Martini was, without a doubt, a passion project. I saved money for multiple years, sold my old PC alongside many of my other possessions, and dove head-first into the world of watercooling. The result of my effort was Martini- my very first watercooled PC, and the "Best BYOC PC" at Dreamhack Austin 2017. Martini's main colors: white, red, and blue, reflect that of Martini Racing- the namesake of the build. Blending the colors properly and creating the iconic Martini stripes was my goal. You can see the Martini Racing stripes on the custom painted Dominator Platinum memory, going from blue, to white, to a red center stripe (the coolant within the monoblock), as well as in the gorgeous custom CableMod cables. The next theme challenge I tackled was in the distro-plate/lightbox combo. The blue coolant flowing through from the pump to the GPUs, back to the radiator form a sort of circle- or a race track.

Theme and passion aside, Martini is an absolute beast of a system. The SLI 1080Tis, overclocked to 2.08 GHz, even with myriad sharp bends within the tubing, have never seen temperatures above 45 degrees. The i7-6850K, overclocked to 4.5 MHz (I was NOT a silicone lottery winner...) has never seen higher temps than 50 degrees. With all solid-state memory, power supplied by a Corsair AX1200i, 32GBs of 3200MHz Corsiar Dominator Platinum DDR4, a wonderful ASUS X99-Deluxe II, and a case big enough to fit an actual Porsche (RIP CaseLabs) Martini is both an extravagantly over the top powerhouse and a beautiful symbol of what hard work and passion can bring.

While I don't have photos to document my build progress, I do have a timelapse! This isn't the original build, but the installation of my new distro plate and lightbox. Feel free to check it out here: