Computer madness! Must read - pics included
 

Someone gave me a very generic case that has a contemporary front. This case was so generic when I got it that it was beige and fanless. A friend of mine recently had a baby, and he doesn't have much money for a computer. I asked my friends to collect parts for a PC for this guy because the last computer he had lagged on StarCraft. :shock: That's strange. However, it had a firewire card...

Here's what we've gathered:
Very solid, server-grade 300W power supply by Emacs
OE Medion mATX Socket 478 motherboard with new chipset heatsinks
2.4 GHz Pentium 4 - 256K L2 cache
768MB DDR333 (256+512)
Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB video card
20GB (sorry to say, but Maxtor) hard drive
40x CD drive

To give him the PC, we're going to have to make a big deal out of it because it just wouldn't be so special otherwise. I'm going to gather a bunch of people, most of them strangers to my friend, to stand around in an area around a computer case filled with pretty awful parts. When I drive him up to the computer, there will be a ceremony in place to give him his new PC, and everyone will act overjoyed and really happy to be there.

Suddenly, a giant red-haired man in a leprechaun costume will jump out of some hiding place and smash the crap out of that computer with an 8lb sledgehammer. Some of the people may join in on the fun, but only those my friend doesn't know. I'll start yelling about who it is that invited all these people, and there will be havoc in general. Pretty standard. Then, in all this calamity, we'll stop suddenly and give him his true computer.

There will be photographers and people with cameras to shoot videos of this. It'll look really formal. These pictures are coming up, but for now, here are some pictures of the computer case I painted and the parts inside:

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The video card had no heatsink:
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Here's the heatsink I put on:
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Yes, those are cable ties. They work really well, actually.

So, here's some more stuff, but without titles/subtitles:
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So, there are updates to come. I hope this comes out just fine. And don't worry - the smashed computer will have sucked to deserve a good thrashing. Do you like the paint job? I used truck bed liner on the top & sides of the case for a cool texture, and then I painted that and clearcoated it. The front was painted, clearcoated, painted, clearcoated, and then painted because the plastic didn't react well to the clearcoat. This is very strange because I primed it, and this usually shouldn't happen. Must have been a cheap case. Does anyone recognize it? I think it used to be a Packard Bell case.

It kind of has an etower look to it.

First thing that came to mind -

Kmart Bluelight computers when Kmart had them a while ago, around late '98 to late '00. Anyone remember those? The distinct bright blue computers that were priced for "budget shoppers"? :lol:

Thanks a lot. It's leftover paint. There are a lot of clearcoat layers., and I think I may do more. The front needs something on the front of it. Here's something else I made. I painted an eMachines case red and fiberglassed on a skull:
http://img2.putfile.com/thumb/9/26600014686.jpg

So, I do this to practice working with paint rather than making the PCs look better. With truck bed liner on the back, I'm sure this case looked at least comparable in beige. I'm trying to find a picture of it when it was generic.

remind me of my first PC

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We may have used the same paint color. Which one did you use? Also, your PC didn't have truck bed liner to "hide blemishes."

I painted that in high school, so we are talking like 6 years ago. I believe it was a metallic blue automotive paint. I think yours is more of a neon blue.

nice job on painting the grass ;)

you should have just primed, painted and cleared. no need to paint it again after you clear it.

if there were different colors, would it have looked better? How about inverting the colors? For future reference, should I just come here to verify colors before I paint cases? :)