Who Will Win Batman Or Superman

We Have a Winner: "Batman Begins"

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We had a long list of entrants in this year's annual case mod contest, but none of them were able to topple the "Batman Begins" case mod, which had been our first weekly winner. It was a close finish too, as other weekly winners weren't too far behind.

25-year-old Alex Wiley wins another CoolerMaster Mystique 631 PC Case and a CoolerMaster eXtreme 600W power supply, while also nabbing the grand prize: a Core 2 Duo processor with enough components to assemble a killer gaming rig. Do we suspect a Robin Core 2 system in the works?

Check out the highlights from this year's contest.

In his own words, here's Alex as he describes his case mod:

The Batman Begins case is a project of mine that dragged out over a year and five months. It was completely finished a week ago. The case was painted black using PPG basecoat/clearcoat for the interior as well as the exterior. Cold cathode lights are located underneath the center piece (power supply) and there are also two hard drive cages which are lit up by clusters of LEDs (One logo for the old Batman movie and one for the new movie).

A slot loading 16x DVDRW is located just underneath the motherboard as is lots of wiring. With a case that is 55 inches wide, you have to find extra long cables for everything. The 1-meter SATA cables are just long enough to get to the hard drive cages. All of the power supply cables were lengthened or shortened to fit exactly where they need to go. As far as the weight is concerned, this case is not for the weak. The case (which is made out of aluminum) weighs in around 50lbs (with hardware) and the steel stand it sits on is probably another 50lbs (though I haven't measured). The base of the stand is made from 3/8″ steel so even a stiff wind won't knock this thing over once it is all set up.

With such an odd shape, most people wonder where the cables plug into. What I did was re-route most of the motherboard plugs (VGA, DVI, Audio, LAN, USB, S-video, etc) to the back of the case. From there you can plug into any of the ports and send the cables down the stand. The square tubing allows the cables to be sent down the stand and out of the bottom as to eliminate any ugly cable mess. With the 40″ LCD in front of it, I doubt it'll really matter but that's what modders are supposed to do right? Hands down this has to be the most intense project I've done to date.

Specifications:

AMD Athlon64 3000+ Venice

2GB Mushkin DDR3200

300GB Maxtor Hard Drive

ATI x800XL w/ 256MB

16x DVDRW

40″ Samsung LCD

Thanks to all of you who participated in this year's contest. Keep checking ExtremeTech for other case mods, as we feature one from time to time. If you have a cool mod that you'd like to share, drop us a line.