When we agreed to collaborate with Gigabyte
and Intel LANFest and hold a mod contest at Gigabyte’s Esports LAN
(thegesl.com) event June 15 through June 17 at Cal Poly Pomona, we expected a
fairly competitive field. After all, this was a big event, and we knew that
there would be some heavy hitters in attendance. We were not disappointed.
Plum
Crazy Trooper
At the end of the contest, when we ended
deliberations with co-judge, former Mad Reader Mod winner, and modder
extraordinaire Lee ‘PcJunkie’ Harrington, we agreed that although there were
several really good mods at the event, the 1st place mod had
to be Plum Crazy used to get the uniquely modded Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper
to the show did some modding of its own, but luckily the damage was such that
he could massage it back in shape for the contest.
Fatz spent roughly 30 hours on Plum Crazy
Trooper, working with such materials as fiberglass body filler and 22-gauge
sheet metal along the way. He drew inspiration for the mod from ‘70s-era muscle
cars: ‘They had some amazing color, really grabbed your attention.’
Color aside, the thing that sets the Plum
Crazy Trooper apart is that Fats decided early on that he wanted to reorient
the motherboard to face the right side panel, which, as you can imagine, takes
a little doing. ‘I love flipping boards, so as soon as I got the Trooper I knew
exactly where the board had to go,’ he says.
Fatz built a new front panel and modified
the top panel, leaving intact only the CM Storm Trooper’s LAN-friendly carry
handle. ‘I wanted to make the rig as clean as possible,’ he says. “That’s why I
hand-built the entire front of the case. Every crack and crevice was filled and
smoothed, so the flush-mounted fan controllers on top looked even sicker.’
Indeed.
The all-white case fans perfect contrast
for the Fatz’s flawless purple paint job, and the custom windows that he
cut(two for each side) show off his components and all the work he did to bend
them to his will. The Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800W power supply’s cables
are fully sleeved in black and (naturally) purple, and the tubing that connects
the Trooper’s custom cooling setup is purple, as well.
The rest of the cooling system consist of
Koolance 480 and 240 radiators, an Aqua computer Aqua stream XT USB 12V Ultra
Version Pump, Monsoon fittings, and a reservoir that you can see through the
aforementioned windows from either side of the mod. The rest of the Trooper’s
vital organs include an Intel Core i5 CPU, a Gigabyte Z68X - UD3H-B3
motherboard, an EVGA 560 Ti video card, and 8GB of Corsair DDR3-1600 memory.
When we asked Fatz if he has any other
projects going, he replied that he is currently working on not one but three
mods, which means he’s likely spending a lot of time in his mod room-or, as his
wide refers to it, ‘the bunker.’
