I have arrived... and there be trees here.
Thursday, January 22, 2009 by Palmer Attaway
I've finally done it. I have attained the level of geekdom long denied me. I'm building my own system. Woot! Alright, it's a little melodramatic, but just think, I've been fixing computers for years and the next logical step would be to build one. It's something I've never done. It's an experiment.
A few years ago, I bought a case (similar to the one on the left, but a little different). It's beautiful metallic blue aluminum with brushed metal panels on the front covered in clear plexi, three fans including one on the clear panel side, blue neon throughout and expansion slots for days. It's a thing of beauty and it's in a box that's covered in dust. I had always intended on pulling it out and building a system in it and just never got around to it. I recently started buying components for my new system, however; ASRock A780 mATX motherboard expandable to 16 gigs of ram with a gigabit network chipset and 512 onboard graphics and an ATI GPU, AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 3.1GHz dual-core processor, 4 gigs of ddr2 ram to start, 320gig Western Digital Caviar SATA hard drive on which will be installed Windows XP 64 bit with a lite step shell on one partition and Ubuntu on the other, and a couple of other bells and whistles that will make this puppy soar right out of the box. There is a problem. The power supply in my case is sub-standard now. Garth is “lending” me another case to put the guts of the beast into, but it's klind of depressing that this beautiful specimen of engineering that I've have patiently waiting in it's dusty box will not be used... for now.
This all leads me to my next point of interest. In my search for interesting cases, I found a
blog that spoke of wood. Get your mind out of the gutter people. I speak of the renewable resource that literally grows on trees (I wish that was my joke). Apparently a group of case modders has gone completely eco friendly in case design and have come up with some spectacular cases. It's enough to make one wish they were a carpenter, or more specifically, a cabinet maker. These are beautiful works of art that can only be truly appreciated sitting out in the open as they glow and hum, not shoved into a hole somewhere in a tiny cubby in your desk or huddled at your feet like their metal and plastic cousins. After seeing these, I started thinking of what I'd want in a wooden case. I'm sure I'd have to add some brass and copper just to make it look all steampunkish or maybe I could get my mom, who does great stained glass, to make some cathedral style windows for the side pannels and build the case as if it were a cathedral or castle. The options are limited only by your imagination.
A few years ago, I bought a case (similar to the one on the left, but a little different). It's beautiful metallic blue aluminum with brushed metal panels on the front covered in clear plexi, three fans including one on the clear panel side, blue neon throughout and expansion slots for days. It's a thing of beauty and it's in a box that's covered in dust. I had always intended on pulling it out and building a system in it and just never got around to it. I recently started buying components for my new system, however; ASRock A780 mATX motherboard expandable to 16 gigs of ram with a gigabit network chipset and 512 onboard graphics and an ATI GPU, AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 3.1GHz dual-core processor, 4 gigs of ddr2 ram to start, 320gig Western Digital Caviar SATA hard drive on which will be installed Windows XP 64 bit with a lite step shell on one partition and Ubuntu on the other, and a couple of other bells and whistles that will make this puppy soar right out of the box. There is a problem. The power supply in my case is sub-standard now. Garth is “lending” me another case to put the guts of the beast into, but it's klind of depressing that this beautiful specimen of engineering that I've have patiently waiting in it's dusty box will not be used... for now.This all leads me to my next point of interest. In my search for interesting cases, I found a
blog that spoke of wood. Get your mind out of the gutter people. I speak of the renewable resource that literally grows on trees (I wish that was my joke). Apparently a group of case modders has gone completely eco friendly in case design and have come up with some spectacular cases. It's enough to make one wish they were a carpenter, or more specifically, a cabinet maker. These are beautiful works of art that can only be truly appreciated sitting out in the open as they glow and hum, not shoved into a hole somewhere in a tiny cubby in your desk or huddled at your feet like their metal and plastic cousins. After seeing these, I started thinking of what I'd want in a wooden case. I'm sure I'd have to add some brass and copper just to make it look all steampunkish or maybe I could get my mom, who does great stained glass, to make some cathedral style windows for the side pannels and build the case as if it were a cathedral or castle. The options are limited only by your imagination.