Antimemetic is a scratch-built, fully-fanless, 0-Decibel, passively cooled gaming PC enclosure lovingly hand-crafted by me here in a small New York City apartment.
I'll document the construction process here. As I note below, this is a long-term, community effort by which I have learned much from others who have experimented with passively-cooled, high-powered enclosures in the past. So, in many ways, this build stands on the shoulders of giants
Antimemetic is also:
Heat-piped, not water-cooled. Heat pipes require no maintenance, can't gunk up, and won't leak on your components. Water is better at moving heat long distances (i.e., far away from your components), but that just means a large enclosure. That's fun and can look very cool, but is no more effective than heat pipes for short runs.
Heat-sunk. Radiators are quite effective for fans that create air pressure, but large heat sinks can use convection (and radiation too) to dissipate heat. The enclosure does not "incorporate" heat sinks. It *consists* of them.
Silent. Zero fans. Full stop.
Efficient. It can happily cool over 700 watts (175 per side) in a reasonably cool room. That means Xeons if that's your pleasure, and SLI if you fancy (and if you're willing to give up one door for the space!).
Minimally-machined. I am working out of a small NYC apartment, so as much as I'd like to do it myself, there is very little milling that I can realistically do. Instead, I employ off-the-shelf components, often for things they were not meant to do
A perfect cube. Its dimensions are 370mm x 370mm x 370mm.
http://imgur.com/gUIeG3Y
http://imgur.com/SSmYXQ4
http://imgur.com/W4FK2ic
Solid. It is made of aluminum heat sinks, aluminum extrusions, copper feet and steel fasteners. No plastic, glass or acrylic act as structural components.
Omnidirectional and tidy. Cables are routed cleanly through the bottom, so, while closed, there is no front, no left, no right and no back to the enclosure.
Comfortable to build in. It is not a tiny case. In exchange, you net plenty of room inside to poke around.
Versatile. Unlike many scratch builds that are custom built for only one set of components, this case can accommodate ATX, MATX, ITX, SLI GPUs well over 300mm, eight SSDs, PSUs over 220mm long. …Why? Because planning.
Gull-winged. Two sides open using high-end (and very expensive!) Japanese gull-wing hinges.
Motorized. The gull wing doors are mounted to a linear actuator that opens at the press of a button.
Unique. This is the only Antimemetic that I will ever build. My sense is that my future enclosures will be more compact, but less versatile. This is the original.
Beautiful. No cheesy windows, no blingy lights. Just black aluminum and pure copper. Okay, maybe some tasteful lighting on the internals.
Original. I sketched out the design and then went to learn implementation from others. Stefan from the Linus tech tips forum and his passive setups have been tremendously instructive in this regard. I am indebted to him for his assistance. I could state now, for the record, that I created Antimemetic before seeing his excellent pseudo-cube enclosure, but you probably wouldn't believe me. Instead, I'll just say that I think Antimemetic is prettier ;-)
Sponsored. Heat Sink USA was kind enough to provide four gorgeous heat sinks for this build. Some say "functionality is the new marketing," and I agree. At heatsinkusa.com you can customize the length of your heat sinks, selecting from various profiles, and buy right from the website with prices displayed. No asking for "quotes" and waiting days for a response. Cut to size and shipped quick. They'll even provide CAD drawings to work with. Tough to beat that.
http://heatsinkusa.com
And finally, Antimemetic is:
For sale. Probably. Maybe. Let's see how it turns out first ;-)