I agree with some of your points. Alienware, and the whole flashing neon light crowd, is simply juvenile. Then again, the only people (barring the video editing crowd) that require the ultimate performing computers are generally the juvenile gamers, so the marketing is pretty spot on.
Personally, I hate plastic. I particularily hate the look and feel and noise of today's plastic computers. That's why I am mid way through an absolutely monstrous project. I am putting together a 8 drive, RAID-5 400gb SATA Seagate server. This server will be a 0 decibel passively watercooled beast (with the exception of 3 very quite pumps). Every heat producing item will be watercooled, PSUx2, hddx8, RAM, MOSFETS, Chipset etc. Some waterblocks were purchased, I'm making the hard drive cooling blocks and I've had to had others machined for me. All of this will be output to a large, but beautiful, copper radiator. There will not be one fan in this entire system. And just to add to the challenge, as I also do woodworking, I'm enclosing this entirely in a cherry end table. The pumps and hard drives will be further sealed in mdf and foam enclosures to block the small noise they do create.
This will be my first watercooled setup to this extent, but I've been building wooden cases for my computers for years. Currently I have a nice beech wood dual 2ghz machine that I'm typing on with a single wine holder and 15 disc rack built in.
The total cost of this computing project looks like it's going to be pushing 3.5-4k. It's using really the finest products made today for computing. However, this machine will not make my music sound even the tiniest bit better than my $20 machine in the basement. This project is simply about the aesthetics, silence and the challenge of attempting something that I believe is unique. I completely understand your desire for something beautiful--there's no shame in that and I obviously share that too. Unless you have need for all those cycles (and a desire to deal with the extra heat and noise from fans), I would skip the "fastest" cost no object audio pc as, in my opinion, it creates more problems than it solves. I highly recommend finding a slower (i.e. cooler processor) computer and building an enclosure to your liking.
Personally, I hate plastic. I particularily hate the look and feel and noise of today's plastic computers. That's why I am mid way through an absolutely monstrous project. I am putting together a 8 drive, RAID-5 400gb SATA Seagate server. This server will be a 0 decibel passively watercooled beast (with the exception of 3 very quite pumps). Every heat producing item will be watercooled, PSUx2, hddx8, RAM, MOSFETS, Chipset etc. Some waterblocks were purchased, I'm making the hard drive cooling blocks and I've had to had others machined for me. All of this will be output to a large, but beautiful, copper radiator. There will not be one fan in this entire system. And just to add to the challenge, as I also do woodworking, I'm enclosing this entirely in a cherry end table. The pumps and hard drives will be further sealed in mdf and foam enclosures to block the small noise they do create.
This will be my first watercooled setup to this extent, but I've been building wooden cases for my computers for years. Currently I have a nice beech wood dual 2ghz machine that I'm typing on with a single wine holder and 15 disc rack built in.
The total cost of this computing project looks like it's going to be pushing 3.5-4k. It's using really the finest products made today for computing. However, this machine will not make my music sound even the tiniest bit better than my $20 machine in the basement. This project is simply about the aesthetics, silence and the challenge of attempting something that I believe is unique. I completely understand your desire for something beautiful--there's no shame in that and I obviously share that too. Unless you have need for all those cycles (and a desire to deal with the extra heat and noise from fans), I would skip the "fastest" cost no object audio pc as, in my opinion, it creates more problems than it solves. I highly recommend finding a slower (i.e. cooler processor) computer and building an enclosure to your liking.