Build of the week: Brandywine

Case modder and painter Hanoverfist has several amazing builds under his belt—each in an eye-popping shade—but it was the Brandywine build on Overclock.net that caught our attention first. (It also put the Looking Glass song, Brandi, in our heads for about three days straight). The Brandywine build was focused on painting techniques, specifically spraying the House of Kolor Kandy paint; no metal fabrication or fancy hardware for this beauty. Hanoverfist told us that it took a lot of patience to get the paint to turn out as impeccably as it did. In order to achieve the look, several layers of paint need to be applied after the metal was painstakingly prepared—probably the most time consuming part of the build.

Hanoverfist says the entire project began out of a need for having a case to house storage drives. “The Fractal Arc Mini R2 case had a good look about it and was perfect for housing drives, but the reason for modding it was to create a work of art. Not a power build. I wanted something that sits in my living room and just looks amazing.”

For modders considering a similarly ambitious paint job, Hanoverfist recommends taking your time and not rushing anything. Congrats on that work of art Hanoverfist, and thanks for sharing the build!

Brandywine parts list

CPU: AMD A8-5600K Trinity Quad-Core 3.6GHz Turbo Socket FM2 100W Desktop APU (CPU + GPU)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H FM2+/ FM2 AMD A88X
Memory: G. Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider series ST60F-PS 600W ATX12V/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 Plus Silver Certified Full
Storage: 2 x Western Digital WD Black 2TB
Storage: 2 x Samsung 840 EVO 120GB (SSD) RAID0
Storage: 2 x Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive WD20EFRX 2TB
Storage: 2 x Western Digital 4TB W Red SATA III
Case: Fractal Design Arc-Mini-R2-BL-W Black Steel MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case
Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Other: Lamptron CW611 and CM615 controllers

Brandywine parts list

Brandywine parts list

Brandywine parts list

Brandywine parts list

Brandywine parts list

Brandywine parts list

Brandywine parts list

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).