From March and through June, Intel held the Intel Extreme Rig Challenge, a competition between the most talented PC builders in the nation to see who could build the most impressive rig to feature the Intel® Core™ i9-7980XE Extreme Edition processor, the Intel® Optane™ SSD 900P Series, and the ASUS ROG Strix* X299-XE Gaming motherboard with Intel® X299 chipset.
Knowing that the competition would be fierce, CLX Gaming, the PC gaming brand of CybertronPC, decided to shoot for the sky and designed a fully functional custom Lian-li DK05 autonomous desk that contains not one but two motherboards, liquid cooling, and storage. CLX not only took home 2nd place in the People’s Choice category but also earned the “Best Engineering” award for their efforts.
Jorge Percival, CLX’s marketing director, was blown away by the results of the contest. “It was an awesome feeling considering the brand is only two years old!” he said. The “Best Engineering” award was well-deserved; CLX outfitted the Lian-Li desk with thoughtful features that might not be obvious at first glance. “There’s about forty-six modifications, though they’re not all visible. We didn’t want it to lose any functionality as a PC in spite of being a desk,” Percival said.
These workarounds include drain ports at the bottom of the chassis for the liquid cooling and a cage for the hard drives at the back of the desk for easy access. “You don’t want to have to be finicky with the inside of the desk, so we made it so that all you have to do is mount your monitors and it’s good to go,” Percival explains.
If you’re an aspiring PC-builder yourself, Percival has some words of wisdom for you. “Building a PC is not as daunting a task as some might believe that it is,” Percival said. “I would tell anyone that has the opportunity to give it a shot.”
Percival got his start building PCs as a teenager, teaching himself the ins and outs of the craft by reading PC hardware magazines and browsing through forums. The real secret, he revealed, is practice. “I took advantage of every opportunity I had to build a computer. I built my own computer, built a computer for my mother, built a computer for my aunt—I would always offer to build a computer for someone so I could gain more experience.”
He firmly believes that it’s something anyone can do. “If you feel like it's something you wanna try, by all means do it”, Percival encouraged.
Learn more about the Intel Extreme Rig Challenge.
