Eco-Intel Mod by Planet Express Klan

Ignus (Fire)

When we all first met up and started working on the mod we all recognised that Ignis, the fire mod, would be the hardest one to make. Unlike the other mods we didn’t have an immediately clear design for Ignis in mind, just a rough set of guidelines.

Another huge part of the problem of course was the fact that fire is an energetic and constantly moving classical element. It never stops moving or flickering, so it’s hard to capture as a work of engineering and design. We could have tried something simple, like a painting, but we wanted to set our sights a little higher.

From the start though one thing we did know about Ignis is that it had to be made predominantly from copper for several reasons. Not only is copper without a doubt the metal that most resembles fire (until it oxidises anyway) but it’s also a soft metal that is fairly easy to work with. On top of that copper is obviously a good heat conductor and these properties would ironically allow us to play with new cooling designs throughout the case.

In the design stage, one thing which quickly became apparent was the fact that we wanted to keep away from static, rigid or box-like designs. Fire is a mobile element and we want to represent that in our design.


The chassis design we eventually came up with is somewhat unique as you can see. It’s a pentagonal based pyramid, but one which first splays out before narrowing to a point. Not only is this design similar to the shape of an actual flame, but it also helps the mod stand out and presents interesting challenges to us as designers.

Once we had a basic design set out it was time to start thinking about how we would actually make it and how much material we would need, so we started by buying sheets of 0.4mm thick copper to begin working with. Originally we tried to source materials from within Spain but we were unable to find a satisfactory finish, so we eventually got some shipped from a company in Holland.


Along with basic copper, we also picked up a selection of protective finishes and resins to coat the metal in. Copper is a very reactive metal and can easily oxidise in very little moisture, changing from fiery bronze to a speckled green. We’d need to protect the metal to ensure this didn’t happen and totally ruin the colour scheme we were hoping to achieve.

At the same time we were also selecting the hardware for this mod. In the case of Ignis, we bought a basic Abit motherboard with a red PCB and copper heatsinks and a Tando CPU and GPU with heatsinks from Zalman and ThermalTake respectively. Like in the other mods we tried to use a range of different suppliers and not mod the actual hardware unless we needed to. In the case of the power supply though we had to make several modifications. In the end we completely disassembled the Tacens Radix Smart we were using and completely redecorated it.


To start with we painted the fan vents a metallic silver to try and maintain the aesthetic of mod. Then we moved onto the housing, which we re-covered with layers of copper foil. We could have painted the PSU housing instead, but we felt that a foil covering would create a less patterned finish which we could add on quickly.