Blogs When a PC case mod isn't a case mod

If you don't modify a case it ain't a case mod.

 

What if you modify the case but don't put in water cooling, is it still a worthy mod?
What if you don't put in any hardware?!

Just asking the real questions here.

Article is spot on however.

 

Sort of named though isn’t it? A case mod is a case that’s been modified.

Not long ago, as said, you would have to mod a case to be able to watercool which is where the lines have become fuzzy to some people.

Maybe it is time for a separate heading for ‘cooling mod’

 

Doesn't have to be a PC, can be a Pi or whatever. It has to be a case for something.

Article is spot on. A pretty WC'd rig is practically off-the-shelf these days.

 

You should go work for the EU deciding what can be called a sausage.

The aim is to make something look cool and that can involve making the case from scratch or just picking and organising the stuff in that case effectively. If it looks really cool it's a success. That thermaltake case mod looks really cool - someone put a lot of effort into picking the right components, colours, lighting, cabling and tubing and the result is awesome.

Going into some complex rules for what you are allowed to call a "case mod" is missing the point somewhat. What counts? - what if I don't drill holes in the case but paint it, is that then a "mod"? What if I drill 1 little hole in it, or make some tiny change? Are you going to specify some min % of the case changed in way X to count? Do I need a bunch of compulsory elements to count? It's all getting a bit silly, and until case modding becomes an Olympic event a bit pointless.

 

We can just leave it for now. Basic builds don't stick around very long. I agree the sheer number of them causes some of the neater builds to be overlooked.
Sometimes it's good for a laugh when they abuse the Mod of the Month tag. I think this article is mostly a, "Quit e-mailing me about your assembly build." -rant. We can only imagine what kind of spam Bit wades through.
A certain glacier-paced monkey was amused at the part about taking months to finish.

 

Didn't we just have this argument?

 

Great article btw.

 

John Hurt's penis looks disgusting?

 

First of all, its Ali Abbas known as abbas-it here. for some reason i needed a new login for this area, different to the forum. oh well.
great topic Antony and it was certainly time this issue was discussed.
together with the hosts and judges of the german casemod championship, we have been having loads of conversations over the past years addressing exactly this issue.

first of all, i personally think we should differ between definition and category. meaning. if we define a casemod then as the name implies, if i modify a computer case then its a modified case, hence a casemod.
as far as category is concerned, i dont understand why many folks then point towards water cooling. whats that got to do with anything. many others and i were moddifying cases before the very concept of water cooling was though up.
i won my first contest with a low budget 30 quid machine while others were using leds and lcs systems and not even polishing a screw.
it is indeed unfair to slap in a bunch of flashy hardware components and calling it a casemod. anyone with money can do that. but not everyone has the abilities to make parts and modifications to all those hardware components or cases. thats the difference between buyers and modifiers.
now we come to water cooling and all the later flashy hardware components like leds and rgb controllers and ram guards and so forth. once again anyone with money can buy this stuff. I work at CASEKING germany where such computers are screwed together by the dozens every day. i for that matter have my own workshop and make real modifications and unique scratch build and pieces of art.
i would boldly almost arrogantly declare myself to be an extreme modifier and have proved many a time that its the message, story or theme i want to portray rather than showing off hardware. of course i like state of the art hardware but if you for instance take a look at RAGNARS REVENGE or SAMURAI SACRILEGIUM or actually pretty much any of my mods, then you will notice that people stop and stare to see what i made of them, not what hardware is in them.
i have actually stopped calling them casemods since years. I call what I do functional art. I have even noticed since I said that the first time in a forum that other serious modders use this phrase a lot too.
And that what seperate the boys from the men in this passion.
While some buy and rig what others could also do, a serious passionate casemodder or functional artist will never be satisfied by just putting screws to holes. he will always find inconventional, crazy and awsome ways of making standard off the shelf hardware and cases to look better, be more and do more.
Frankly speaking, its us functional art casemodders that have actually kicked off the industry into making more of the computer world than just a biege case with excel calculators in them.
I personally like building theme of back in the day and building bridges between modern state of the art hardware and elemntry essences of themes and topics and subjects in a way unimaginable.
LIVE THE THEME AND THE THEME WILL LIVE.
Keep an eye on my latest SPARTACUS, MOD OF THE ARENA, to see what I mean.

 

I don't see any complexity. If the case is modified it is a case mod, if the case is not modified it is not a case mod. Seems simple enough to me.

 

That EU and sausage remark was juvenile. are you always so rude to people or is it just because we have intenet inbetween and that makes many people brave.
(brave is the opposite of coward)
your last line was the only relevant thing you said.
if you modify it its a case mod, if not then not. wow you hit the nail on the head.
you talked before that about missing the point. then please explain what this whole discussion is about. exactly the fact that there is this point called casemod or not. and if there wasnt then the whole jury board of the DCMM wouldnt be banging there heads together on it since years either.
of course it has no impact on real life beyond the boundaries of this passion.
maybe you missunderstood that part.
so and now to your next remark of what if you drill a single hole and so forth. once again, of course whatever you change to anything in the world is a modification.
if i buy a pack of crayons and some fill in the line drawing books and fill in the colors that wont make me an artist. but if i draw a picture myself and color it, that will. its called the painting and the poster dillema, maybe you should read about it.

its easy to see in copy and pasting of a message, hint hint... not a painting, but a poster, yuck.

 

Let's say I rented a house.
I could and decorate it with Cool Stuff™ and I wouldn't need to consult a landlord. I'm not doing anything destructive the the house itself, I'm simply buying things just like everyone else does.
If I were to make structural changes to the house however...that would require consulting the landlord. It also requires a skill-set beyond online shopping.

 

So what you're saying is you won't consider my Thermaltake AIO dropped into a CM 690 for Mod of the Month? EVEN THOUGH I set the RGB lights to a garish purple that clashes with the red glow off my video card?

 

Ahh the ol’ edgy topic that spawned so many arguments in days past, although tbh by the sound of things we’ve mostly got over that now.

I agree that a stronger identity for casemods (and by extension scratchbuilds, I’m happy to place them under the same roof for this purpose) would be good. The tricky thing really is just ironing out the creases where things overlap.

I’d like Modding to encompass making elements from scratch, modifying existing ones and generally making a system unique with not off the shelf solutions. That covers a lot of bases that I think we all agree would be “Modding” here on Bit.

For example, some define Modding as the case, but what if you paint the motherboard and all the components and make blanking plates but leave the case stock? Same goes for making customised reservoirs, cables etc. which we would all class as mods I’m sure.

The top mods tend to stand out regardless in the field, so really it’s the folks in the middle who are getting a bit shunted around by the change in perceptions.

 

But but but what if you 3D print something from a file you downloaded, but didn't modify yourself?




/adds rule to clause 13b, paragraph 6 on page 294

 

Aye modding is modding, case mods are case mods and scratch builds are just that, a case built from nothing but raw materials (and not just a load of bolt together components like some people have confused them for in the past).

A case mod is something as simple as drilling a hole for a toggle switch. Not buying a cable cover from Corsair as an optional extra and fitting it.

Like many other hobbies eventually it loses its identity. For example, BMX bikes. They are all pretty much identical now with the same geometry, same components and same colours (raw, black, grey). During the 90s and 80s it was all about self expression, and no colour was too loud. About the closest thing they make to coloured bike parts now are jet fuel and oil slick. And that's pretty much it.

Mind you, case modding ceased when companies like Corsair pretty much copied all of those mods and added them to their cases. PSU shrouds, decent cable management, braided cables, plenty of rad space without you needing to chop it to bits and so on.

Most modern cases just require assembly, not a Dremel before you even build them. Which is good I guess, but hardly great for the great lazy era who are so lazy they don't play video games even, instead sit on their bums watching people playing video games.