Stewart Bendle : This is awesome. Adding a personal touch by modding your PC in line with your hobby/career.
Joe Shields : Unique build for sure! Creativity is a '10' on this one. That said, I would have picked a different car for an even better 'cool' factor, but getting everything inside that little PT Cruiser RC car without any obvious modifications is an absolute win. Well done.
Brandon Hill: That's probably the coolest PT Cruiser that has ever existed. The battery upgrade would be a great addition to this rig.
Sayem Ahmed: Now, this is the exact kind of build that I wanted to see on Rig Rundown. Not everything has to have the best, newest, top-of-the-line specs, or have a set of Lian-Li's glowing power cables. Taking a lower-powered PC and stuffing the chassis into a pretty iconic car is great fun for a build. I love it. I don't think my aunt's old PT Cruiser was this cool.
(Image credit: Forum user: DronePilot) (Image credit: Forum user: DronePilot) (Image credit: Forum user: DronePilot) DronePilot 's setup is almost dizzying to get your head around. From the sheer number of screens, to simply imagining how to set this all up in the first place. Regardless, this is less of a rig and more of a command center. Sporting a 12th Gen PC, a Lenovo Legion Go, a Haswell-based Mini-PC, a 13th Gen Intel Laptop, and a 13th Gen HP ProDesk Mini all in one place, and to have it all work exactly the way you want it to, takes an astonishing amount of work.
It's not all about the PCs, though, as the setup also features a $500 speaker setup, a bevy of ports, full Cat5, routed through switches, and, indeed, runs underneath the house itself, offering you pretty much everything within arm's reach.
The setup also functions as a real-world call center and includes a KVM to manage the sheer number of systems (and the number of TVs and displays!) this rig offers. It's an appropriately complex setup that goes beyond the scope of many of our humble desks at Tom's Hardware.
The amount of effort that's gone into the Master Center is immediately apparent, which is why it made our shortlist.
Paul Alcorn: I am a fan of huge monitors for productivity use cases; this is an awesome setup.
Matthew Safford : Love to see a TH reader who also uses a 55-inch TV as their main monitor. And there is plenty else to be impressed with here. Is that an Intel 4th Gen Haswell Mini PC you've got running Windows 11 ? If so, kudos to your abilities, and for keeping a PC that is still useful out of the trash heap! If it does what you need it to do, it's still useful.
Joe Shields: I'm on the other side of large TVs for monitors… depends on the use case. High DPI or bust when you're sitting that close. A mid-range system feels curious, but if it works for his purpose, it works! No need to overspend! Looks like you have command of darn near everything and the ability to easily access all systems. Well done!
Stewart Bendle : Definitely a fan of the command center. The warmest room in Winter.
Sayem Ahmed: DronePilot's Setup is mighty impressive. Everything from the frankly ludicrous number of screens, to the actual layout of the room itself is super-well considered. Special shout to the speaker setup too, it's a point that often goes missed in a lot of setups, but not this one.
(Image credit: Forum user: SilenceIsGolden) (Image credit: Forum user: SilenceIsGolden) When a lot of people make their PCs, they want them to stand the test of time. But, as technology moves on, it becomes inevitable that one day, you'll have to replace your beloved build. But, for SilenceIsGolden , who told their wife that this would be the only PC built in the next decade, they pulled out all of the stops.
The results are nothing less than beautiful, blacked-out and wall-mounted Antec Core P3 Pro in black serves as the ultimate commitment to a computer, designed to weather the storms of time itself. Featuring 96 GB of RAM, 8 TB of total NVMe storage, including a curious Intel Optane 900p 480GB drive, a rip-roaring 9950X3D , and RTX 4090 , the computer is indeed no slouch.
Even more impressively, the entire system is custom-looped and water-cooled with a suite of AlphaCool waterblocks, covering the CPU, GPU, SSDs, EK Fittings, and D5 Next pump. This was complemented with a customized Thermaltake Core Pacific DP100 distro plate, which was painted black, with some custom heatsinks thrown on for aesthetics. Alongside a handful of finishing touches, like Lian-Li's light-up Strimer RGB power cables and Alienware AW3425DW OLED display to drive it all.
SilenceIsGolden's goal of building a silent, custom-looped build certainly looks the part, but they are still looking for a way to silence the Seasonic x Noctua Prime TX-1600's PSU coil whine. When fully mounted to the wall, and with the smart-looking RGB, this build certainly looks lovely and heavy.
Sayem Ahmed: Silence is indeed Golden for this slick wall-mounted build. The blacked-out look is very nice, but it must be pretty hard to dust a semi-open-air case like this. I appreciate the dedication to water cooling here, too. While a lot of folks buy the glowing power cables to put some awful animation over it, this actually looks really nice. I would love to do something like this, but I would also live in fear of the PC falling and cleaning it. My only real worry is for the plaster on your walls.
Stewart Bendle : These dust magnets look very cool in a clean, minimalist room. The RGB and color choices work well.
Matthew Safford: It's great to see Intel's still impressive Optane 900p drive in a modern, powerful build. And I hope you picked up all 8.5TB of solid-state storage before prices started climbing last year!
Andrew Freedman: I've never been in love with the look of a Strimer, but I quite like the RGB on this one. It looks like the electricity is flowing out of the walls and through the rig.
Joe Shields: Wall-mounted builds always get the nod in my book. This one takes it to the next level with the matching water cooling ecosystem and overall clean appearance. The high-end hardware complements the build well.
Sporting an Intel Core i7-14700K , 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a staggering 10TB in NVMe SSD storage, alongside a total 72TB in HDD storage, this setup is an arcade archivist's dream. Powering all the graphical heft of emulating MAME and CPS3 is an RTX 4060, which should do that job without so much as breaking a sweat. But the real beauty in this arcade setup is in the peripherals, of course.
A pair of Sinden Lightguns can emulate the arcade shooters of old, in addition to dual Atari Sixer joysticks, running through a serial to USB interface, two Atari Paddle controllers, two DualShock 3's, A Kensington Orbit Trackball, a Quickshot 2 joystick powering all the 90s action, in adition to two spinners, and two eight-button traditonal Noir Arcade layouts, complimented by a pair of eight-way joysticks and buttons, Skylanders Portal, and a Commodore 1541 disk drive. The arcade unit by GameRoomSolutions is wrapped in Gatchaman artwork, a nod to the classic anime, and whose cast features in the 2008 arcade fighter Tatsunoko vs Capcom .
This is all seemingly organized chaos, and it looks excellent. With the setup powered by a staggering 65-inch Roku TV, Destruk explains that the total cost of this setup came to less than $4,000, built before the RAMpocalypse. Somehow, Destruk still has three USB ports left and is planning to add a racing wheel and pedals.
Joe Shields: Yes, please. I always wanted a stand-up arcade game in my basement. The standup console with the buttons and the accessories on the wall is impressive.
Andrew Freedman: Do you have ' The Simpsons '? Can I come over and play ' The Simpsons '? This system is prepared for everything. Lightguns? Atari joysticks? PS3 controllers (my least favorite PlayStation controller, but hey, not my rig!)? The Skylanders Portal of Power? That's dedication to playing games the way the developers intended.
(Image credit: Forum user: Edman545) (Image credit: Forum user: Edman545) (Image credit: Forum user: Edman545) (Image credit: Forum user: Edman545) (Image credit: Forum user: Edman545) (Image credit: Forum user: Edman545) Manual Metal by Edman565 might be one of the wildest PC builds that we've ever seen at Tom's Hardware . Edman545's dedication to building the ultimate hard-lined, custom-looped build has collectively floored us.
From the images alone, we can see a total of 11 displays, and multiple devices powering Manual Metal, which has been named appropriately, as the build seeks to evoke the same feeling as tuning a manual car, with appropriate styling for the hard-lined steel pipes, and controlled via a custom built panel, with all of the switches and knobs you could want. Furthermore, the system has two radiators placed outdoors, for that extra cooling boon.
To get to the meat and potatoes of the build itself, we're looking at a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, alongside an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT , 128 GB of DDR5 RAM, and a total of 3.5 TB of NVMe storage. But, the more impressive part of all this is the cooling setup, which is powered by a total of ten Noctua Industrial F12 fans, two PrimoChill radiators, a Thermaltake Pacific W8 on the CPU, an AlphaCool Core Swift on the GPU, dual-looped Bykski PWM pumps and reservoirs, and custom stainless steel tubing and valves.
Aside from the dizzying number of displays, there's enterprise -grade networking involved here too, with an Intel X550-T2 Dual 10GB/s PCIe adapter, a dedicated Creative Sound Blaster, and a Game Capture card too.
The cooling setup here is by far one of the most impressive things about this build: "I commissioned a custom mount for the reservoirs. I used two so that it can be configured as two loops, depending on which valves are open. Being the only clear part of this system, I can tell the water is flowing by the vortex created when the pumps are cranking," said Edman565.
They also noted that one pump could easily power the system, but installing two allowed for manual adjustment of the flow rate for the outdoor loop. Even more impressive, the custom control panel evokes a classic fighter-jet feeling, which was entirely custom-made just for Manual Metal. It's pretty astonishing and resulted in a near-unanimous win for our panel.
Matthew Safford: Love seeing those old Dell 4:3 monitors (which I remember using in my college's library) put to good use! There's so much impressive customization going on here, I don't even know where to begin.
Joe Shields : Wow. This is. Wow. If I wasn't married with two kids, it's how I would do it. Custom controller, outside cooling, 3D printed parts. Absolutely amazing setup, even if some of the screens are 4:3.
Sayem Ahmed : I think we have our winner, folks. This is really one of the most impressive systems that I've seen to date. The control panel not only looks cool, but serves as an excellent way to measure things in an analog-like way without resorting to a screen, which is frankly, more boring, and way less cool than this. I cannot imagine the number of man-hours that it took to build Manual Metal. Everything from the fluid paths to the cable management and sheer amount of effort and love radiating from this system is everything an enthusiast should aspire to.
Well done to Edman565 for winning Rig Rundown with the astonishing Manual Metal build. We'll be in contact with you shortly.
Sayem Ahmed is the Subscription Editor at Tom's Hardware. He covers a broad range of deep dives into hardware both new and old, including the CPUs,\u00a0GPUs, and everything else that uses a semiconductor. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-20/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Sayem Ahmed Social Links Navigation Subscription Editor Sayem Ahmed is the Subscription Editor at Tom's Hardware. He covers a broad range of deep dives into hardware both new and old, including the CPUs, GPUs, and everything else that uses a semiconductor.
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