It's an old PC.. resurrected!

I had this old machine for a long time, and was looking forward to make something a bit more of it. It has flagship parts in it (at least for 2017 standards), so i thought to bring it to new life, make good use of it, and a real monster for 1080p out of it... but with a twist!

The old (and huge) ATX tower had to go..
I needed to have a completely modular machine, so i could upgrade it, or change parts out, or modify it freely anytime i wanted, but i also wanted a completely unique case (or frame for it), with extras, like displays for my use scenario, RGB lights, a great cooling solution so it could also handle a decent overclock.. This is how the Frankenstein was born!

I had a lot of ideas, but my favorite one was an open case, almost like a test bench, but with all the luxuries of a premium case. The looks are mostly functional, and I would consider it somewhat "industrial", though i had no specific target in mind. The chassis is Aluminium, and the meshes are stainless steel, so it's not only "sturdy", but also heavy The form factor is pretty good though, the whole machine is exactly as big as the ATX motherboard, and the height of it is also about what the lenght of the motherboard is.

The hardware is optimized for the maximum possible performance with still very good thermals and more then acceptable loudness.

The old Ryzen 7 does a good job at its factory settings, tried it at 4,3Ghz, fixed on all cores but the payoff was little to none, so it's better to run it stock. The 3200 DDR4 runs at 2833Mhz, as i ran into hardware limitations (the motherboard + the old Ryzen combo can't handle more).

The GPU took a decent overclock, +150 Core and +400 Memory. It could do much more (+180 and +500 was working, but not stable), so i rather take this and it's absolute stability. The thermals go rarely over 62C, thanks to the custom fan curve and a slight undervolting (and maybe that backplate airflow).

I can now run everything with Supersampling (1440p) on a native 1080p display, without any performance hit, and also crank every setting to maximum with 8xAA on top of it thanks to the massive performance overhead of the GPU over the old Ryzen CPU. My target is a smooth 60FPS at all times, but i get mostly at least double that.

Since the beginning of this build a lot has already changed, be sure to check out the build updates! This machine is always changing, morphing into a better version of itself, either the hardware changes, or the looks, sometimes both!

The next thing on my list is to "max out" the AM4 platform, possibly with an 5800x3D, and switch to a 500series mATX board, as it would allow me for much better cable management (because it's shorter!) so be sure to check back!

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Unlisted parts :

"Case" material - Extruded Alu 10x10mm

"Side panels" - Perforated Stainless Steel

"Side panel" LED diffusor - White silicone sheet

LED strips - Generic (5m roll)
LED strip plugs - "Asus pinout"
LED strip brackets - Generic 10x10 Alu with white diffuse strip

Built in display - generic HDMI 5,5" 800x480 touch panel (no Windows support for touch)

Info display - 3,5" TURZX "straight to usb header" realtime data

Case fans - 4x Xilence 80mm fans

Motherboard power - 2x 90degree 24pin power adapters

..and a bunch of little things, like the illuminated "Keyboard cap" power button, the built in USB 3.1 hub, the single HDD indicator LED (made for other testing purposes), the black cable sleeves, and so on, the list is never ending