By day, Dave Williams is a glass-industry engineer in the north-west of England. At night (and weekends), the 47-year-old is "Macroman", one of the leading lights in a large, online community dedicated to PC customisation and transcending the design limitations of the "beige box".
His Macro Black custom-made PC is a legend. Made from hand-tinted Perspex, it sports polished mirrored surfaces and chrome logos that come alive when powered up. Inside, a thicket of fibre-optic cables react to sound, glowing green, yellow and purple in the dark. The CD drive is "stealthed" and hidden from view. The fans are subsonic and almost completely silent.
It's his pièce de résistance, built from scratch and lovingly honed over months. Attention to detail and aesthetics are paramount to arch-modders such as Dave. "I'm a minimalist," he explains. "And it lives in the living room so the wife's got to accept it."
It's a sign of the times. Previous generations of enthusiasts noodled with cars, or maybe hi-fis. Today, they customise their high-performance PCs to the hilt. It's about individuality and innovation.
"With so many people using computers, there's this urge for geeks to differentiate themselves," says Will Harris, a 21-year-old law student who runs the leading modding webzine, Bit-tech.net, from his room at the University of Oxford. Many of his readers are teenage videogamers weaned on technology. Their PC is more than just a tool, an entertainment system or even a prized possession. It's part of their identity.
"Personal tweaks and unique features can buy you much kudos and attention from other PC owners," says Harris. The height of fashion is a case with a transparent side panel for audience appreciation at Lan parties. Some modders have added cigarette lighters, stained-glass windows, neon signs and even retro-fitted machines into old Marconi radios, or R2D2 cases. Others have squeezed their PCs into Apple cases - and shrugged off the subsequent death threats from aggrieved Mac owners. One man, G-gnome, has dedicated months and £2,000 to making his PC look like Orac, the snobbish computer from Blake's 7. Thousands of enthusiasts have viewed the online photo diary of its construction http://new.bit-tech.net/article/114/19.
Today, modders even have their own magazine, Custom PC, complete with Readers' Drives: centrefolds of customised machines, cases splayed wide open. The scene is like the custom car market, says editor Gareth Ogden. It's about having a machine that best represents you. "You don't want a Porsche so you can drive at 200 miles an hour," he says. "You want it because it's classy, powerful, and stylish, and it's better than driving a Mini."
However, most modders lack the tools and skills necessary to make stylish mods. Airbrushing, cutting metal, even drilling require practice. "Most kids wouldn't know a jigsaw if it tore their arm off," says Harris. Indeed, online modding forums are full of tales of woe and warranties invalidated by ambitious teenagers setting about their PCs with pillar drills.
It's this gap between aspiration and ability that the market has grown to fill. Mass-produced mod-kits are now available off the shelf for enthusiasts. Websites such as www.kustompcs.co.uk offer affordable components: fluorescent UV cabling, noiseless fans, soundproof cases and water-cooled CPUs.
At the same time, as the computer gradually shifts from its traditional place in the office or bedroom to the living room, the quest is on for a PC that doesn't look and sound like a miniature 1970s power station. Commercial companies are slowly waking up to demand for good-looking PCs. "The first ones were pretty awful," says Ogden. "But now they're getting better."
New innovations such as the Zalman Nano-ITX, a tiny motherboard that measures a mere 12cm by 12cm, are leading to small, quieter PCs that rival Macs in style. He recommends the Hush ATX, a slim-line, high-performance, good-looking and silent PC that looks like a chrome hi-fi separate. The case is one big heat-sink so it doesn't require fans. It looks good but costs a lot of money.
Even bigger companies are getting in on the modding act. Macroman was recently commissioned by Intel to custom-make a "gorgeous" transparent PC to demo Intel's latest processor at press launches. There's also a growing market for customised PCs for businesses looking to stand out at exhibitions, or one-off mods for companies to use front-of-house.
Many of these new ideas for PC designs have been lifted directly from the underground. "We do something and three months later we see it being manufactured in Taiwan," says Harris.
Off-the-shelf kits and cheap components have replaced hands-on toiling over a workbench. Cheap vinyl appliqués (ie car stickers) negate the need for airbrushing. The ideas have run out. "Everything that can be done has been done," sighs Harris.
Macroman is not sore to see his hobby commercially exploited, however. He can rest assured he has created some of the best PCs, although he has not let fame go to his head.
"Someone offered me five grand for my Macroblack," he says. "But I thought, 'Nah, it's not worth it'. Let's keep things in perspective. It's only a plastic box, for God's sake."
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