Case Mod The Decomatic HTPC - 2007 Intel Design Contest Finalist

[slipperyskip]

Skip to final photos

When I built this project back in 2006-2007 I took a lot of photos with the intention of publishing a work log after-the-fact. That never happened as a good friend of mine keeps reminding me. I nixed it mainly because of the following bit-tech rule..

"If you have a finished project but no log of the work done, post it in Modding. If the forum moderator doesn't think your mod qualifies as a log, it will be moved to Modding and you will be notified."

Since then I have seen other "back-fit" logs here so I'm thinking I may have misinterpreted the rule.

I think the whole story needs to be told including the Decomatic's role in the Intel million dollar case mod competition it was built specifically to compete in. The story is filled with fraud, inspiration, deception, betrayal and intrigue on an International scale. I'm only half-joking about that.

This is a case mod. The case to be modified is a Silverstone La Scala LC02.



It was chosen for two reasons. First, it fulfilled the competition's rule that the computer had to be less than 12 liters in capacity. The LC02 tops out at 11.8 liters.

Second...it was free. Thank you Silverstone.





The case is beautlfully made from solid aluminum. Its unique features are its ability to take a full-sized ATX motherboard and its use of a slimline optical drive instead of the standard.





Access to the interior is through this lid that I'm calling the top plate. It is shown here upside down.

Note: I place captions below photos because that is the way I was taught. Sorry but I'm too old (and stubborn) to change.





The top plate has a piece of 3/16" birch plywood attached to it using small nuts and bolts. The sides, made of 4" wide basswood planks are attached in the same manner but only to where they meet the top plate. I use mechanical fasteners because of my concern for ill effects caused by the expansion and contraction of dissimilar materials. This method has proven to be effective.





Another 4" basswood plank is notched out and fitted to the back in the same manner. None of these wood panels are physically attached to each other they merely "hang" from the aluminum top plate.



That's all for now. So is this a project log? Or not?

[Cheapskate]

It's from the Slipperyskip. Do you really think they will nix it?
You have me wanting to hear about the Intel contest intrigues already, but I'll settle for a kick*ss build log.

[jhanlon303]

Looks like a log to me. It has a beginning and an in progress. Is it on your site finished so I can peek?

john
/edit
Never mide I found it. I remember this one.

[slipperyskip]

Originally Posted by Cheapskate

It's from the Slipperyskip. Do you really think they will nix it?
You have me wanting to hear about the Intel contest intrigues already, but I'll settle for a kick*ss build log.

The slipperyskip might be reason enough for them to whack it. lol

[slipperyskip]

The Contest

The Intel Core Design Challenge, or "contest" as it will be known, was announced in Sep 2006. It was not open to individuals but was suppose to be a contest to motivate OEMs into designing small, stylish and innovative home theater PCs using Intel technology of course. Grand prize was $700,000 and second place was $300,000.

This immediately pissed me off. We all know where the real innovation comes from in case design and we were being intentionally excluded. If Intel wanted the industry to be motivated then how about an open contest where there was a high probability that they would get their collective asses handed to them by a bunch of amateur enthusiasts?

Next....The Deception



The Silverstone faceplate is very nice but it had to go.





Hmmmm. I wonder where the fan holes will go?





I got a 1/4 sheet of white oak veneer from one of my cabinetmaker buddies. It is the most common veneer they use for making kitchen cabinets. For those who don't know...veneer is real wood. The fake stuff is called laminate. I used contact cement to apply the veneer resulting a surprisingly strong structure.

[slipperyskip]

The Deception

So I contacted a friend at Intel marketing and chewed on his ear awhile. His advice was to form my own company. I thought about it and decided that the costs and effort involved wasn't going to do me much good. What I need is to be Googled because most people don't look much beyond that anymore.

I had used the name Slipperyskip Computers before when dealing with companies that don't deal directly with the public. Innocent stuff. Just knocking down doors to talk to potential sponsors and such. Some of this Slipperyskip Computers stuff had already leaked out onto the Internet and was Googlable. I needed more so I conspired with some sympathetic friends in the media to do some more seeding.

At this same time I reworked my website by temporarily changing the name and tags. I also got rid of all my Google Ads. The contest required that you file a formal application by the end of the year in order to compete. Jeffrey Stephenson, President of Slipperyskip Computers did so in a timely manner.

We got the acceptance letter two weeks later. We partied.

Please understand that in no way was I ever motivated by the money. Walking away with cash wasn't ever going to happen. I wanted to wave the Case Modder's flag, embarrass Intel for stupid thinking and maybe crush a few "professional" designers egos for a bonus.

Next....The Pre-Game Show




The stock LC02 on the left shows the position of the power supply that I removed and replaced with a...wooden GTX 280? What the....?





Silence is essential to an HTPC and noise level was one of the judging criteria. To keep my design quiet I...er...we decided to do two things. First thing was to make this a single fan system. Fanless was out because use of a Core 2 Duo processor was a contest requirement and even a mobile version requires forced air cooling.





The second thing was to NOT mount the single fan to the skin of the case. Case mounted fans shoot noise straight out into the living space whereas an internally mounted fan's noise must fight a torturous path to escape.





By building an internal air-tight barrier and mounting a fan on it I'm able to move air from one "compartment" to the other. The inlet plenum takes its suction from a vent opening that I Dremeled into the bottom. The space freed up by using a micro-ATX motherboard instead of an full ATX is used for the exhaust vent on the other side.





The inlet plenum and mounted fan as seen from the bottom.

Edit: The slight surface scratching you see easily came out with polishing compound. The surface is raw aluminum and not paint.





The exhaust vent from the bottom. The exhaust opening is larger because hot air expands. Seen through the opening is the fanless video card and TV tuner card.

[DonT-FeaR]

very cool..

[slipperyskip]

The Pre-Game Show

Silverstone offered me a spot in their display at CES 2007 for the freshly-minted Decomatic. So fresh that it didn't contain any computer equipment. It was being displayed as a case at a case manufacturer's booth so I got away with that. Feedback from the show was great from both the press and Silverstone who said that the case pulled in traffic that they wouldn't normally see. It stuck out like a sore thumb against a sea of black and aluminum Silverstone goodness.

Back at the ranch, armed with my acceptance letter and CES feedback, I started to twist manufacturer's arms to get some proper equipment. I still had a month before shipping the project to Intel HQ in Santa Clara.

Gigabyte was the first to drop. They coughed up a micro-ATX MoDT motherboard that was never sold in the US. The contest rules called for a Core 2 Duo processor but they didn't exclude the mobile versions so the Gigabyte Mobile on Desktop (MoDT) board became quite a secret weapon. They also sent me a pre-production GS 7600 fanless video card with HDMI/HDCP that was insanely rare as well.

Thank you Gigabyte!



In the end everything came together. The only thing I purchased was a used T5600 processor
off of ebay and and a copy of Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition. Total project cost including materials and shipping....$326.

After extensive testing I shipped it ahead of schedule. I didn't see it again for 3 1/2 months.

Next...Jubilation and Controversy



My Humidor Server had been destroyed in a shipping accident so I scavenged off the front emblem and heavy, thick chrome corner pieces.





Each corner is made up of 24 pieces of wood. The chrome trim (shown in front) is pinched between the layered pieces with only the very outside edge showing. This photo displays the prototypes and mistakes that ended up as scrap.





Some test fitting. Sure, the corner structures could have been CNC cut out of a solid block of mahogany but what's the fun in that? Building up a structure from small scrap pieces of wood instead of reducing down a single large chunk of wood are two ways to get to the same result.





Test fitting with a dummy faceplate to check the look and proportions. This all failed.





Mounting up some chrome and checking the look. Still failed.





Twenty one pieces of mahogany veneer make up the skin of each corner. The one on the right is still being worked while the left one is complete.





The tricky corner was the one in the back. It had to be specially made with a notch and trimmed chrome in order to clear the PCI slots. This photo also shows the ventilation inlet and exhaust system. The cross member physically separates the two vents so hot air won't be recirculated.

Although the corner pieces appear to be supportive "legs" they don't actually touch the desktop. The computer's entire weight is supported by the four square pads shown above. The corners are purely decorative.

[Boddaker]

This would be a great pilot episode for VH1's new series, "Behind the Modding".

Great stuff!

[slipperyskip]

Originally Posted by DonT-FeaR

very cool..

Thanks! It does run very cool.

Originally Posted by Boddaker

This would be a great pilot episode for VH1's new series, "Behind the Modding".

Great stuff!

Thank you! Maybe there will be a spin-off called "Desperate Modders"

[logan'srun]

man, this is awesome! Even if it's over, I love the suspense and think it qualifies as log!

[ringo]

Good job, very intersting what you made with this case.

[slipperyskip]

Jubilation and Controversy

Intel Core Challenge Judging Video Kinda long but worth it for the Skull PC.

So surprise, surprise, the Decomatic was chosen as one of ten finalists by a group of Intel employee/judges. In addition they announced that the final ten would compete in a separate on-line popularity contest. Intel scheduled to have a reporter interview me since I was the company-designated spokesperson.

My insider Intel mole tells me that the Decomatic scored very high and may have actually won the first round. Regardless, I had just beaten up on some of the world's biggest computer companies including, oddly enough, Gigabyte. It seems the American office didn't know that Taiwan HQ was entering. Now that's just funny.

I saw the photos that were posted on the People's Choice site (now dead) and went ballistic. Intel stickers had been applied to the face and top of the computer during the technical qualification process. They looked like they were slapped on by a six-year-old without any regard to the negative impact. The impact was immediate as many public comments made note of the shitty looking crooked stickers and how I could have done better.

I told them to take them off or ship it back. They thought I was kidding, nobody talks to Intel like that. In the end we compromised. They replaced the on-line photos with ones I supplied to them. As for the box, they removed the top sticker and had an adult supervise the repositioning of the face sticker.

The upside of the sticker is that it represents Intel certification that the Decomatic actually does work. Some doubts will arise when I cover the PSU that was used. I will point to the sticker at that time.

The first thing I did when I got it home was to peel that POS off.

Next...Pimping and Betrayal




A hole is cut for the knob and the power switch is mounted. The tips of the buttons are cut-down aluminum anti-theft doorlock knobs for a Ford Mustang.





A proper faceplate appears with a matching optical drive button in place. The slot was cut by hand. Absolutely the most difficult thing I have ever done in case modding. Period. I will never do it again. Exclamation mark.





Just by chance I had matched up my Griffin Powermate to the winged "O" emblem and found that they were a perfect compliment in both size and finish. Sometimes you just don't question these kind of things.

Edit: No. I don't use masking tape colored heatshrink. lol The Powermate was re-spliced and sleeved later on.





The wings meet up with the Powermate. The knob gets a protective layer of tape to protect the finish during the remainder of the build.





I'm still amazed to this day at how well they fit together.

[HaoKi]

Its nice to see how you actually made this setup. I've admired your pictures of the finished product before, so its great to see a worklog also.

[slipperyskip]

Originally Posted by logan'srun

man, this is awesome! Even if it's over, I love the suspense and think it qualifies as log!

Originally Posted by ringo

Good job, very intersting what you made with this case.

Originally Posted by HaoKi

Its nice to see how you actually made this setup. I've admired your pictures of the finished product before, so its great to see a worklog also.

Thanks guys! It was a long time coming. I had to document this before the Alzheimers really set in or more likely, lose the photos.

[stonedsurd]

It's really odd - even I'm building a full-ATX wood-clad HTPC case

This is really nice

[slipperyskip]

Pimping and Betrayal

The contest site is long gone but I found this old Register article that shows most of my competition.

Intel Challenge Goes Public

I say most of them because three of the final ten pussied out from the optional People's Choice competition.

The vote count was secret the first two days but they changed their minds. First posting had me winning but that soon changed, amazing how that works. I wanted a fair fight but I have a different definition of fair I guess. The only real chance I had was to appeal to the case modding community. Surely they would come to my aid.

The Aussies and Europeans stepped up big time especially the Swedes and Finns. My fellow Americans, with a few exceptions, acted like a bunch of douche bags shooting me down time and time again. [I deleted this next section of text because it was depressing and bitter]

After that I completely gave up on contest pimping, even to this day. The mCubed HFX (my favorite] eventually won the People's Choice Award. They later proudly admitted that they twisted the arms of their parts suppliers for votes. Smart move.

I came in third place but I did win the comment competition (if there was such a thing). I had the most comments (260) and the highest percentage of positive comments by far.

In a very surreal moment, several case modders came over to post comments. Much of it was "You guys all suck" and "We could do better than you" stuff. I kept my head down because I was, after all, the President of an international computer company.

The press interview went fairly well. All I had to do was remember to say "We" instead of "I".

Next...Judgment and Intrigue



Gotta talk about the CPU cooler. The motherboard came with a low-profile heatsink but I purchased a huge chunky piece of aluminum goodness to use instead. The single system fan blows sideways directly through the fins. I got very nervous about such a large, heavy heatsink coming loose during shipping and ruining the computer (experience speaking). Just for fun I put the original low profile back on and tested it. Amazingly I only lost a few degrees with the swap so I decided to keep it. The plan was to drop the big boy back in when it came back home.





The Decomatic was the only contest finalist that used a discrete graphics solution. All the other players used onboard graphiics. This is a NVIDIA GS 7600 that would have smoked the competition if there had been benchmarking. The card mounts into the case using a PCIe riser and extension as seen here.





Yep. That's it. The power supply. A mini-box.com 120W PicoPSU. All 4 ounces of it. Deal with it.





The HDD and ODD attach to a steel mounting plate that spans the case from front to back. This adds a lot of strength to the otherwise all-aluminum enclosure. I did some modifying to the hard drive mounts by drilling out the holes and installing rubber grommets.

[DonT-FeaR]

looking really good

[slipperyskip]

Judgment and Intrigue

About this time I figure Intel knew what was going on. I'm not sure because they never let on. It wasn't in anyone's interest to out me as a fraud considering the level of interest the Decomatic was generating from the public. In the end, Intel invited me to compete in the following year's competition so I'm not exactly sure what their thiinking was.

Maybe Intel played me. By inviting me to compete in subsequent events they were essentially tying my hands to keep the dirty little secret. Regardless, it worked because I have never admitted to cheating until this very thread. There never was another contest. They canceled it six months later.

So the big judgment day came on April 10th, my birthday. Intel brought in three outsiders as judges in addition to Paul Otellini, Intel's CEO.

Then There Were Two Video

On April 11th I received an e-mail from Intel Marketing. I figured it was the "Sorry to inform you" message. Instead it was notification that they were processing a visa for me to travel to China. They needed some paperwork filled out and some other info from my passport in order to proceed. The timeframe was tight so it had a short fuse on my turnaround. What the...?

E-mails were written. According to Intel, all the finalists were getting visas processed in order to preserve the secrecy of the winner's identity right up until the award ceremony. There was something very odd about all this. I think they wanted to make sure the winners were actually going to be able to attend the ceremony in Beijing.. It works much better that way in my mind. The Core Challenge award ceremony was a major centerpiece to their IDF (Intel Developers Forum) show schedule. It took place immediately after the CEO's keynote address. It would look pretty bad if the winners were a no-show.

I don't have a passport. I've done all my traveling as a member of the American military. We don't need passports to travel in foreign lands. We just invade wherever we want to go. That was a long time ago and I've never had the need for a passport since.

I drug my feet until the very last minute in order to preserve the illusion for as long as possible. Finally I told them. Almost instantly I was informed that I didn't win. Hmmmm?

Next....Mop up



This is how the case cracks open.





Backdoor shot. Lots of tasty ports to plug stuff into. I used waterslide decals to do a little labeling. I called it the Model 12b. Twelve for the capacity and b because it made it sound like there was more than one.





Money shot. This photo was taken by a professional photographer hired by Intel. I photochopped the Intel sticker off of it.

[stonedsurd]

Money shot is right. Looks worth a pretty packet.

Mine's gonna have nothing on this