Project: A new, stylish (water-cooled) multimedia PC for my parent’s living room
As my parents are keeping up with technology pretty well, a small computer has been part of the living room’s ensemble of electronic gear for quite a while now. But with the audio&video sky-rocketing from s-video discs and crappy *.avi files to DVD, Full HD, Blueray untouched and finally 4K videos, with new Skype, Office and other program’s versions demanding more processing power, the old media PC just wouldn’t do anymore. Luckily, a couple of factors paved the way to amend this unfortunate situation:
- I had decided to stay in Germany for a couple of weeks and had some time to spare
- One of my best friends (I’m the one who introduced him to his wife and served as his best man at their wedding, that’s how good of a friend we’re talking) is an avid Case-Modder, Overclocker and general expert in all things water-cooled.
- Playing around with technology is fun.
And so we set out to convert some of the not-quite-ultra-cutting-edge-anymore-but-still-pretty-impressive hardware he had laying around (an i7 @ 4.5Ghz, 16GB DDR2 Ram, etc. etc.) into a suitable new machine for the living room.
It was clear that the computer had to be as silent, so there was no question that a water cooling system was in order. Once that decision was made, the choice was to either go very subtle and make the PC blend into the background as possible or to opposite, to make the PC a new centrepiece of the living room, something to look at and enjoy it’s presence something like a better lava lamp that also comes with the ability to Skype, surf the web and so on.
And so the idea of what is probably one of the coolest media-pcs out there was born. Within a couple of days we had an outline what it should look like in the end. Cool, futuristic, organic, technological, but at the same time clean and professional. And that’s where most of the work lies. Anyone (well, not literally anyone, I guess) can stick some LEDs onto a ready-made case with an acrylic glass window. To make something as neat and clean as the pc you will see in the pictures below, you need the kind of expertise my friend possesses, the experience and knowledge of years of creative case modding.
So without any further ado, here’s the beauty (more pictures to come when I return to Germany):
