Not everyone wants a black box desktop. Yes, a bit of RGB lighting certainly perks up the samey cuboid silhouette of a gaming rig, but what about those of us who want something with just a bit more personality? Something—dare I say it—a wee bit Extra?
How about a 3D printed cathedral kit that magnetically attaches to your PC case? Or perhaps you'd prefer something a little more Bloodborne-inspired? "We can do Bloodborne on the PC—not on PC, on the PC," Zoë Baye of Zombie Tech Gaming quips.
Based in the Pacific North West, the PC building business is a tiny two person team consisting of Zoë Baye and her husband Brandon Ayala. They're the team behind the aforementioned PC case cathedral kit that went viral on X last year.
Article continues belowZoë explains the case mod began its unlife as a prebuild for a friend, saying, "They wanted something vampire and goth-y. Sounds like a cathedral—duh! I could absolutely do this. I was taking inspiration from TechLin's Afternoon Tea and Tech Tesseract's [underwater themed PC]. And they did a lot of pillars. And I'm like, 'Yeah, we could do pillars. We could do a cathedral.'"
"Inspiration comes from everywhere," Zoë smiles.
After researching a number of other purchasable cathedral .stl files online, Brandon explains they began work on modelling their own original kit. He says, "We ended up using Cinema 4D to 3D model it, and from there, we took it to other programs to then be able to 3D print it—but there's so much prototyping."
Brandon currently handles a lot of the 3D modelling, though Zoë is also learning how to 3D model too. She describes the couple's current creative process as, "I bring him the sketches, and I'm like, 'Hey, do this, this, this.' And he's like, 'How about this?' And I'm like, 'No, how about this?' And then we bounce back and forth. Everything is a collaboration effort between us too."
Zoë, in turn, handles a lot of the PC building herself, and she shared the process of crafting the Vampire Cathedral PC last year, though the response surprised her.
"The comments were less, 'This is cool' and more, 'So, where can I order this?'" she said. "And then we got an influx of 200 emails of people being like, 'I already have a Hyte case. Can you make this as a kit separately?'"
That kit has since gone through at least seven different iterations, as Zoë and Brandon work to make it as well-balanced and well-fitting as possible. Currently, Zombie Tech Gaming only offers kits that are compatible with the Hyte Y70, Y60, and X50, though Zoë notes they are working to bring the kit to a wider range of PC cases.
"The requests for the NZXT, and the Lian Li, and the Thermaltake cases—100% we're bringing them, [but] they take forever to get the fitting just perfect," Zoë explains, "So, I'm really grateful that a lot of people have been really patient with us [...] To expand this, it's going to take us some more time, because we got to buy those cases. We got to measure them."
The current Hyte-focused cathedral kit remains a fairly complicated case mod, and takes two to three full days to 3D print. This means that Zombie Tech Gaming has had to upscale its operations to nine 3D printers in order to meet demand.
But before taking the business fulltime, Zoë and Brandon worked as graphic designers and marketers for a house building company. Zoë grew up helping her Dad build PC's as a kid, even assisting with his custom water-cooled build all the way back in 2010. She began crafting her own custom builds primarily as a hobby in her '20s, though circumstances soon necessitated Zombie Tech Gaming to arise.
"I have a chronic illness, so it makes it kind of hard for me to do a regular nine to five job with my condition, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome," she explains. "It just kind of happened gradually. I fell in love with building computers. I fell in love with customizing computers. I was getting sicker with my chronic illness. I was like, 'what if I just made this an at home little side gig for me, and Brandon would have, like, a blue collar job that he goes to?'"
However, when a job offer for Brandon fell through at the last possible moment following the couple moving cross-country, the pair decided to make a real go of the business in October 2025. Zoë describes this as their "make it or break it moment."
Zoë had already shared some of her earlier PC projects online, including this delectable 'Strawberry Milk' build, as well as a custom lavender 'Dream PC' for Brandon. Builds like this drew a lot of attention to Zombie Tech Gaming in its early days, though camera man Brandon also highlights, "I think what really hit it off was we were one of [very few businesses] that offer, like, full customization. On top of the cathedral kits, we were offering 3D modelling and printing."
Zoë adds, "That's how the Bloodborne [inspired case mods] came about—we had somebody directly hire us to do it. And I was like, 'Oh, absolutely, yes, you're a genius. This is the best idea ever. Thank you.'"
Zombie Tech Gaming has also built a Five Nights at Freddy's inspired PC for a client. This build used non-traditional PC building materials such as pinstriping and speed tape designed for race cars. "That was so fun," Zoë says, "I really like to give people the opportunity to get the PC of their dreams that, like, they wouldn't be able to buy stock."
Even though Zombie Tech Gaming has only begun to shamble forward, looking for brains, Zoë has been touched by all of the early support. She tells me that even though the cathedral kit is not the project they're "most emotionally attached to"—with a yet to be revealed project she describes as the pair's true "baby child"—she has "cried real tears over [the positive response] many a time."
"I'm just a chronically ill girl who is building stuff. I didn't expect to get so much support and so much love," she tells me. "Originally, we only anticipated our business to grow over the span of a year, kind of slowly. But then it was like, boom, here's a couple 100 orders [...] And we're working out of our garage—our very small, single car garage."
She later adds, "It was very surprising, and I'm thankful every day—I don't take it for granted."
1. Best overall: Havn HS 420
2. Best budget: Phanteks G400A
3. Best midrange: Lian Li O11 Vision Compact
4. Best budget compact: Thermaltake S100 TG Snow Edition
5. Best high-end: NZXT H9 Flow RGB+
6. Best Mini-ITX: Fractal Design Terra
7. Best Micro-ATX: NZXT H3 Flow
8. Best full-tower: NZXT H7 Flow
9. Best pink: Hyte Y70
10. Best looking: Phanteks Evolv X2
11. Best for beginners: Be Quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX
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