We love a little bit of 3D printing motion in terms of PC modding, and PC builder Steve Grever has pushed the boat out with this fiery open-air construct. Desirous to get away from the usual black field, Steve constructed this touch-screen-equipped PC in a purple Thermaltake P3 chassis, that includes a number of customized 3D-printed PC components made with matching purple filament. There’s additionally a Large Daddy from BioShock maintaining a tally of the flames.
Because of our quickly rising PC constructing Fb web page, we’ve seen many customized gaming PCs, from mods based mostly on present case designs to scratch PC builds. You possibly can even submit yours for consideration proper right here. Now let’s chat to Steve about this Bioshock gaming PC.
: How did this construct begin?
Steve: The Thermaltake P3 case caught my eye from the second it was launched, and I lastly pulled the set off and bought one final yr. I didn’t need a fundamental black case, so I made a daring option to go together with the purple model, which is able to stand out nice on my desk and at LAN events.
I embraced the purple shade scheme and 3D-printed some customized components (some purposeful, some ornamental) to match the general design. I made a decision to make use of matching purple and black energy provide extension cables and minimal RGB lighting through 140mm Zalman followers and magnetic RGB mild strips – I didn’t need the case to be too brilliant or distracting whereas gaming or working from house.
I’ve additionally been a PC gamer since 2002, and I needed to share my love of video games similar to BioShock, Cyberpunk 2077 and so forth, so I made room on the backside of the case to swap out totally different gaming figures I needed to indicate off. I created customized graphics for 2 small LCDs (one on the all-in-one liquid cooler and the 7-inch touch-screen) to show my favourite recreation characters and generally humorous memes.
What made you select the Thermaltake P3 as the inspiration?
The Thermaltake P3 case was nice for me, not solely due to its open-air design, but additionally due to its versatility for customizing the orientation of all the case. As well as, it provides a wide range of placement choices for various {hardware}, such because the graphics card, energy provide, and water-cooling elements. With this case, the sky was the restrict when it comes to how I needed the {hardware} to be displayed – I even had the choice to mount all the case on the wall to save lots of desk house.
How did you create the customized components, such because the encompass on the cooler’s pump unit?
I designed the customized shroud for the NZXT Kraken Z63 cooler in Autodesk Tinkercad, and I created the STL information utilizing Ultimaker Cura. I additionally discovered some shiny silk purple filament on Amazon that matched the case rather well. The shroud took round 4 hours to print on my Ender 3 V2 3D printer. I used to be actually proud of the way it turned out, so I added the identical fireplace theme to my gamer tag plate, which I connected to the highest of the graphics card.
There are many different 3D-printed components on this construct with the identical matching purple filament, together with the 7-inch touch-screen housing, gamer tag plates, hat and headphone hangers, and tempered glass brackets. I needed so as to add a number of extra tempered glass sections to the entrance and high of the case. This was partly for security, but additionally as a result of I needed room on the highest of the case so as to add extra gaming figures and different stuff.
I used to be capable of finding a customized glass fabricator on-line that helped me to seek out the suitable tempered glass to match my case. Thermaltake additionally has an incredible useful resource web site with 3D printing property for its P3 circumstances, which is the place I discovered the brackets to connect the tempered glass to the case. I additionally discovered some purple and black-sleeved energy provide extension cables to maintain the theme constant between the case, elements and cables.
Inform us in regards to the touch-screen.
It’s a Kuman 7-inch capacitive touch-screen that has a 1,024 x 600 decision. I exploit it to observe PC temperatures, fan speeds and gaming body charges. It interfaces with Home windows through HDMI and is operating AIDA64 Excessive software program, which permits me to customise all the structure and design of the monitoring panel. I discovered a panel design that matched the cyberpunk look and modified it to suit my wants.
What’s the story behind the BioShock Large Daddy mannequin within the backside?
BioShock was one of many first sequence of video games that bought me fascinated with PC gaming. The Large Daddy character had such a singular type, and the determine I bought has eyes that may glow purple, yellow or inexperienced. It could stand by itself, and it’s simply the suitable dimension to put it on the backside of the case.
How did you intend the lighting for this construct?
I needed the RGB lighting to be as minimal as potential, so I solely added a 12in magnetic RGB strip in entrance of the graphics card, and used the lighting on the Zalman SF140 followers that lined the radiator.
I bought actually fortunate discovering these specific followers. The Kraken Z63 cooler requires 140mm followers, which could be tough to seek out in numerous kinds and designs. Nonetheless, I got here throughout the Zalman SF140 140mm RGB followers on Newegg, and instantly knew they’d match my design idea.
These followers add accent RGB lighting, and now have two units of open-air fins per fan, which push greater than sufficient air by the radiator to chill the CPU. The mix of an open-air fan design and X-shaped RGB lighting made the followers pop in my P3 case.
I then used the Asus Aura Sync app to create a customized lighting profile for the case. I actually appreciated utilizing an all-red hue throughout all of the RGB elements. The setup provides sufficient ambient mild to brighten up the case a bit, but it surely doesn’t overpower the LCD on the CPU cooler or the touch-screen.
What specs did you select and why?
I’ve at all times appreciated AMD processors, and the Ryzen 5000 sequence of CPUs had been getting nice opinions for his or her gaming speeds and general efficiency. I additionally needed to contemplate my funds, which was round $2,000. I centered on getting mid-range to high-end {hardware} for my processor, CPU cooler, motherboard and graphics card, after which used the remainder of my funds on the facility provide, system reminiscence and storage.
This was a bit difficult with the PC {hardware} shortages on the time (and I didn’t wish to pay scalper costs), however I managed to piece collectively an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X processor, NZXT Kraken Z63 cooler, Corsair RM750x modular PSU, 32GB of G.Talent TridentZ 3200MHz DDR4 RAM and an Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard. Fortunately, I used to be additionally in a position to purchase an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Version at MSRP from Finest Purchase utilizing the Inventory Drops Discord channel.
All the {hardware} I selected is nice for day by day duties, similar to phrase processing, web looking and photograph/video modifying, however the PC can also be wonderful for gaming at 1,920 x 1,080 and a couple of,560 x 1,440 – I haven’t had any points operating video games similar to Horizon Zero Daybreak, Outriders, and Battlefield 2042 at Excessive or Extremely settings (relying on the sport).
I work at home as an online designer and content material creator, so I exploit my PC day by day for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver. After work, I spend fairly a number of hours enjoying video games. I additionally design 3D components in Tinkercad and dabble a bit in Blender too. At night time, I additionally let my PC do some fundamental crypto-mining utilizing Good Hash with my RTX 3060 Ti.
Did you come throughout any difficulties?
The primary challenges through the PC construct course of had been cable administration and placement of the 7-inch LCD touch-screen. The case has loads of room to your important elements, however the one space left open for the touch-screen was on the backside of the case, or on the highest utilizing a suction cup mount that I secured to the glass. I additionally had issue routing the cables from the touch-screen to the again of the case.
I overcame the latter by discovering right-angled HDMI and USB adaptors, which helped to maneuver the cables towards the again of the case and provides my PC a cleaner look.
How lengthy did it take you to finish this construct, from begin to end?
The preliminary construct took only some hours, however creating and printing the customized 3D components took one other week or so. I additionally needed to wait nearly two weeks for the customized tempered glass components to be minimize and shipped.
Cable administration took a little bit of time as effectively, but it surely was actually a deal with to do that with the P3 case as a result of all of the cables are hidden behind the again panel of the chassis. It was really easy to route cables beneath the case and excessive of the motherboard to attach the CPU energy cables too. I lastly accomplished the PC in a bit over three weeks.
The construct course of was fairly easy –the primary selections had been the case orientation (wall mounted, horizontal or vertical standing), graphics card and energy provide orientation (two choices for each) and the place I needed to mount the exhausting drive and radiator for the AIO cooler. The case has many further components, which allow you to alter the case’s configuration to accommodate totally different layouts.
One of many ultimate additions I made to the P3 case was creating and printing customized hat rack brackets for the again of the chassis. I personal fairly a number of baseball caps, and the again of the case appeared fairly naked, so the hat racks are very purposeful.
Are you fully proud of the tip outcome, or do you want you’d completed a few of it in another way?
I’m round 80% proud of the general design to be sincere. I’m serious about creating some customized graphics that can be etched into the tempered glass panels. I’d additionally like so as to add some further RGB lighting to mild up every glass panel and produce out the etched graphics too.
As well as, I’d like to put in a customized water-cooling system, as a result of the closed-loop AIO system I selected is restricted in some ways. I’d like so as to add exhausting, clear tubing and alter the colour of the liquid to match the case. I’ve seen some superior customized reservoirs and waterblocks that might look nice on this PC.
I additionally wish to add extra customized sleeving to the remainder of the facility provide cables, fan cables, SATA cables and RGB header cables. Lastly, I’m going to 3D-print a customized PSU cowl utilizing the silk purple filament to match up all of the {hardware} with the P3 case shade scheme.
Thermaltake P3 BioShock PC construct specs
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
- Case: Thermaltake P3
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Version
- Storage: 500GB WD Blue SN550 M.2 NVMe SSD (for Home windows), 2TB Mushkin Pilot-E M.2 NVMe SSD (recreation storage), 2TB WD Enterprise 7,200rpm 3.5-inch SATA exhausting drive (secondary storage)
- Reminiscence: 32GB (4 x 8GB) G.Talent TridentZ RGB F4-3200C16-8GTZR
- Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix B550F-Gaming WiFi
- PSU: Corsair RM750x
- Cooling: NZXT Kraken Z63 all-in-one liquid cooler with 2 x Zalman SF140 140mm RGB followers
You’ve personalised this PC rather well together with your customized 3D-printed fiery touches across the CPU cooler pump and graphics card Steve – the purple filament matches the theme completely, and this can be a actually distinctive construct.
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