Mod of the Month - October 2008

Dominator

by fstr
Worklog

Ah, another month, another boxy Lian-Li mod to throw up here, right? Well, sort of. Most of you who read these pages regularly know I'm not even a fan of the cases, so much so that it has to be especially good or different in order to get a Mod of the Month tap. If I had a dime for every LiLi that just had a touch of acrylic and a bit of watercooling, I could be writing this from my retirement home in Aruba.

Fortunately, fstr proves that the sheer number of monkeys with typewriters can indeed generate a couple pages of Hamlet each month - his own A05-B mod goes well above the curve of "slap on some acrylic and mesh and call it a day." Is it the passive radiator? The custom metalworking? Or is it the top-notch execution reminiscent of one of my favourite old salts, modsquad?

Maybe it's a little of all of them...but no matter which path I pick to describe it, one thing's for sure - it's a gorgeous hack-and-slash of one of my least favourite cases, and it's shaping up beautifully.

The modding begins with a previous mod - fstr had done a very basic bit of work in 2007 to give a bit of UV green accent to the standard black finish of the A05-B. He would use this colour as an inspiration for further modding...

The next big concern would be to incorporate a large passive radiator into the case. Most people plop this on the side panel, where it sticks out in an odd formation. But fstr came up with a different plan - he created his own shroud to attach the passive radiator to the underside of the case.

With the radiator's case done, it was time to mount the radiator inside of it. So far, so good!

Finally, the last details were added to the radiator, making it ready to mount on the bottom of the case.

The rest of the watercooling loop has now been added, including the reservoir and dual pumps. It's starting to look like a computer could live here now!

Dominator is already pretty far underway, and it just seems to keep getting better. Large bore compression fittings, passive cooling and an attractive, clean design and colour scheme make this a mod that can't really be ignored. So why are you sitting here reading this, when you could be reading the worklog?

Don't forget to take a moment and stop by the forums to vote for Dominator by fstr if you think it has what it takes to be the next bit-tech Mod of the month!