After finishing the work on the L3p L4n case mod, the famous dutch modder L3p, who also happens to be the author of the epic L3p D3sk modding project, decided to concentrate on his new modding project — Cross by Red Harbinger, which was initially announced almost half a year ago. This new modding project will be scratch built from glass, steel and aluminum and will share its form factor with the L3p D3sk modding project, i.e. it will be a custom table, that will house all of the PC components inside. It’s worth noting that this modding project will also act as a prototype for the commercially produced version of such table, which will be made by l3p’s company, which is called Red Harbinger.
After L3p showed his table-based L3p D3sk modding project to the public, he was contacted by a lot of people, who wanted to purchase such a PC enclosure for themselves. Considering this, L3p decided to cooperate with his friends to release a commercially produced version of such a table-enclosure, which would be available to anybody willing to pay. At this time the Red Harbinger company consists of six people, two of whom you probably already know: one of them is L3p himself, while the other is Roboduck, who is know for being a finalist of the Phobya Case Design Competition and a nominee of Bit-tech’s Mod of the Month contest for February of 2010.
The Cross by Red Harbinger table-enclosure is planned to have a modular upgrade-proof design, which should be able to house a great amount of hardware, required to build a high-performance workstation-class setup (of course it can also be an uber gaming PC ;)). Because of such goals, it supports the installation of: dual motherboards, dual PSUs, a large number of video gards and an epic 28 (yup, twenty-eight) storage devices. Cooling in such a setup is vital, so it needs to be both extremely efficient, while quite at the same time — the table has fourteen mounting spaces for 120 mm fans and also supports the installation of two quadruple (4 x 120 mm) and two triple (3 x 120 mm) radiators for the watercooling loop. The project also features soundproofing to decrease the overall level of noise.
Since the table top in this project is made out of glass, the enclosure will provide many cable management features to help the user conceal most of the cables. For the same reason, the table will also feature a LED lighting system with an ability to adjust the color and hue of the illumination. You can estimate the finished look of the Cross by Red Harbinger project based on the 3D render and some photos that are currently available.
While the first commercially produced Cross table-enclosures by Red Harbinger should become available in the following months, L3p decided to use the existing prototype of the table to build a modding project with it. The main goals of this project is to test the prototype in real life, show off the possibilities of making a modding project based on such a table, while also making an improved version of the L3p D3sk and simultaneously attracting potential customers ;). Since L3p is using a prototype of the Cross table-enclosures, his variant will have some differences form the finished product, which will be more refined.
Regarding the price, the current information suggests that the Cross table-enclosure by Red Harbinger will be priced at approximately $2000 in US, shipping not included. Furthermore, the project seeks financing by involving potential customers via the famous Kickstarter service. It should also be noted, that the price could potentially be lowered if there will be enough backers on Kickstarter, since the manufacturing costs (which are a huge factor in the retail price) are strongly dependent on the production run of the product.
You can follow the build progress of this modding project based on the Cross by Red Harbinger prototype in its corresponding worklog and if you’re interested you can visit the official website of Red Harbinger.
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