If you can’t buy the exact PC hardware you want, then why not build a custom rig that’s as close to it as possible? That was the approach of PC modder Jesse Mills when it came to building this laser-cut wooden gaming PC filled with Noctua cooling gear. The stain on the wood matches really well with the standard Noctua color scheme.
Thanks to our rapidly growing PC building Facebook page, we’ve seen many custom gaming PCs, from mods based on existing case designs to scratch PC builds. You can even submit yours for consideration right here. Here we chat to Jesse about how he made this Noctua-themed PC build.
“The build was inspired by Noctua’s recent foray into the GPU market with its RTX 30/40-series partner board products,” Jesse tells us, referring to the ongoing collaboration between Asus and Noctua to make really cool and quiet graphics cards using Noctua fans.
“Unable to get my hands on one, I wanted to get as close as possible with my own modded design,” he continues. The result is this PC in a wooden Cyberwood PC case, which is made from basswood plywood.
Jesse laments the fact that he wasn’t able to make the wooden chassis himself. “I wish I had a bigger workshop, but precision stuff outside the realm of electronics is a little beyond what I can do with my own equipment right now.”
However, we think there’s no shame in using an off-the-shelf PC case, especially when you plan to put your own design stamp on it. This case also looks great, with precision cutouts for the front panel connectors and buttons, as well as hexagonal vents – it all slots together like a jigsaw.
Where Jesse introduced his own design elements was when it came to making the wooden panels look the part, and the components for that matter. “The case was stained and sanded,” says Jesse, “and most of the components were wrapped and painted to match the Noctua colors.”
The latter wasn’t easy, though. Jesse says the motherboard paint job was the hardest part of the build process. “Trying to incorporate both the beige and brown colors onto the same piece was tricky, but I think the result was worth it,” he says. “Most of the time when I paint mobos, I use just one color and tape off the rest of the board.”
Jesse explains that he was able to take off some of the heatsinks to help him with this, but for the rest of the board, he used plastic and masking tape. “Another trick I use is to screw everything into cardboard boxes so that I can hold it, and get paint into every nook and cranny – this also helps everything to dry without getting any debris on it.”
There are some other neat touches as well. Jesse soldered LED strips onto leads and hooked them up to a Molex cable so that everything is illuminated from the inside.
The end result looks fantastic, and it perfectly suits the colors of the Noctua cooling gear inside, which includes four Noctua NF-A12x25 fans – one of our favorite fan models. The brown backplate and PSU cover also work really well with the build.
If you’re interested wrapping and painting your components, make sure you check out our full guides on how to vinyl-wrap a graphics card, and how to spray paint an AIO liquid cooler, as well as our big guide on how to paint your PC case.
Noctua wood PC specs
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
- Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming B550M-Plus WiFi II
- Memory: 32GB Silicon Power Turbnine Gaming 3200MHz
- Graphics card: Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
- Storage: 512GB Transcend TS512GMTE220S SSD
- PSU: 550W Corsair RM550
- PSU cables: CableMod C-Series Carbon Pro ModMesh
- Cooling: 4 x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM 120mm fans, 1 x Noctua NF-F12 PWM 120mm fan, Noctua NH-L9a CPU cooler
This is brilliant work by Jesse. The standard Noctua color scheme can be a bit divisive, but Jesse has perfectly matched it with his laser-cut wooden case and the result looks great.
This post originally appeared on Custom PC, which has been covering amazing setups for over 20 years and is now part of PCGamesN. Join our 500k member Facebook group to discuss this build.
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