garbage. See, the proper way to prep plastic is to actually uh, you know,
scuff it up and then use alcohol. So,
the alcohol gets rid of the oils that are in the
plastic because the oil is used as a release agent in the molding process. So
when you try to paint over plastic, it
doesn't always want to stick very well because of the oils and the alcohol will
get rid of it. So little tip,
I think there's like a lot of the areas
where we're where we will be creative and some of the stuff we bought to be
creative haven't even been really on camera at all yet. Um, so we want to get
a super clean battle station, super clean build, and then uh add the
flourish and like everything that's going to make this thing creative and
unique. Tech Showdown is brought to you by Synergy 2 in partnership with G-Skill,
be quiet!, and Cable Mod.
Synergy 2 makes sharing your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers so
simple that anyone can use it. Learn more at the link below. So, I'm painting
the uh case feet right now. So, we're going to do white on the whole case, but
then we're going to do some accent pieces in in pink. So, some of the mesh
and different things. So, we thought that pink feet would be kind of a nice
contrast. So, just getting those painted ahead of time.
Oh, fish eyes didn't get didn't get prepped very good. Yeah. So, if you
don't prep something and clean it really good, uh I don't know if you can see it,
but so the black little spots that you're seeing are what's called fish
eyes. And so if there's a contaminant on the surface and you try to put paint,
especially if it's like a oily contaminant, it will separate the paint
from the surface. And so it leaves what they call a fisheye.
So, this is the front panel piece. So, what I did was cut it down. Uh, we
removed the actual door that would go here. And we're just going to make like
a filler panel to set inside here. So, this was on the front of the actual
door. And so, I took it off and it just had to be cut down a little bit. Oh my
god, it's a perfect fit. Okay, we'll
mount this in here so it's permanent. And then we're gonna have to drill a
couple holes for our water cooling lines and then some mounting holes for the
brackets for the reservoir. So our reservoir is going to Oh, I look great
with it. So our reservoir is going to uh
sit right here. And so looking at the front of the case, we'll have a
reservoir on the outside. I do kind of wish that I had gone with a white primer
if we were going to try and do any vibrant colors. But if we do go ahead
with chocolate brown for real, then it'll work just fine. That actually
looks super pro down there. All my parts drying. I mean, okay, super
pro is probably an exaggeration, but okay. One of these parts is touching the
saworse leg.
Okay. Wait, I'm good.
No, I'm using up all my pegboard. Just trying to find a spot for this to dry.
So, my power button and my reset button
are still in here. Um,
I think I have an idea for how to mask them off, though. The problem is we
don't have time to do like really tidy masking with, you know, razor blades and
stuff. We need a piece of tape to cover
what can't get paint on it. But, I think if I flex this out, then I can slip this
under it. Actually, you know what? I
think I'm going to leave the sticky side. Wow, this must be the world's
crappiest masking tape. Brilliant.
So, I think what I can do is just stick this in there and
demonstrate once and for all that there's no problem you can't solve
by flexing out and sticking it in there.
Thank you.
No, it's fine. I can work with this. Cuz that is what Tech Showdown is about.
Working with what you got in spite of Ed's best efforts to sabotage everything
you hold dear.
Can of flat brown? No, no, no, no. Three cans of the um of
the clear coat. And clear coat. Yeah. And you want three colors of brown
still? Uh I I think so. Like if we're going,
you know, shades of chocolate, then uh
we might as well go shades of chocolate.
Like I really didn't want to get into the whole like painting thing with this
project, but these guys have forced our hand a little bit. Like we can't show up
with a not painted system at this point. Oh man, I am I need Luke to get back
here with more paint. Holy crap, this painting is taking longer than I had
hoped. Okay. How long will you be there? Um, I just I'm out of primer.
The multi-tononality of our color scheme
is probably the only thing that saves this chocolate idea. So, I need to get
literally everything taken apart where we
were pretty screwed. Okay, so I'm officially out of primer, which means I
have to find something else to do. I'm going to start with the monitor
disassembly. So, in terms of color scheme for the
monitor, frankly, I don't have a ton of options. We're going with uh with gold
and chocolate. So, what I was kind of thinking was
gold for this thin bezel frame. Then we
do a brown desktop wallpaper.
Then we do uh I mean for this standing I
don't know. Um, like we could go gold
all the way and then maybe I could mask off like a like a jagged line and we
could have uh brown come out the bottom or something like that. But I mean,
every every time I add, you know, masking, I'm adding more complexity to
something I'm already not going to have a lot of time for.
Is Luke back? Yeah. Hey. Hey, man.
I have a wide mix of news for you. Uh
oh. What is this? All good though, right? Um, mostly.
Uh-huh. Start with the good
and then tell me the better. Um, I got a lot of track.
Okay. There weren't a lot of trains that you could put things in.
Check this out. I got the logo off.
So, we're going to be able to put that back on after we paint. Cool.
But I got like this. So, we have a little station,
which I think is cool. Um, I got this,
which we can unscrew the top off of it and just use that bit.
Cool. So, that could like be pouring off like the GPU or something if we want.
Um, I got a little thing. So, if you want to have a pad on top of the computer.
Dope. Okay. Um, this I think we could just like put
some on it or something. I don't know. And then there's only like
two that you can actually put things in, which is a little sad. Nope. I think we can live with that.
That'll be the thing that pulls them. Uh, that's a caboose. Oh, does that
push? No, I don't know.
Does it matter? We We need one of the stack. All right.
I can get that later. Might be cool.
Um little firet truck. Sure. And a little ambulance.
Oh lordy. Okay. Yeah, we need that. Yeah. Uh
our team needs an ambulance. Yeah. Okay.
I don't know if this is going to I don't know if this is going to translate to
like foil wrapping,
but I'm sure going to It looks okay.
Wow,
this is tacky, dude.
Oh god. No, I'm not. I'm worried about me. Keep painting. I'm worried about us.
Keep painting, man. Don't you ever think about us? Oh my god. You have the primer, right?
Only in therapy. No.
Are you serious? Yes.
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it even works across VPNs and tricky home networks. If you get the pro
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sharing, dragging and dropping files, copy pasting, lock screen
synchronization, and lots more. You're not kidding right now.
No, I'm not. Oh, that's bad.
I will go get primer.
Should I do Ace Hardware? Or should I just go to Home Depot?
I don't know. Okay. Is there anything else you can do
in the meantime? Uh, yeah. I can keep working on the
monitor. I'll find Don't worry. I'll find things to do. Okay, cool.
I swear I could have strangled Luke when he came back without primer. My level of
impress went from here like here. I
cannot believe he came back without the primer.
Well, I got sick this morning, which was not good. Um, and I'm tired and I have
to like go around the city and stuff and forget primer, which was like
the main reason that I went to the store. So, that was pretty bad. So, Luke
and I couldn't help noticing um while we
were checking out their super boring
generic candy color scheme over here that they have four tables.
And meanwhile, we're scraping by with two. So, we've liberated a table. That's
how we do in Canada. Hey, buddy. Actually, we'd probably just
ask for it. But they're American. They wouldn't really like get it, you know?
Hold on. Let me just get this hanging first. Yeah, it's good. Okay.
So, everyone knows I just likes pink, right? And everyone knows Steve from
Gamers Nexus is going to be like picky on the actual computer.
But what these guys don't know is Central Park.
Okay. What about it? I'll explain it in more detail later. Okay. I super don't get it.
What? I don't I have no idea. So, we're almost
done getting everything painted. We need to adjust the RAM to monitor a side
panel. And once we have everything under paint, we got to run and grab a couple
things that we couldn't get yesterday. And then we'll be back here and we have
to lay a second color of paint on our tabletop. And we want to try to get that
done about 4:00, which lets us let the paint set up a little bit, let us pull
the tape, and then be done for the day and let it cure.
I bet you did. Pretty good. Pretty darn good. So, it's
going to it's going to be a little bit closer on the second coat as well
because right now we have a lot of that white popping through. So, you're going
to see that it's really close.
It's just the shaking.
We've actually done pretty well. Uh we
just have uh we So, what we're going to do now is we're going to bond this
little insert panel right here that we
cut. We're going to bond it into this
piece and let that sit overnight so that it's good and strong. And uh when we
come back in the morning, it'll be locked in. It'll be solid. And then we
can scuff it and paint it. This
um that's the mark that I made when I
kicked out my foot to try and keep it from falling. Okay.
Oh, there. Oh, okay. It got that gold on it from the
floor. Yeah. So, Luke, this is coat number three of the monitor. This is the point where
this gold either starts to look good or uh we give up hope on it.
Okay, cool. Yeah, cool. The biggest surprise for me today was
how well the gold turned out. I um I was
Oh, I was pretty worried when I saw the first coat cuz like you can never judge
paint by the first coat, but it's a
clue. That looks pretty all right. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, I'm actually down with that. Okay. Could maybe use like one more coat, but
it's definitely coming together. Well, hey, one more coat is a hell of a lot easier there. Easier than, "Oh my god,
blow it up. It's terrible." That whole thing that we were kind of
told we couldn't do. I think they're going to go pretty far with that.
You know what though? I honestly am not worried about that.
You guys were told to do that. Well, we assumed based on that we had
parts provided by sponsors.
So, no, we weren't explicitly told we couldn't.
I was you were okay. Well, I wasn't.
I was told by you. Okay.
You know how we observed that their system is like really safe? Like
actually like boring? Yeah. I'm worried that they did that on
purpose. What do you mean? I'm worried that uh that we're looking
at sort of a a fraction
of Well, don't look at it then.
Is this a bad time to mention that I don't really know how to mask and I'm just kind of winging it?
Uh, I already knew that. Oh, okay.
If I hadn't already known that before today, I would have known it from
watching you do it.
So, there's that. I mean, it was based on your masking skills that I decided to
do all the painting rather than hand off at some point. might have just uh
damaged the finish on one of the most important parts,
the frame of the monitor. Hold on. Let me see if I can retouch it while it's
still wet, I believe.
So, Luke, crazy thing. Um,
I'm out of stuff to paint mouse. All right, done. Uh,
unless you want me doing something else, but you're going to have to kind of disassemble it for me.
Did you do the keyboard? Uh,
I'm going to assume that I did, but I can't find it.
If we use a bag to mask it off, we tie
it nice and tight, then I think I can probably spray around it and hit the
frame. Holy crap, it does look ridiculous.
It looks crazy. Some mad scientist lab.
Today was a blur because I was doing the
same thing over and over and over again and I was on paint fumes.
Well, that's what today is going to be like. Um, so I mean sample size of one,
but other than me spitting on it just now making lightsaber noises, finish on
this looks pretty good. I'm I'm really
happy. So, I'm going to start hitting this with paint. My goal for today is to
finish painting things so that tomorrow I don't have to look at another can of
paint. Speaking of which, what am I doing? I'm
going to finish taping off this power supply and then I'm going to finish doing some of the stuff that we were
talking about to those tubes. Yes. And I need that thing.
Yes. Ah. Ah. Yes. The thing. The secret weapon. Ah. So, turns out that I had a
Threadripper block on my desk the whole
time. I don't know where they're gonna get one.
If the competition was two days, I think that would look awesome.
You know what I mean? I like it. I'm I'm like pretty pleased
with how this turned out actually. Iron Man. Yeah, man. Too bad that's not the team.
I can't get any paint on where it is anyway. So,
you good? Mhm. Okay. Yeah, I contained it. You don't look
that good. Yeah, I know. I've like filled my mouth
twice in the last 10 minutes. Pretty gross.
Yeah, I know. All right, that needs to be primed, too. So, just the block and the feet of the
monitor and then we're done priming. Okay. So, are we good for primer then?
Yeah, we're good. But if I did send you to go buy more
primer, that's what you would buy, right? Yes.
Oh my god, I hate this nozzle.
Also, it's leaking at the bottom. Freaking brilliant. I'm trying to
imagine a way that I could be more pissed off by having two bad spray cans
in a row. I think it looks chocolatey.
I'm not going to get after them for the color. I think it looks chocolate.
I don't think I could be more mad right now.
While you and that color have had their differences,
together something great has happened.
Captain, pause.
What?
Um, my hand my fingers are Oh.
Uh, well, our card's dead.
Okay, you can use theirs. Yeah. Okay, we have another one. I just
have to do all of this over again. So,
our GPU can't be air cooled anymore. Um,
cuz we ripped off the fan header.
So, which is like ridiculously on here. What I'm trying to do right now is get the
block part off of it cuz then you could just paint this. You
just swapped the other card. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm trying to salvage some of this. Okay.
um sort of I laid it out on the ground
but like sorry right now I am trying to
get a rough idea of how this whole train track thing is going to be able to come
together. I'm pretty unsure but I'm
going to try to make it work. I'm still painting. Thanks for asking.
You know what? Yeah, let's diarama it up for a little bit here
just to make sure what I need to buy. We need to sanity check this. I don't
want to go back to toy traders if we don't have to. So, I actually don't mind
our idea at this stage. We got the train, we got the town, we
got the theme. Um, I think the system is
going to end up looking pretty sharp. I still have some deep concerns about the
water cooling because I haven't figured out how I'm going to make the
limited amount of tubing that we have work with the fact that I now have to
integrate a reservoir and pump.
Um, but my only concern at this point is the
legs. Our plan for the legs completely fell through and we have no backup.
People bought some candy from the candy train and are going to go to the park, I
guess, cuz they're not there yet cuz they're by the candy train. Um,
that that that's a dog. Um,
it's a candy dog. Candy dog. It's a black licorice dog.
It's not a black lab. It's a black licorice dog. Um, there there's a tree.
I don't I don't know what um It's a lollipop tree. It's a lollipop tree. Uh, yeah. And then
there's some shrubberies which are probably going to be jube jube shrubberies. I don't know. Every
previous tech showdown, the setup has been that Lions and I go shopping in the
morning before Tech Showdown actually starts and buy all of the stuff that
we're going to use because we know the theme and then the entire duration of
Tech Showdown is us implementing that theme. That's it. We have one shopping
trip and we make it work. And with this tech showdown, we decided to sit there
and try to visualize it or sit there and start taking things apart while trying
to think of what we should do. And I think the best thing for us would have
possibly been to just go to the dollar store and go to the other store and see
what we can find like we did in previous episodes. I could also be totally wrong
about that. I don't know. I just think our theme isn't super great. Okay. So,
I've got all my tape uh
put back over the white area so that I can just stay stay with the same pink
area that I had before and uh tried to get it as close as I can to the same
edge so that um it doesn't look wiggly
or anything like that. So, uh it doesn't have to be super perfect, but I'm going
to go ahead and just roll the pink back over the top of this. You can maybe see
on the camera there's some light areas and dark areas. And so you'll get that
just on your first coat. And so on the second coat and then if you go with like
a third coat, um it'll darken up more and more each time. So it'll it'll um
become more solid.
That is better. But just magnetic.
So those just drop on. Now we have our pink and white mouse to
match and they are ready to lock into place.
Oh, except for it won't it won't look right on the inside corners when we go.
Wow. So, this is an awesome fact. only 60 calories, contains 20 servings at 60
calories. We have to put our steel uh
bendable rods into our lollipop. So, I
got to cut the uh dowel off. And now I'll have to drill a small hole in to
fit the uh steel rod just right. Third
one.
Yeah, sweet pink. A little lighter, but not too bad. Okay.
A lot of pain on this part.
keyboard is all pink keys, white keyboard
and uh with the white PCB cover underneath. We should get a nice sweet
glow from the uh
car. This might be a trick. What? This might be a trick to get this to stay.
Oh, why am I so long? Oh, that's right. I left it long, though.
Oh, dang it. Okay, so here's the little box I made.
Um, the adhesive is still a little bit on the sticky side.
Oh, nice, dude. What? That's awesome. Does it? Oh, dude, that does look good.
Isn't that sweet? Yeah, that's sweet. All right, I up, too. It bubbled up and
looked horrible. Really? Oh, yeah. Huh?
like you guys. Oh, not quite. Actually, Colton actually
thought we did do it for a living. Oh, no. We don't.
We have day jobs, man. Yeah. I said something about working on
servers and stuff, and he's like, "You what?" Like, yeah, both of us do this as
kind of a professional hobby, I think, is the best way to describe it. We try
to achieve professional results, but both of us work 5 days a week. And uh
we're up here all week on vacation. That's a really bad ugly contrast.
We could pull we could paint them. The the problem is durability of paint, but
wow. That's that's hideous.
Um we could just pull this front cover
and just blast the whole thing. Yep. Yeah, I'm going have to do that.
I have to fix a couple of these heights, but that's hideous. Um okay, so yeah,
keyboard, mouse, monitor, tower. Bob's
an OCD freak, which makes working with him sometimes really challenging,
especially since I'm not at all. And he
gets easily distracted. But, uh, you know, having someone who's
an OCD freak on a case modding team, it's pretty
valuable because everything gets put exactly the way it should be on the
finished product. And that sound means it's the end of the
workday and the end of the show. Tune in next week when the boys will assemble
their final builds and present them to the three celebrity judges. Will I,
Justine, be tickled pink? Will Central Park leave its mock on Riley? And will
Steve Burke of Gamers Nexus be impressed by things that Steve Burke of Gamers
Nexus would be impressed by? All will be
revealed next week on the final episode of Tech Showdown.