Mod of the Month - March 2008

Neophyte

by Dark~3nergy
Worklog

When one usually thinks of a neophyte, they think of a beginner or apprentice. What they don't think about is someone who is already incredibly talented in their craft.

With that in mind, maybe Dark~3nergy misnamed his latest project. Some of you may remember his last rather awesome work made out of MDF, known as GTR. If you missed it when it was featured a while back in our old modding round-ups, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Apparently, the success of GTR has unleashed a demon – Dark~3nergy is back with a crazier design than ever, and this time he's graduated to bigger toys, bigger tools and a bigger budget. Neophyte is a gorgeous scratch build made out of laser-cut steel for that dark and industrial look... but why should I tell you about it when you can look at the pictures yourself?


Dark~3nergy really raised the bar for any of you who 3d-render your mods – even the concept work for Neophyte is a work of art. These two renders show where he plans on taking this project as the ball gets rolling...


...right to the laser cutter and back again. Neophyte's incredibly detailed cuts aren't really good work for a jigsaw, and the thick and heavy steel isn't going to just melt under the almighty dremel. So, parts were measured, designed and shipped to the laser cutter – to come back and be test fitted with none other than duct tape. Gotta love it!


Not everything was custom made for this build – unfortunately, that included the motherboard tray. Buying a separate mATX tray would have cost in the region of £70 – a rather useless expense when he had an ATX one handy. So, a bit of cutting, filing and a touch-up of paint, and Dark~3nergy was back in business.

The actual panels on the mod would each be multi-layered to show off the cut-work. So, to provide for that, Dark~3nergy attached them using hex-head bolts and spacers that offset the cut pieces from the main framework.


Reduce, reuse and recycle – the handles that Neophyte would be sporting were actually pickups from the local Ikea furniture store. Hey, whatever works and fits the mod, right?!

For as far as Neophyte looks to have already progressed, there's still a lot of work to do. Dark~3nergy is nothing if not a stickler for the details, and the whole inside of the case still has to be created. So, I'd highly suggest you high tail it directly to his worklog to see what he's up to next!

But before you go, make sure you take a stop over to vote for Neophyte by Dark~3nergy as the Mod of the Month for March!