2015 Thermaltake CaseMOD Invitational Season 2 Heats Up
After the success of the first Thermaltake CaseMod invitational, Thermaltake has ramped up their efforts and expanded to include more modders for season 2! Our very own Nick Blackwell was invited for the first run but this time Thermaltake has invited TEN international modders to compete for the title, each bringing their own flavor and style to create a Thermaltake casemod original.
There are some familar names on the mix including legendary American modders Brian “Boddaker” Carter and Ron Lee Christianson. Brian Carter is of course the creator of the Cosmoz Cruiser which we previously featured here, the Tron Light Cycle, Trident’s Neptune and Battlestar Galactica casemod among others. Award winning modder Ron Lee Christianson of Blue Horse Studios created such incredible mods as ALIEN which won in PDXLAN, Half-Life, Bio-Hazard and more. Ron Lee Christianson is the current front-runner in popularity among fans judging by the weekly pre-judging public votes and his build will be a Steampunk Time Machine themed build. He is off to a headstart with large pieces of clay sculpture that will be used on the mod taking shape as seen in his worklogs. Brian Carter on the other hand has a very interesting build going on as it is hard to fully picture what he is assembling starting with what appears to be several shock absorbing leg stands for the system. The theme of his build is “Adrenaline Transport Services Inc” and it looks like it might be a fun sci-fi project in the works in the vein of Futurama. This is why readers should keep on checking for updates on this worklog every day to see the process.
Canada is represented by Jonathan Garlit, known for his scartch built DOTA box mod which been featured at MaximumPC. His project is called G-X902 and is shaping up to be a Gundam-inspired design with hand-cut and shaped aluminum panels over the X9 case. From the United Kingdom, Dave Alcock who writes CPU cooler reviews for eTeknix.com and known recently for his Project Unity build using an InWin 909 case featured on OCaholic.ch has been keeping his build close to his chest and has only so far teased the components he will be using including some DDR4 memory kits from AVEXIR.
Mathieu Heredia from France, co-founder of Watermod is probably the strongest designer in this group and it will be interesting to see what he does with his Thermaltake build. He has won several awards from Bit-Tech, LDLC, MaximumPC, Guru3D and more for his casemods and has been comfortable with using non-typical case modder material in previous builds, having always designed mods with a classy contemporary showroom feel. He is using a white Core X9 in his build and has shown a white AVEXIR memory kit so his project will most likely use white as a theme. From Germany, Edgar Marckmann runs the Case Modding Deuthschland Facebook group and has worked extremely fast aseembling his “Project Fly” casemod for the event. His two-stack X9 build already has custom acrylic panels up and will probably finish before anyone else in the event.
From Russia, modder Maxim has plenty of tools at his disposal including a CNC machine and he already has designed, engineered and milled his own water-cooling solutions for his build. He is an engineer by trade and is building a Tron themed build for the event. Australia is represented by Alex Ciobanu from Simple Modz. You might remember him as a previous featured mod here on Modders-Inc with his Green Molecule build. His entry to the Tt invitational is dubbed ‘Canis Majoris’ and features an angled double-X9 case design.
Representing East Asia are Jeng_ki from Thailand and Jesse Palacio from the Philippines. Jeng_ki’s HULK mod was recently seen on MSI PRO MOD competition turning heads with its sculpted Hulk hands and UV green style. It looks like he is not just using one or two X9 cases in his build but will be combining three into a single design. Like Alex Ciobanu from Australia, Jesse Palacio has been featured here at Modders-Inc, two times in fact, first for his Project Spade build and then for his CM Silencio 650 build the following year. He has improved even further significantly since then and has been making mods non-stop for his various local clients. He has honed his hand-crafted style and so far has built a gattling-gun for his X9 tank project called the “Juggernaut”.
Be sure to check the Thermaltake Season 2 Casemod Invitational forums daily for updates. Participants for the prediction voting also have a chance to win some cool Thermaltake prizes up until September 29th. Actual event voting will run from October 26th through November 9th.
