Different engines - Steampunk modding

Posted at: Wednesday 2nd April 2008 by Amanda Jeffrey

For some modders, breaking free of the 21st century's fascination with brushed aluminium and factory-issue beige means travelling back in time to be inspired by Victorian science fiction. Amanda Jeffrey takes a look at the old kid on the block, Steampunk, complete with brass mice, typewriter keyboards and cog-filled laptops.

If wood isn't for you, consider the metal end of the spectrum, the most popular being brass and copper. Remember, however, that if you set your Steampunk a little later in time and adopt a more airborne theme, aluminium with weight-saving holes will also work. Other materials that can work well are glass and quartz. Glass from the Victorian era wouldn't necessarily have been thick and distorting, but neither would every piece have been as perfectly clear as modern glass. Using smoky, distorted glass will leave only well-lit elements visible. Consider dials with quartz-tipped ends (amethyst or prasiolite is nice too), or quartz points with LEDs beneath them as indicator lights.

Steampunk is a broad church, so to guide your mod, it's useful to take the design in a specific direction. Perhaps you want a mod that wouldn't look out of place in a mad chemist's laboratory; you might consider using laboratory glass for your water-cooling system (or fake it with acrylic tubes for a much safer option). Place a rack of test tubes in the side of your system, and fit them with colour-changing LEDs to indicate hard drive activity for an instantly readable and distinctive alternative to an LCD. You could even consider the option of using red rubber tubes from Bunsen burners, and having them coil in and out of your case.

If chemistry was never your strong suit, you could bring out your inner Captain Nemo with a nautical theme, and take your inspiration from the Nautilus submarine and the great brass diving suits of the past. Insert a brass porthole in the side of your riveted case, complete with verdigris stains; you could also fit a thin, double layer of acrylic inside and a hidden bubbler to give it an underwater effect. Use wingnuts as case screws, replace your displays with modified analogue barometers, or entwine the case with tentacles from an over-enthusiastic kraken. Let yourself be inspired by compasses, maps, telescopes, sextants, lighthouse lenses, port and starboard lanterns and, even better, Atlantis.

Maybe you'd prefer to opt for a clockwork theme? You could add some moving, intertwined cogs and gears, and perhaps a large, frosted glass clock panel on the side or even a wind-up power switch with ratchet. There are usually already gears and moving parts on a PC, such as the disk tray, so why not take advantage of them and have them power simple moving scenes. You can be as creative as you like, perhaps taking inspiration from the 'cuckoo' clocks of the past, several of which had serious, morbid themes, such as the Prague Astronomical Clock.

There are so many different themes to consider: Frankenstein's laboratory with brain jars and twitching body parts; a time machine-inspired case with mechanical time dials and leather upholstery; retro-occult themed machines with magnetically moving markers (watch out for the hard drive, of course); and holographic windows. The choices are many and varied, and the DIY ethic plays a part - you can't simply go out and buy a Steampunk PC off the shelf (yet), so you're going to have to build it yourself.