Project Osmium: Materials and Hardware

Materials
The materials of choice are black transparent acrylic, and black anodised aluminium (brushed finish). While I am not particularly inclined towards lighting in my computer cases, I felt it would be nice to have some diffuse white lighting in the case, accentuating particular elements. Black acrylic would show this off nicely, while hiding the internal components behind a mirror finish when the case lights are switched off.

Hardware
Small form factor here means a micro-ATX form-factor (socket-1156 mini-ITX boards will be a long time in coming...) In addition, I wanted to minimise cost as far as possible, and since I will not be doing heavy overclocking on this setup, it should prove relatively easy to stay on a small budget. This rig will be mainly used for multimedia playback and heavy multitasking, essentially a do-it-all build (excluding gaming; I am not a PC gamer).

The following key components have been picked out so far.

• Intel Core i7-860
• Gigabyte P55M-UD2
• Corsair XMS3-DHX DDR3
• XFX Radeon HD5750

The watercooling elements are tentative and may be replaced by other picks sometime.

• Swiftech MCP350 pump
• Swiftech MCR220-Rev dual-120mm radiator (built-in reservoir)
• Dual Noctua NF-P12 for radiator cooling
• Enermax Enlobal Marathon / Magma for air intake & memory DIMM cooling