Build Your Own: The Customizable, Illuminated Dream Machine

The Perfect PC For Any Mood

We’re typically resolute in our choices when it comes to the guts of our favorite PCs. But we can get downright fickle when you start talking about aesthetics. I'm pretty sure everyone here at Tom's Hardware has a different opinion on what looks good. Choosing an enclosure is difficult enough. Forget committing to any one color of lighting (that's if you can tolerate lighting at all). In ideal world, we'd like the freedom to change colors to suit our moods. And this has to be done right. The tenets of artistic design demand that all pieces fit together. We can’t have green lights in the chassis, a yellow mouse, and a keyboard that blasts out red.

A few years ago, it would have been unrealistic to expect components from different vendors to come together in an amalgamation of coordination. You would have had to spend hours modding your chassis and peripherals with custom LED lighting. This is no longer the case, though. Thanks to a number of enthusiast-friendly companies and good old fashioned capitalism, you can find a wide variety of cases, accessories, and peripherals armed with LEDs able to assume any color in the RGB spectrum.

So, we decided to construct a customizable illuminated dream build. Although it boasts some fantastic hardware, this system's real focus is  bright colors and exciting effects. We'll showcase each component, of course, explain why we picked each of them, and how we put everything together. In the end, you'll see just how well-coordinated (and luminous) a build can be using off-the-shelf parts.