Overview / Usage

Carbon Zero is PC case mod project, my interpretation of future innovations.

My approach is to show how technology and nature can come together to create a sustainable but high tech green environment. The case has a living, breathing top panel with real grass and a tree. Above them is a grow light to ensure the long life of all plants. All the case surfaces are combining wood surfaces with metal. The side panels represent the nature with tree shaped cut outs from wood mixed with the metal surfaces.

The inside of the computer will have a river made from epoxy, and all fan covers will be made from wood in the shape of trees.

I've been around computers for most of my life, confident with hardware, but this would be the 2nd case mod I've ever attempted.

I would like to say thank you to Declan Williams who helped me with the initial 3d model.

Thanks to Kamil Stankiewicz who helped me a lot through the creation of the whole project, Jiri Lostak and Andras Sallai for the pictures and videos.

I would also like to say thank you to Intel and all of their staff who made this project possible and helped me on the way.

Methodology / Approach

I'm a confident diy-er, with a good basic tool set in my workshop. I always wanted to work with wood, find it really delicate and warm with lot of potential.

The plan:

The first big challenge is the top panel, I would have to create a container from acrylic to contain enough soil for the grass and the bonsai tree and ensure they don't leak inside the computer.

The arch is made from layers of acrylic which I have to bend with LED's integrated inside, and possibility some irrigation system, but haven't decided yet.

The side panel of the PC will have a tree cut out made with a coping saw for the small details, placed on the metal panel.

All fan covers would be made from wood using a coping saw.

Most of the work would be done with hand tools, unfortunately don't have access to laser cutter, but have a lot of patience and enjoy this kind of work :)

The execution:

My approach to the execution of the project changed after a couple of failed attempts to make nice hand cut pieces in my freezing cold garage and decided to look around for other cutting options. This also gave me the opportunity to evolve the design and add details that I previously wouldn't be able to add.

As I had no previous experience with laser cutting and the vector graphics that it requires, my friend Kamil helped with the designs and also I managed to pick up the basics in the meanwhile.

When the wooden panels arrived, all I needed is a couple of coats of woodstain to give it a nice colour.

The riverbanks didn't needed precision, so I made them myself, just needed two layers to add depth.

Then came the day for my first time ever resin work. Thanks to a couple of tutorial videos, I managed to quickly prep the pieces and get the right colours in. Unfortunatley due to shipping issues with the moulds, I couldn't do the keycaps.

The top piece was the most difficult to produce, had a number of different pieces over the time. the original plan was to use acrylic,but I had issues with cracking. I got some foam boards and went through a couple of sheets creating different shapes until I got the final version.

Getting a bonsai tree was also an issue, it's not something I could find in a number of garden centres so I used a sligthly different plant at the end.

Only thing left was to take pictures and a video. Again I had no experience so it was help from friends and a great learning experience.

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Technologies Used

Seasonic FOCUS PX-850 Power Supply

SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD

MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 3070 Video Card

be quiet! Silent Base 802 White

CORSAIR K68 RGB Gaming Keyboard

Logitech G502 HERO Gaming Mouse

MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI

2 x 16 GB memory

Intel Core i9 12900K

MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360