Custom Made Deus Ex Machina

While riding my bicycle around Seattle's International District ( China Town to the uninformed ) I saw and endless supply of rather questionably modified cars. It inspired me to write about custom modified PCs or in other words the rise of the 2Fast Tricked out Bling Bling doper than Xbox hax0r Puter b0XX!

People love their computers.

If you look at your typical Internet/PC user they have a certain reverence for their computer equipment that is rarely seen in other forms of tools. The only thing that comes to mind is some people's relationship with cars. If you look at PC as a mental extention of the human mind and will then this seems correct. Pacemakers and sex toys are about the only electrical equipment that has more of a personal impact than ones PC.

Marshall McLuhan theorized how people mentally interact with their tools. When a person is driving a car their mental self image is projected onto the car and they look after it like it was a part of their body. So if a driver gets into a fender bender they do not exclaim "Hey, that car hit my car" they exclaim "Hey, That guy hit ME"!

A unique attribute of humanity is vanity, We care what our hair looks like, what our cars look like, what our bodies look like and on and on. So it is not that unusual that people will take pride in their PC and will be inclined to decorate it.

When I was in Jr High I read this half serious book abut hackers and hacker culture. They half joked about how the Macintosh was very Catholic and the PC was very Protestant. With the Mac you had to take the whole package and accept the levels of icons and intermediaries between you and the divine. The PC was a do it yourself environment that was very open to change where it was up to your to find your own salvation personally. There are some Mac hacking out there but the PC culture is more adept to cracking the case and changing things. There are several types of Macs that are almost impossible to change. This is not specifically a bad thing just a different way of doing things. There I was able to piss off Mac users and be blasphemous all at the same time.

Computer medications fall into two categories, performance enhancing and visually enhancing. A true PC nerd will devote their mental and financial efforts on both.

Let us take a look at the ever changing possibilities that one can impose on a PC if one was so inclined.

The first thing you need to do to make a tricked out PC is spend five hundred bucks or some ridiculous amount of money on the most powerfull video card on the market at that time only to find out a new high end game chip to come out next month. The growth curve on PC video cards are evolving much faster than Moore's Law with generations changing every six months instead of the year and a half. There is also a nerd holy war that puts Mac vs PC to shame and that is ATI vs Nvidia. Every couple of months some one puts out a new card that is faster than the previous one and the distinct crown of who make the baddest card passes around like a volleyball.

And you can't just use the standard of the shelf tested video card drivers. Nvidia and ATI have had leaked drivers passed around the net. Of course you can't keep the video card at the factory's intended speed. After all what do the engineers who designed the cards know how a card should run. So there are a plethora of over clocking and graphics tweak tools out there. I guess the best thing to do is to keep your video card right on the verge of melting down into a plasma state like some energy conduit on Star Trek

Don't forget to make t-shirts with your 3d Mark benchmark score so you can let all the other kids at the LAN party know just how big your polygonal balls are.

Now how do you keep all this over clocking goodness cool? Fans! Big ones the meaner the louder the better. Nothing is better than having a really power full PC sound like a industrial Shop-Vac. There is no reason to stop with only one fan when you can put one on the CPU, the video card and one in the side of the machine to suck in more air like a jet engine.

Almost as cool as a fans is big'n bad Grills and Heat Sinks. The more sharp and pointy metal the better. Think about the random points on a Japanese anime giant robot. The pointier the better. Eat your heart out Gundam.

Or you could give up air cooling and install a liquid cooling system and use water, freon or beer to cool your PC.

Now what is the point of having all this space age technology if you can't show it off to your friends. That is what windows are for and I am not talking about some OS from Redmond WA. Just take a hand-held circular saw and cut out a nice big hole that you can put plexiglass or plastic so it will look like a Dilithium Crystal chamber. Oh and don't forget to put some neon lights in there so that you can bask in the hardware accelerated 3d goodness by looking at the actual chips. It is sort of like how ever good Star Trek TNG episode had Data opening up the little door on his head.

Also there is no need to us off the shelf cables when you can spend a wad of money on gold plated extra thick cables. Because you know that the speed of light is faster when it travels over a really expensive metal cable.

Only the truly insane would install a leaked version of Windows. There are enough problems with the versions that have been declared done. The very thought of running a version that was nowhere near being finished is enough to make me crawl up into a fetal position and suck my thumb.

Don't forget that you can add more Bling Bling to the Xbox by painting Halo and flames on it.

One way to instant coolness is to just use an intentional cool case. I think the products by Color Cases are 2 Kool 4 Skool!

Just to be a little bit cooler than the next kid there are wireless laser mouse. Sure you may never take it off your desk and they need batteries but damn this is being cool we are talking about.

You also need to be quick to debate Quake vs Half Life vs Unreal VS Counter-Strike vs what ever game is hot that moment with your sun light deprived kin at the LAN party.

Another way to reach custom PC Nirvana is to buy a Mini-itx super small motherboard and build a PC into something that is not expected like a toaster or lunch box. I love reading about some of the creativity and engineering required to pull some of these off.

Do you remember the custom PC seen in the piece of shit movie Hackers? I will admit to having that movie in on my DVD rack but it is only there as comedy.

Notebooks are not as customizable as desktop systems but I did order some custom hacker stickers for my notebook. I got the WiFi Jesus fish and the hacker in Japanese ones.

I knew every chip in Bobby's simulator by heart; it looked like your workaday Ono-Sendai VII. the "Cyberspace Seven," but I'd rebuilt it so many time that you'd have had a hard time finding a square millimeter of factory circuitry in all that silicon." Burning Chrome 1981

Once again William Gibson was way ahead of the curve and talked about custom PCs in both Neuromancer and Burning Chrome. He also talked about espresso back in 1984 decades before Starbucks took over. Hell why not install a coffee maker in to your PC?

Here are some links to get your started:
mini-itx.com
colorcases.com
casemods.com/
coolcasemods.com
twistedmods.com
pccasemods.com
pimprig.com
consoleshowcase.com

In fact most of the very first sersonal computers before Apple and IBM started making PCs were custom make kits that were made with love sweat and soldering.

There is nothing wrong with modding a PC as long as you don't go overboard and no one gets hurt. Just don't write checks that your electrical engineering skills and Dremel can't cash.