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I wanted to start a thread for any modding enthusiasts here so we can show off our tinkerings and creativeness and perhaps even inspire others to try something new.

It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to look flashy. It can be a total hack job. But what have you done to "customize" your hardware or do something out of the ordinary?
I figured I should start since it's my thread. mrgreen

Excuse some of my shoddy camera work though. Apparently I have early symptoms of Parkinsons ( j/k )

I had a tiny little Mini-ITX HTPC last year that served its purposes but fell short when the need for living-room PC gaming arose. I wanted something reasonably powerful, fairly compact, but completely silent.

I went with a Silverstone SG02-F chassis.
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Micro-ATX board, full size power supply. This is the kind of system I could have built:
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But I wanted something quieter. I didn't want fans spinning up when it was under a load. I thought that I would need a bigger CPU cooler than I would be able to fit in there normally. But that would mean I would have to do something else with the power supply.

Well I don't need this drive cage...
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...so I ripped it out and installed a 300W Seasonic TFX PSU.
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But I didn't want a cord to just be hanging out of a massive gaping hole where a power supply should be; I still wanted it to look and function as stock. So I improvised.
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I cut out the back of a cheap power supply and soldered a power cable to the AC port. That allowed me to fit a Cooler Master 212 with ease.
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I needed a silent graphics card, so picked up a passively cooled Radeon 6850.
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But it bumped up against the Hyper 212, so I had to rotate its orientation.
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I added some fans just to keep everything cool. It didn't technically need it as the chassis has good ventilation overall, but I wanted better control of temps. Cable management is a total nightmare though as there is no where to shove all of that cabling and the PSU cables are remarkably long. Add to this that every fan is connected to some sort of fan controller or resistor.
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I achieved my objectives though. It looks stock, runs nice and cool, and I've been very happy with it.

I planned on working on it tonight (hence what inspired the thread) so I can post additional/better pics if anyone is interested.
Hmm... At one point, I did splice the wires of a fan into the floppy power plug. It works because it usues the same voltage, though I have no pictures sad

Invisible Noob

At my school, almost no one has an actual desktop, and nobody wants to risk their laptops because of their reliance on them for classes. So I'm one of the many people who played script kiddie and modified their windows interface to look like it is running "GladOS" from the video game Portal 2.

Probably the best thing about that is when several of us decided to visit the campus IT department and ask for help with the printing drivers. Despite the interface being the same, they could not figure out that we were running windows.
Sexy Chaos Engineer
At my school, almost no one has an actual desktop, and nobody wants to risk their laptops because of their reliance on them for classes. So I'm one of the many people who played script kiddie and modified their windows interface to look like it is running "GladOS" from the video game Portal 2.

Probably the best thing about that is when several of us decided to visit the campus IT department and ask for help with the printing drivers. Despite the interface being the same, they could not figure out that we were running windows.

You really can't do a whole lot with a laptop anyway.

Dedicated Man-Lover

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Damn, you have some bony fingers, dude.
Sonic Offline
Damn, you have some bony fingers, dude.
I'm very skinny... O.o
I was going to post pictures of my Carambola project, but it's coming so slow that I fear it won't be as awesome as I want it to be.

Dedicated Man-Lover

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Minion4Hire
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Damn, you have some bony fingers, dude.
I'm very skinny... O.o
Want to trade? I'm not fat, but I do noticeably need t start working out.
God Emperor Akhenaton
Sexy Chaos Engineer
At my school, almost no one has an actual desktop, and nobody wants to risk their laptops because of their reliance on them for classes. So I'm one of the many people who played script kiddie and modified their windows interface to look like it is running "GladOS" from the video game Portal 2.

Probably the best thing about that is when several of us decided to visit the campus IT department and ask for help with the printing drivers. Despite the interface being the same, they could not figure out that we were running windows.

You really can't do a whole lot with a laptop anyway.

Sure you can, it's just most people don't do it because you can destroy your board fairly easily.

Sparkly Vampire

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Je Nique vos Merdiers
God Emperor Akhenaton
Sexy Chaos Engineer
At my school, almost no one has an actual desktop, and nobody wants to risk their laptops because of their reliance on them for classes. So I'm one of the many people who played script kiddie and modified their windows interface to look like it is running "GladOS" from the video game Portal 2.

Probably the best thing about that is when several of us decided to visit the campus IT department and ask for help with the printing drivers. Despite the interface being the same, they could not figure out that we were running windows.

You really can't do a whole lot with a laptop anyway.

Sure you can, it's just most people don't do it because you can destroy your board fairly easily.


Knew somebody who did some wonderful looking laptop modifications... such as the Clear Computer Dade Murphy/ZeroCool/CrashOverride (or was he Acid Burn?) was gifted by "The Deadly Plague" in the 1995 action/comedy "Hackers" (It is a comedy right?). Later another one that was only referred to as "The Bomb Case". This within a few silly small cosmetic modifications. There are also those SteamPunk case mods.

It is not impossible to do... just you need to have an idea of what you want.

As per the IT Department not being able to figure out it was still Windows... just a graphically modified version of Windows... I've typically found IT Departments to be aggressively aggrevating in not knowing what they are doing.

I'll start listing intelligent (and secure) ways to run their systems... and they'll be looking at me like I am discussing some archain black magic... and most of the stuff I am talking about were made Standards in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s... with only a few new in this millenium. Godammit, all the computer knowledge that has been lost. Even more aggressively so, with people crediting Apple Computers with creating a GUI, when X11, the eleventh version of XWindows, was finalised as its standard in 1979 (also, possibly make X12 please... x.conf sucks as a concept). Hell, cheap affordable computers was something Atari wanted to do... but ultimately the C=64 and ZX Spectrum are examples of cheap computers before Apple even put anything out.

You know what? Going to set up my coding production/distrobution server and get my stuff out there for the Year of the Snake. Because dammit... sometimes it seems like nobody knows how to do any of this stuff any more.

Loving Elder

I have a custom PC but I don't do anything fancy with it. It's my dedicated DAW heart Maybe with a few PC games thrown in for measure. xD I do get bored on occasion.
Evil Senpai
I have never modded anything in my life but i am curious in how it's done.
Can someone explain to me how it's done and how do you make it compatible with the game itself? surprised

I this thread is refering to Hard-Mods likes in the OP. Soft(ware) mods are very circumstainal
I kinda feel like posting my cable management in my new NZXT Phantom.

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