg?). Anyone got any suggestions?



Lastly, I also noticed that my two newest set of leaves appear to have some holes in them. It looks like some kind of bug problem but I couldn't see any when I looked real close.



I hope these little guys pull through