Mod of the Month - October 2009

Project: Ioncito

By elGafas
Worklog: Here

Thankfully mini ITX motherboards have come back with a bang after a bit of a lull a few years ago when their lack of performance and high price made them a little unpopular except for the odd carputer or mini mod. We've spotted quite a few mods around that are using them, be it Core 2 mini powerhouses or integrated VIA CPUs. However Project: Ioncito uses none of these CPUs, instead opting for Zotac's latest Nvidia Ion based mini- ITX motherboard.

The setup is really quite cute but we're liking elGafas' custom case even more. It looks a little like the Silverstone Fortress FT01 except the side panels are coated in black leather - initially it sound like a bad idea but following a very neat job, we can actually say it looks quite unique.


The case took shape pretty quickly in elGafas' project log but looks fantastic and it's a shame we didn't get to see how it came together. We can see just how small the case is too with hard drive and PSU taking up much of the bottom section. The side panels appear to be made of MDF.


Above we can see one panel has received a side window to show of that lovely Zotac mini-ITX motherboard once it's been installed. We can see the board on the right, cute eh?


Here's how elGafas covered those side panels in material which appears to be a mixture of glue and, as shown in other images in his log, pins. In any event, the result looks great as we can see here on the right.


There's yet more ninja cable braiding this month too. elGafas took his PSU apart (make sure you leave it off for a few days to let that residual charge dissipate else you'll get a new hair do) and braided all the cables individually. Nice! Later we see why white cable braid was used as various other bits of hardware received a coat of white paint.

If you'd like to vote for Project Ioncito, head over to our forum here.