With no ATX compatible power switch and standby mechanism the BC-250 expects there to be a constant 12V at the GPU connector. This is slightly wasteful as the PSU is always on. There's a 'power switch' on the BC-250 you can use to turn it off and on, but it doesn't communicate with the power supply at all.
I quickly bashed together a little MOSFET based setup that puts the server PSU I have in standby. When the BC-250 is on it uses a feed from one of the headers to hold the PSU on but when it shuts down the PSU goes back into standby.
While I plan to make a wooden case I'm probably not going to be CNCing a back panel, it's out of sight so 3D printing will do. I improved on my original brackets and printed them on the Hackspace printer which produces better quality prints than mine do.
These brackets are designed to just screw to a wooden baseplate and hold everything firmly. The baseplate is going to be a bit of boring old plywood and then I intend to lower something more decorative over the top. Most of the gamers doing BC-250 builds are going for gamer type stuff and I quite fancy a 'steampunk steam deck' made of wood with brass accents.
The Hackspace got a fibre laser engraver recently so doing little embedded brass plaques etc. should be very possible but will mean learning to use our CNC machine. My woodworking skills simply aren't up to the chisel work to do it by hand.
Before I get ahead of myself though I need to make sure this arrangement isn't going to cook the BC-250. So it was time for some cardboard engineering and a heat soak test.
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