Single PC House?

Daidraco

Daidraco

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The Problem: The PC I own is huge and ugly. Even with its fancy little LED lights, tubes and wires. It doesnt fit anywhere nicely with the theme of the entire house. I want to be able to sit down in my living room and play a game if I want to, or go to my bedroom and play a game. No, I dont want to use a laptop or tablet.

The Plan: I would like to have a builder come in and construct a box under my stair well and install vents on the side of the stair well up high and a vent thats on the front of the stair well down low. I could then install run silent fans on the upper vent and lower vents for a good ventilation system that has nice filtering for dust. The stair well already has power ran to the interior of it.

The Question: With the PC in a remote place like that, what problems would I have running a USB cable and an HDMI cable to two rooms within the house? Id like to be able to plug in a wireless hub for a keyboard and mouse in two different rooms and be able to switch over the TV's to the HDMI input's and have access to the PC. The PC is equipped with two different HDMI ports and is powerful enough to run anything I throw at it on Ultra.

I know about Steam's streaming, but my main objective is to hide the PC entirely.
 
Intrinsic

Intrinsic

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I would imagine you'd run in to distance limitations trying to use USB or HDMI. When I was designing 911 / Dispatch centers we had a lot of customers request that the PCs were in the equipment room and not on the desktop so the dispatchers couldn't fuck with anything, but it ended up being dumb because then if you had to reboot the computer or troubleshoot something you had to go back to another room, if it was off hours like 2am and the IT guy wasn't around the equipment room was probably locked which just caused more problems because you didn't want incompetent dispatchers having keys to IT room. Anyways, slight derail rant.

We used a bunch of different IP KVMs that just extended the stuff to the desk.
 
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Frenzied Wombat

Frenzied Wombat

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You'll need a signal booster for hdmi at a minimum..

Here's a crazy thought, why not just buy a new discreet looking computer case instead of hiding the existing one and running wires across the house?
 
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Borzak

Borzak

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The make fiber deals to use on USB that can go on for almost forever. It has a USB connector on each end and then it has fiber the rest of the way and turns it into a fiber usable signal and back again on the other end.

Not cheap tho.
 
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Daidraco

Daidraco

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I didnt imagine that it would be cheap to do, but I think it would be worth it. A signal booster for the HDMI, which just backs up what someone else said about it. Then Fiber Optic USB Cables. The strength of the signal is the pinnacle of my concern and hopefully those ideas would address it.

Buying a second, slimmer PC doesnt really fix any of the problems.
 
Lanx

Lanx

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i've had zero issue running 50ft hdmi cable (i only needed 25ft but 50ft was a buck more, like wtf...), from my htpc or my PC, for USB i had to use some super thick cable tho, then connected a hub to the end of it, also here's a pro tip, for any wireless you want to do, lets just say you're gonna use the logitech wireless shit, that comes with the nano adapter, drag a usb cable from you're pc and basically make the adapter 1in next to you, do not connect the nano adapter to the PC, this way you get all the benefits of wireless, w/o going, WTF I DON'T HAVE CONNECTION!!!
 
ToeMissile

ToeMissile

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This whole scenario doesn't make any sense to me. Do you not have an office space/desk that your computer normally sits at? When you get a hankerin' to use your pc in the living room, do you break everything down and move it to a coffee table?

And if you're in the mood for a nice bubble bath.... and your guild has a raid scheduled?

Not trying to be a dick, just don't get it. Maybe I'm too old.
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

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Uh you realize you can build incredibly small computers that are more or less top of the line gaming machines right?

 
Eomer

Eomer

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I really don't see why just using a Steam Link isn't an option for you. I bought one and while I haven't done a serious amount of gaming on it, it seems to work pretty flawlessly. I don't use it much because my TV in my bedroom that it's connected to is a bit too small and far away to play most PC games on. But just fucking around in GTAV it's seemed pretty seamless.

And even if you don't do a small form factor PC, you can get some pretty nice mid-tower cases that are very unobtrusive and classy. This is what I use for my desktop PC, and it fits my loft's decor quite nicely: http://www.corsair.com/en/carbide-series-330r-titanium-edition-silent-mid-tower-case

Otherwise, if you're going to put it in your living room with other AV equipment, a Silverstone LC-20 would work fine: SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.
 
ronne

ronne

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HDMI won't really be an issue, it's good for at least 50ft with just a single cable, sometimes up to 100ft depending on the signal you are sending. Gaming at 1080p/60fps should be doable with hdmi 2.0 or higher up to 100ft without much trouble. Trying to do anything more than that though, say 1080p/144hz or 1440p etc and you'll run in to trouble (same goes for 3d if you do that shit at all). Longer than that and you need baluns, something like these things (nevermind this boards fucking keep trying to link an amazon page as media for some fucking reason). These are typically good for ~250ft, sometimes as much as 300ft, using cat6, and aren't all that expensive these days.

USB has much shorter single cable ranged (like 15-20ft at best), but can also be extended using similar baluns, and they are much cheaper generally. I've personally not used any of them for longer than about 75ft, but in theory they are good for as much as 150ft. The ones I've set up work pretty flawlessly, can just dump a powered USB hub at the business end of them and connect multiple devices without any real issue.

Not sure on the layout of your house and the kind of distance you'd need to cover, but I've done quite a few similar setups for rich yuppies in my geeksquad days and it works pretty well.

Your other option really is just transplant your PC in to a media center style case and plunk it in your entertainment/TV cabinet or whatever. You can cram full size 1070s and shit in to those these days without any real trouble.
 
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Daidraco

Daidraco

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You guys have done an excellent job. Still going with the extended wires, cause in reality its just not that expensive to hide my PC versus buying a new one. The layout would be 20-25 feet in either direction and the stairs were chosen based on this. Thanks guys!
 
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