One of the glorious things about being a PC owner is the fact that the only limits to what you do with your gaming machine are your imagination and size of your bank balance. Some may desire to turn the simple box into an explosion of light and colour, whereas others may hark for something more refined and understated. One Reddit user is very much in the latter camp and decided to create a wooden tribute to the king of brown, Noctua.
I spotted this Reddit post a couple of days ago and it generated some mixed feelings amongst the team. A user going by the name moto_zima had put together a gaming PC, using a heavily modified Hyte Y60 case. That chassis is normally favoured by fans of RGB lighting, thanks to the way its glass panels 'wrap' around the front and side. We've described it as a "techy terrarium."
However, this particular build also involved a lot of Noctua fans in their traditional colour scheme of beige and brown. Even the graphics card matches the theme, as it's the Asus X Noctua RTX 3070. Perhaps feeling this isn't quite in keeping with the general style of the Hyte case, the modder decided to give it an even more natural look. Enter stage left: a wood grain finish over all the metal parts and the complete removal of every glass panel.
They've all been replaced by a metal cage, furnished with a matching brown paint. The result is a rather open case, which may lead you to think that the user will be experiencing temperature and dust problems. Noctua fans can shift a decent amount of air so that shouldn't really be an issue.
I have to say that I quite like how the whole thing looks, though I have reservations of how well the graphics card fits within the cage. It certainly gives off an air of refined antique furniture to me, though you may well feel it gives off an air of grandma's old cabinet.
HYTE Y60 MOD Noctua build. from r/pcmasterrace
If you fancy your own wood-effect PC case, but lack the creative skill to make one yourself, you might want to give the Fractal Design North case a look. Admittedly, relatively little of the whole thing is actually made from wood, though I still like the design. It's a shame there aren't more manufacturers willing to use more natural materials in their PC cases, but there are good reasons for it.
Solid wood is a poor thermal conductor so it's not ideal to have masses of it surrounding a collection of electronic parts that churn out piles of heat. It's also a little more expensive to work with compared to mass-produced sheets of steel and PC cases are created with keeping such costs to a minimum.
Whatever your thoughts are on wood or wood-effect PC mods, I certainly want to see more of them. I'm done with the whole RGB thing and for my next system upgrade, I'll be dropping it entirely. The hassle of dealing with all the cables and software isn't something I'm interested in these days, so I may just go down the beige and brown route myself.
I wood. Wood you?
