I think many of you know about ServerDNA by now. It’s like a full-day of exhibition for PC enthusiasts and gamers whereby many big brands or their local distributors will come over and set up their booths to showcase what’s new and what’s hot. On 29th September 2018, it’s their 3rd time having a the ServerDNA event – hence the 3.0 suffix.

There was a full day of agenda going on. It kicked off with a welcoming speech – obviously, then proceeded with speeches from the 3 biggest sponsors for ServerDNA 3.0 – Intel, Seagate, and Acer.

Starting from 11am onwards until 6pm, there are lots of activities that went on in parallel  with the entire day. The most interesting things here:

1. scratch.Build Modding Showcase where modders from around the world flew to Malaysia to show off their custom PC builds.
2. side.Track Technology Sharing where the exhibitors have a dedicated venue to give a speech highlighting their brand, products, and everything in between
3. Intel Extreme Gaming Playground where there were friendly matches and have certain time slots where anyone can have a chance to have fun
4. ServerDNA’s Gamers Battleground: Counter Strike!
5. GamesBond VR Playground that’s open for everyone to play Beat Saber. Yes, many people were swinging VR controller around.

We also have a rather short livestream where we walked around the venue and show what’s up with ServerDNA 3.0.

The ServerDNA 3.0 event itself

For ServerDNA 3.0, it was held at the same venue as last year’s ServerDNA 2.0, but the placement of booths, seats, exhibitors, and where the audience can walk around – it felt much more spacious and more enjoyable. The scratch.Build Modding Showcase  was scattered around the ballroom and that means we do not have to cramp to look at those mods.

For the entire event, it’s free and easy as you get to pick and choose where/what you want to do, like attending the side.Track talks or play some games around. Certain exhibitors like ASUS and Acer has dedicated activities to be done at their booths as well. Performing these activities can score you some free swag.

One booth in particular stood out to me personally – and that’s Ammobox Studios. They created a new game called Eximius which is available in Steam Early Access now, where it’s a combination of RTS and FPS together. It’s a 5v5 game where each team has a dedicated commander. The commander will micro-manage and handle the RTS part of the game, whereas the other 4 teammates will be the shooters to go out to the field and capture points or destroy the enemy base to win. Of course, the commander can go into the field and become trigger-happy as well.

By the end of the day, we arrived to the one section that everyone had been waiting for – the giveaways. This time around, we had to scan QR codes to enter the giveaway. Mechanics aside, I think it’s much more efficient than assigning numbers to everyone and picking them at the end of the day. Also, the winner is picked by the computer!

And to top it all off, there’s also an auction like last year.

That concludes ServerDNA 3.0 – but we’re not done here. Let’s talk more about the scratch.Build Modding Showcase.

The scratch.Build Modding Showcase

We found a few interesting builds this time around since there are modders from other countries as well. Not all of them are scratch builds per se, as some of them are mods from existing cases. Still, they’re fantastic to look at.

This time around, the craziest build is by HammanChronicle. It’s literally shaped like a futuristic ballistic bazooka cannon that shoots energy rays, and decorated by his intricate custom loop liquid cooling masterpiece.

Analyzing the build, we can see a bunch of RGB fans near by “base” the cannon where the fictional energy ray should be charging at, and Hamman used two super long hard line tubing loops to create the white and red colors. There were only two pumps shown at the top of the “cannon”, but we predict that there should be more pumps hidden inside the cannon since a single loop won’t have enough pressure.

On the other hand, we have a simple yet very practical mod by Buckroger Endevour where he took a simple wooden table, saw off a rectangle and laid in a shaped metal retention to hold the motherboard, power supply, graphics card, and some 2.5-inch SSDs. Then, a piece of glass is laid on top to cover all the components. The glass sits flush with the wooden tabletop as well.

What’s interesting for this simple mod are the handles for the glass panel. It’s flush with the glass, but when pressed, a handle reveals itself as it rotates. Very practical indeed.

Honestly, for me, I’ll just turn off the RGB lighting and use the table as the PC never existed. It’s such a great idea to save space!

Another super clean build is by the modder from China, Ziyang Sun. His mod is built with an InWin D-Frame. The case itself looks like a roll rage of rally cars and Ziyang Sun integrated his frosted hard line tubing and made them look like it’s a part of the chassis. Very clean build too.

For a more decorative build, have a look at RexTech’s Gundam Hangar build. The PC components itself probably take only about 30% of the entire piece – but the Gundam models together with the props and mini people are what make this build a decorative one.

I was also told that these little people are individually painted by hand. They’re super tiny and painting their hands must be a pain for the eyes!

Then we also have a lot of other builds that were interesting. Look at this scratch build by Nhenhophach from Vietnam. It looks like Star Wars’s TIE Fighter and the reservoirs are at the joints of the two wings with the body, while the cockpit is the motherboard and CPU itself. At the front of the wings, one of it has an LCD to tell system stats and a power button on the other.

Nhenhophach’s build has another interesting trick up its sleeve – and that’s the CPU block itself. It’s made entirely out of acrylic. There are zero fins and the I presume that the coolant in the loop makes direct contact with the CPU’s IHS. There are no fins to spread the heat across a larger surface area. While we can’t comment on its cooling performance, it does provide an interestingly beautiful aesthetic to it.