My Next Project

My wonderful daughter has given me my next project for my PC.  She loves to press the red button and turn off my computer.  Often this starts with a request to watch “Trains… Trains!” before changing the fan speed and turning off the computer.

My idea is to add a switch that breaks the connection between the on/off switch so if she presses the button.  An example of the switch is here.

I think that I could insert the switch on the front of the case.  Since the panels come on and off I could afford to make a mistake or two.  As part of this project I would want to clean up the wiring in the first picture from the USB.

Might want to think about custom cables.
The 970 LED was blue. During my last cleaning I turned it off and the case looks much better.
This is a huge problem. My daughter loves to press the button

PC Case Plan

I wanted to start this blog as a place to document my future case mods, PC builds, and plans to wire/set up our house.  Things are going to be pretty hectic over the next few months and I wanted to have a small space to talk about my hobby and keep my thoughts strait.

Currently I’m running a unmodded CM Storm Stryker case that is air-cooled.  I build this PC to run VR and currently have:

  • Skylake i5- 6600
  • Gigabyte G1 970
  • EVGA 850 Supernova Gold
  • Asus Z170 Pro Gaming
  • 16 GB G-Skill DDR 4 2400 RAM
  • Two ACER 1080 P monitors

At this point I’m pretty happy with the setup performance, however, the colors (white, blue, red, and black) and the lack of a “K” processor have my pretty sad about my build and choices.  This was the second computer that I build and continue to be pretty happy with the wiring, case, and overall “feel” of the construction.  It’s able to power my HTC Vive (if I ever bothered to play it).

In the future I see two additional PCs being built.

1) A small form factor media/household control PC.  I think that we’re going to see a ton of “smart” appliances in the near future that will be able to communicate with a central “hub” PC that I would want to control and replace the Xbox we currently use as a media center.  This would allow me to build a mini/micro form factor and try to design something that would fit in a media center/living room.  The only thing I know for sure is that I would want to take the i5 from my current rig and replace that with a K processor.  I would anticipate building this in the summer of 2017 for ~$500-$700 (not including the replacement CPU.

2) A sweet custom water-cooled/modded case computer.  I know that sounds like something a 5 year old would want, but hey, that’s one of the reasons we like this stuff.  I think building this is a 18-24 month time frame would give me enough time to move my family, set up a shop to case mod, and get to it.  In my mind I imagine starter switches like a truck, flashing lights, and a sweet case that I can casually look at and say ‘Yeah, I stripped it down and built it with xxxx”.  The only thing I know right now is that I want to avoid a black/red color scheme.