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Our first weekly case mod winner is 23-year-old David Barry, of Brooklyn, New York. David’s Star Wars TIE Figher mod blew us away. David gets 120 free downloads from eMusic.com. You can read about it below in his own words.–ed.

My case mod is a scale model of a Star Wars TIE Fighter, with a computer built right into the cockpit. And, it’s also a desk! The whole case is built from scratch. As a die-hard Star Wars fan, I knew my first mod would have to incorporate something from Star Wars, and I could think of nothing cooler than a TIE Fighter. I got the blueprints online and got to work.

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I started with the side panels (wings), which were cut from plywood. The cockpit of the TIE Fighter was most problematic part to build. After several failed attempts to create a ball out of Bondo, I finally found the perfect sphere—a Jolly Ball (a pet store item). A plywood cutout that I installed inside the ball holds all the computer components, and PVC piping connects the cockpit to the wings. Accurate detailing was created using wood filler, wood strips, glues, paints, and caulking. The whole thing was painted, and the desktop surface (Plexiglas) was attached.



The wood cutout allowed me to divide the cockpit into two chambers. The front chamber includes a FlexATX motherboard and an Athlon XP 1800+. All other components, including an 80GB hard drive, the power supply, and a CD ROM drive that pops out the bottom, are fitted into the rear chamber. The green laser canons on the front of the cockpit are the power-on and HDD activity LEDs. Power and reset buttons are built into a side panel. Red LEDs light up the interior of the case. A 12cm fan draws air out of both chambers.



The entire project cost me about 300 dollars to complete (sans computer components), and I spent four months working on it.

David Barry

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