The World's Greatest Earthbender

The World's Greatest Earthbender

• It all started with the desire for a fancy PC case, my first and only previous tower was a generic plain black case and it was just boring. I wanted something like the Hyte Y60, or a "fish tank style case, but the price tag was too steep for my budget. Originally I was going to swap my old components into a new case, add some RGB and make it look nice. I came across the Sama case and the price was perfect for my budget and being that it came with ARGB fans was a plus, but it was limited to a mATX board. So one thing lead to another and I just got all new components, minus a new GPU, because my 2070 still works fine for my gaming. I've seen many people with AIOs with the LCD screens, adding extra RGB, and some kind of figurine and calling it a Character Build, and that is what I wanted to do, but I wanted to go a little further.
• So I decided to go with my favorite character from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Toph, but not just slap a figure and color coordinate the RGB and call it done. With the PSU block have the big empty space, it seemed like a perfect place for some art and/or styling options. I got some rock design peel and stick vinyl, printed some mini wanted posters and a DnD floor texture. I wanted to add the Earthbending symbol, but thought it would be cool for it to have some backlighting. The PSU block was big enough to fit the PSU and a RGB fan, which worked perfect for the backlighting, and also bringing in some additional airflow to the GPU, that sits inches from the top of the block.
• I spent about an hour with a Dremel cutting out the symbol. I found a clear plastic lid from an old tool case, I scuffed it up with some sandpaper to help defuse the light, and glued it to the back of the cutout as additional support. From there it was just a matter of clean up, putting the vinyl sheets on the case, and mod podged the mini posters and rock floor in place. I moved one of the RGB fans that came with the case into the PSU block, flipped the MB side fans to intake, and added two Noctua 1700 in the rear and top for exhaust, I figured 4 cheap intakes and 2 strong exhaust should give me good airflow. I also added two RGB strips, one across the top and one with the fan in the PSU block to give the symbol a brighter glow.
• The cooler is a cheap place holder, due to budget limits, and eventually will be upgraded to an AIO. With the Ryzen being designed to run at 95C, which is a temp I'm not to comfortable with, I found many youtubers with a simple PBO optimization that helps reduce the temps, and now during gameplay the CPU temps aren't getting any higher than 75C and the PBO upped the CPU GHz a little.
• My only complaint is the Sama case showed it's cheap price point in the fan controller that comes with the case broke at the SATA slot, so I had to get a fan splitter so I could at least have the fans working, even though I lost their RGB, for now. Also outside of Newegg there is no additional information on this case. The instructions that came with the case were just a generic one page "how to install the components" and it had a different model number on them, and there is no additional info on that one either. Additionally with the MB side fans and this motherboard, the usb 3.0 connector had to be snaked around the GPU in order to not kink the cable, but a simple 90 degree adaptor helped eliminate that from view.
• In the end I love how it turned out. When I got it up and running everything works great, and surpassed my expectations.
• Being that I didn't have the Toph figure at the time of completion, and only owned one ATLA POP, I had a joke setup for a little of "The Fire Nation has invaded" lol