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First post, by Mau1wurf1977

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Hey all!

I got a fairly decent system going, but my friend is a lot more organised. Everything is sealed in anti-static bags and he even has these sealing stickers so that it looks new.

How do you guys organise and store your parts?

I just got some bags from eBay and they are PERFECT for CPUs.

I really struggle with storing all ISA/AGP/PCI cards and especially mainboards. Post Office sell boxes that are almost perfect in width and length, but way too tall.

Currently I have them in bubble padded envelopes but not happy with this solution. Also finding it difficult obtaining anti-static bags large enough for mainboards.

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Reply 2 of 33, by ratfink

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I try to get anti-static bags for all cards not in machines.

Motherboard boxes can usually take another card or two.

Graphics card boxes [minus inserts] can take half a dozen cards each, as a bonus you get to play graphics-card-tetris every time you swap cards.🤣

I put others in plastic boxes like you already use. NICs and other small cards can stand up in them, others lay flat. I try to make sure the heavier ones are at the bottom and don't have too many deep.

I like to try to keep long narrow flat foam-lined boxes for long cards like awe32, soundscape, voodoo5, voodoo rush. Don't have any right now though.

I keep the boxes in cupboards so there's often a few loose but antistatic-bagged cards on top.

Cpus are the most worry. I use thin foam layers and pack loosely, avoid risk of crushing etc. I try to keep all cpu boxes too.

Reply 3 of 33, by keropi

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"graphics-card-tetris" , I can relate to this 🤣
I just keep everything inside antistatic bags and stored in cupboards. If a card has pointy pins on the back-side (like older isa ones) then I add a layer of that foam material mobos used to have in packaging so the card next to them does not get damaged.

🎵 🎧 PCMIDI MPU , OrpheusII , Action Rewind , Megacard and 🎶GoldLib soundcard website

Reply 4 of 33, by Skyscraper

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amateurs...

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New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 5 of 33, by Forevermore

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I alternate stack my Video cards in their bags. With the less interesting ones on the bottom 🤣

I have trays for my CPUs & use discarded mobo boxes for my mobos.

Beyond that, I try to put everything I have into a case 😁

So many combinations to make, so few cases to put them in.

Reply 6 of 33, by Mau1wurf1977

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I ordered larger anti static bags and that should help clear the clutter a little bit. I was putting hardware into cases before, but the more I do this (hobby), the more I just think a test bench is the way to go because there are too many cool parts to play around with...

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Reply 7 of 33, by ratfink

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Yeah, I bought a testbench a few months back, used it once and it's been gathering dust since but I have plans for using it for stuff I want to play with but know I don't want to set up permanently.

There were two I looked at, a Lian Li and a Cooler Master. The Lian Li is an elegant aluminium stand [or plain odd, eye of the beholder and all that 🤣] and the Cooler Master is a simple steel box with a couple of buttons. I bought the Cooler Master, it's sturdy and does the job, I can pile things on top of it 😜 and there's no risk it will fall over.

Reply 8 of 33, by Mau1wurf1977

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My test bench is much simpler!

Because all the commercial ones are not easy / fast enough for me.

Currently it's the cardboard box from a monitor 😀

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
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Reply 9 of 33, by Old Thrashbarg

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We've been doing a bunch of work on the house, so stuff is shuffled all over the damn place right now, but here's an area where you can still see some semblance of my previous organization methods, hidden under/behind the piles of extra crap. 🤣

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Eventually I'll be able to get the rest of the shelf units back into place and make things all neat and tidy again. Until then, I've got boxes of cards sitting in the front room, computers in the living room, books and miscellaneous parts stacked up in every out-of-the-way corner... hell, there's a goddamn printer in the kitchen. Renovation sucks. 😠

Reply 11 of 33, by bristlehog

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:
http://i.imgur.com/TGEgMlvl.jpg […]
Show full quote

TGEgMlvl.jpg

Get that! Har, har, haaaaar!

I store most of my cards in plastic IKEA boxes. However, full length ISA cards won't fit there, so I store them within keyboard boxes:

LAPC-I
AWE32

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Reply 13 of 33, by bestemor

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For CPU's there are these:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151074364923

Or these, which I prefer:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221027564987
Can fit even 2 cpu's inside, given the dual layer of foam pads.

But, somewhat expensive I guess, so if you collect alot of cpus I suppose the trays are the way to go...
http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19216

Some more CPU ideas:
http://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7927

- As for other boxes, I find my most useful ones here:
http://www.rajapack.no/p.cfm/750-32/Hvite-pos … esker--minipapp

For my motherboards:
http://www.rajapack.no/p.cfm/750-40/Posteske- … -og-brevordnere

The company has localized webshops all over Europe(rajapack.xxx), but the actual available box models/sizes seem to differ greatly from country to country.
They can even send you free samples without any shipping charge!, if you want to test which model works best for you...

(does only sell to registered businesses though, so if you don't have access to an account then tough luck... 😢 )

And on ebay there are the german maxibrief boxes:
http://www.ebay.de/sch/Maxibrief-Kartons-/104552/i.html
Several sizes, some which nicely fits both expansion cards(sound/vga/etc) as well as the motherboards themselves. And some sellers even ship outside Germany, so...

http://www.ebay.de/itm/221169728338

For memory modules, I put them in tiny antistat bags(http://www.ebay.com/itm/151119458844) and then inside something like this:
http://www.prosperplast.com/components/com_vi … 4b70ca2e47e.jpg
All memory in one place.

* * *

....what can I say, I like boxes......! 🤣 😁
I even label them...(!)

BUT, sadly no knowledge of any Australian outlets or even US.... 😐

Reply 14 of 33, by Mau1wurf1977

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Great ideas guys!

Can't wait to get the anti-static bags I ordered and pack it all up 😀

Post Office sells boxes, but the ones big enough for motherboards are too tall. I'll keep looking...

My website with reviews, demos, drivers, tutorials and more...
My YouTube channel

Reply 15 of 33, by badmojo

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Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Post Office sells boxes, but the ones big enough for motherboards are too tall. I'll keep looking...

Pizza boxes would be good for motherboards, you could swing by Dominos.com.au and place a bulk order, hold the pizza 😀

Life? Don't talk to me about life.

Reply 16 of 33, by awergh

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Hmm looks like some people put a lot of work into thinking about organising hardware. For cpus I have them between two pieces of foam in a small motherboard box. I used to have them just sitting on the shelf but I wanted to use more of the space on that shelf so I put them in a box (I don't actually have that many cpus that are not sitting in motherboards).

For optical drives, hdds, floppy drives I just sortof stack them wherever I find convenient, not very well organised when i think about it. Expansion cards I have in anti static bags (I am truely surprised with the amount of it I actually have) sometimes individually sometimes multiple cards in the one bag particularly if its just a 1MB S3 Trio 64V2/V+ which I have plenty of. Then the bags are in there own boxes with a label like PCI Video cards or something. Its various hardware boxes, Optical drive boxes are particularly good cause you can store most normal length expansion cards in those. Power supply boxes are pretty good to as well. All boxes are labeled but of course I labeled them on the top so I still have to pull them all out when I'm looking for what I want.

RAM is mostly sorted by type and size in its own antistatic bags well I think the bags go like EDORAM or 72pin FPM, <64MB SDRAM, 64MB SDRAM, 128MB SDRAM, 256,512MB SDRAM, DDR1, DDR2 and this is all in the one box which is surprisingly heavy. I also found a whole lot of 33pin FPM which I grabbed in a small motherboard box as well.

Motherboards however are a little more problematic, I have those in antistatic bags but I don't have boxes for those 🙁 So I just sortof have them wherever I find to put them, I have a drawer with 5 motherboards in it I think. I really need some more boxes, I found some but there were really too small except for the smallest of babyAT and uATX motherboards.

PSUs are sortof stacked on the bottom shelf I think, and cased computers go wherever I put them I suppose.

Most of what I do is much the same as it used to be except expansion cards where a bit more haphasardly placed in antistatic bags. I even have a very low resolution photo of what some of my "organisation" looked like a few years ago. (that third shelf looks more or less the same except more stuff but still not very well using the space, same for the second shelf except one of the 464s lives on my desk instead of in the cupboard)
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Might as well show the rest of the important shelves which is also similar except I have one GT64 on my desk so I naturally filled the rest of the space with stuff.
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Reply 17 of 33, by bestemor

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badmojo wrote:
Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Post Office sells boxes, but the ones big enough for motherboards are too tall. I'll keep looking...

Pizza boxes would be good for motherboards, you could swing by Dominos.com.au and place a bulk order, hold the pizza 😀

as for pizza.... perhaps something like these.... ? 🤣
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/220987595078
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/321231952966

...4,5cm height should be sufficient(and not too much) for most older boards (?)

More Aussie stuff here:
http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/Boxes-/109740/i.ht … ?_ipg=200&rt=nc

Reply 19 of 33, by DonutKing

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badmojo wrote:
Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Post Office sells boxes, but the ones big enough for motherboards are too tall. I'll keep looking...

Pizza boxes would be good for motherboards, you could swing by Dominos.com.au and place a bulk order, hold the pizza 😀

The boxes generally taste better than their pizzas too...

If you are squeamish, don't prod the beach rubble.