PC Modding has been a curious sub-culture within the PC enthusiast arena for the last ten years. It’s evolved firstly from people wanting to customise the cooling to aid overclocking of their PC cases, into the addition of lights, paint jobs and “case windows” to see the hardware inside, into fully CAD-designed and handcrafted pieces of wonder.
All forms of design and build have been tried, ranging with results from the incredibly elegant to the vastly obscure, as we’ll show below. One theme is common to them all though: inside lies a normal PC that you’d use like any other.
Chiaroscuro by Nick Falzone:
Based around the tiny 17cm square mini-ITX format, this elegant build demonstrates that Nick is evidently a master of woodwork, as he handcrafts the case out of both Ebony and Maple. Inspired by the Beijing Digital Building –the technical centre host of the 2008 Olympics in the same city – it houses the main PC components, including a full gaming graphics card in the top, along with the optical drive and storage in the base. The grills on the side can even be adjusted for varying airflow to the internal components!
Cygnus X1 by Attila Lukacs:
It’s rare that both wood and metal can look so good together, but Attila sets himself apart by designing something of sheer retro beauty. The polyurethane covering to hand chipped and crafted wooden sides pulls back the design years until opened up, when inside the polished steel and plastic coverings for the internal PC hardware make it look beyond 21st century. A truly incredible work of art that is apparently everyday usable too.
Dark Blade by Ginluca:
A striking two tier build with integrated watercooling for the internal components shows how sharp some designs can be. With a cleverly thought out mixture of colour and space, as well as information displays and buttons that would look at home in the cockpit to a plane, this build certainly stands out and dominates a crowd.
The Nvidia Cube PC by Mnpctech:
As a company that specialises in PC modding accessories, Mnpctech is no stranger to the world of custom designed cases. The Nvidia Cube PC houses an Nvidia Ion mini-ITX motherboard – the same size Chiaroscuro uses above – as the backbone to the full PC. It’s housed in what looks like an elevated impossibility and build of fluorescent green and black acrylic. For some reason it reminds me of classic Lego space series, so it really must be cool!
WMD by G-gnome:
Hand crafted over 18 months from of aluminium and stainless steel, this epic case build houses a full PC with watercooling inside, in addition to a slide-out motherboard try for ease of access to all the hardware securely fastened inside.
The aesthetics weigh in heavily on the industrious, with visible bolts and fixes, along with large metal clips holding it together. The splashes of red along with the side clock add to the “immediacy” of the name – in fact, it looks so serious we expect most people to do a double take if they saw it in the flesh!
Do you mod yourself or have any ideas for a customised PC? Drop me a comment below!
