Meet the Modder: Joe 'JR23' Robey

True, I have helped you change coolant on systems at Insomnia, and the builds look so simplistic, but when you look at them more closely, they are very clever indeed. Can you name three modders that you look up to, and why?

Justin 'Imersa' O’Grady  – We’ve worked on so many projects together, and from the very first one we just instantly clicked, inspiring each other with ideas. Neither of us are particularly flexible with our opinions, and our styles certainly aren’t the same, but they seem to fit around each other without compromise.

Bartłomiej Wiktor Kurpiewski otherwise known as 'Niklot' – I consider photography a huge part of what we do, and Niklot just leads the pack for me. Often I’ll sit looking at an image thinking 'I’ve seen that motherboard in real life, I don’t like it, but that is beautiful!'; it affects my sleeping patterns! His daring styles of reverting to long floppy tubing, messy cables, or a fully frosted case are just so on point.

Three? I was really struggling at two! There are lots of other builds I like and little details from all over the place have me in awe, but I tend to look at things on a tiny scale. Maybe I am entirely captivated by another builder, and I just haven’t noticed. Well, it probably would be Snef if he just slowed down with the white builds.

Haha, I love white builds, especially if there is orange involved somewhere! I haven't seen Imersa for ages! We need a catch up for sure! What do you do that is unique? Are there certain builds that have pushed you?

Mate and Furia are definitely my most unique projects taking water-cooling integration to an unprecedented level. Reservoirs and pass-through plates are starting to get pretty standard, but creating a single part that includes multiple blocks and pumps while serving a structural purpose is quite out there.

An EVGA SR-2, four 780Ti Kingpins, HyperX memory and storage, EK blocks, Noctua iPPC fans and a few suitably huge Silverstone Striders, MDPC-X sleeving, and of course a wildly customised Parvum.

What do you hope to achieve in the next 12 months? Do you have any contests you wish to enter or events you wish to attend?

Contests don’t last long enough for me; I couldn’t decide which screws to use in 24 hours, but I would like to finally make it to some shows and companies outside of the UK. I would love to find some place I could build PCs every day

What other hobbies do you have?

I collect antique farm engines with my dad; we concentrate on 1900-1925 engines built in the USA and like to find them in original unrestored condition. It was a period of staggering mechanical diversity with hundreds of companies competing to create unique patentable designs.

Joe was actually kind enough to show me some of these engines in the flesh as it were. We will take a proper look at these on our tour through his workshop. But first, Joe, teach me something!