'Puter pron

I'm sure there are some other hardware guys lurking around...

Back when I was in college, I had this computer case custom built. It's done by MountainMods, and is based on what was then their unreleased Duality chassis. I had them cut mounts for four 120mm fans on the top and opted for a single 120mm port on each motherboard tray instead of the dual 80mm's they were offering at the time. I also chose to have both psu mounts on the bottom of the case instead of one up and one down.

As you can probably guess, I had this done because I was running two machines - a file server and a gaming rig. Well, times have changed, and I rebuilt.

I was going to run a low power system in lieu of the fileserver so that I could watch movies and TV without my gaming rig eating all the power, but the left channel audio was shot on the mobo and I didn't feel like getting a sound card. So, instead of running two machines, I'm only running one in that giant case.

It's rather old, now - a q6600 on an IP35-e with an 8800GTX. Not much to brag about these days, but back then it was top of the line.

Waterloop uses an Iwacki MD15, Swiftec Apogee GT (bowed) and a Bonnie heatercore. Since the pump runs on AC, I have the pump and the power line to the PC on their own switched surge protector; that way I can shut the pump off when it's not in use, but cannot possibly power the computer on without the pump running first. I build the shroud myself out of 1/8 acrylic (I didn't peel the paper off... dunno why) and used a hot glue gun to seal everything up and hold it together. I also made those blockers where the 5.25 bays would have gone because I don't actually run an optical drive.

For me, this setup was really thinking outside the box, because I was so used to having two machines in there, but I'm very happy with how it came out. Though I may have to take the waterloop apart again to clean the block, as temps are higher than they should be, but it's within range so I may just be lazy and leave it.

Enjoy the photos.