I built this PC for a charity silent auction for some relatives who lost everything in the Louisiana flood in August 2016. Using a combination of some spare parts I had from a previous build that never materialized and some selected new components, I created Project Cerulean as an entry-level gaming PC.

Probably the biggest challenge in this build was the case. I had originally planned to use a DeepCool Tesseract case in blue, but when I went to order the parts, it was out of stock at Amazon and NewEgg. While in stock at NCIXUS, it was going to take 2-3 weeks to ship, and I needed the case sooner than that. So, I fell back on the Cooler Master Elite 310 case I had purchased years ago at a closeout sale. However, this budget case from the mid-2000's has a top-mount PSU bracket, a single cable routing hole, and a bare-metal interior which simply wouldn't do for this build.

I started by disassembling the case as much as possible to scuff, prime and paint it using some Krylon Maxx paint in Royal Blue to match the blue insert in the front panel. After about 3 coats and drying overnight, the case was ready to be built in. Installing the PSU and motherboard first, I built out from there, attempting to route and manage cables as I went to save me from headaches later. The single cable-routing hole and <1/4" space between the motherboard tray made this a bit difficult, but a combination of black zip ties and twist ties came to the rescue and made the system presentable. With more time, I think I could have made some modifications to the case to ease cable routing, but I think it looks great given the time constraints.

At the charity silent auction, the system went for $300, which is less than I hoped for, but that's $300 my relatives didn't have before, so I consider it a win.