Modding - Page 3

Adidas has partnered with its environmental group Parley for the Oceans to design a 3D-printed shoe created in part with garbage found in the ocean.

As of now, it's in the concept stage and comprises an upper made with plastic sourced from the ocean, and a 3D-printed midsole made with recycled polyester and gillnets (specialized nets used to catch fish and sometimes left in the ocean).

"World leaders forging an agreement is wonderful, but we shouldn't need to be told to do the right thing," says Eric Liedtke, adidas Group Executive Board member responsible for Global Brands. "The industry can't afford to wait for directions any longer. Together with the network of Parley for the Oceans, we have started taking action and creating new sustainable materials and innovations for athletes. The 3D-printed ocean plastic shoe midsole stands for how we can set new industry standards if we start questioning the reason of what we create. We want to bring everyone from the industry to the table and create sustainable solutions for big global problems."

If you're thinking about making, downloading or tinkering with a 3D-printed gun file, you might want to think again. Reports have come to light stating that the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) doesn't take to this kindly, offering hefty jail time to anyone who might want a gun file of their own.

Last week, the NSW Government passed its Firearms and Weapons Prohibition Legislation Amendment Bill 2015, with one section stating that simply owning a 3D blueprint of a firearm can land you up to 14 years in jail.

With incarceration also extended to owning plans for "electric milling machines," this new legislation marks further action against illegal real-life weaponry, offering up harsher penalties to those with stolen guns or others who are keen on making illegal firearm modifications.

During the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, Intel spent a lot of time promoting the "Maker" craze in the current world. Intel corporate strategy officer Genevieve Bell believes it's a great time in the maker movement, with Intel interested in supporting new technology ecosystems created by developers.

Intel is a supporter of the Maker Faire and of Make magazine, with growing popularity in the print publication and global maker events.

"It's never been a more exciting and accessible time to invent the future," Bell said during IDF. "It's about changing the world, in small ways and big ways. It's about breaking the rules. Possibilities and disruption. Hard work. Solitary or collaborative. It's not always clear what you are doing. It involves curiosity. It certainly involves failures. It is exhilarating. Sometimes people resist it. To me, that is making."

Tech modding expert Dave Bennett is a kind of emulation wizard who is responsible for many improbable wonders like running PlayStation 2 games on a smartphone as well as playing Valve's epic puzzler Portal on Android. Bennett's latest achievement let's you play Half-Life on a smartwatch. Not that most of us would ever want to play Valve's epic FPS on a smartwatch, but it's still a pretty impressive spectacle nonetheless.

According to the modder, the SDLash3D app is able to emulate Valve's old-school GoldSource game engine that powered classic titles like Team Fortress Classic (which is also playable on Android). While working on making Half-Life run on a phone, on a lark Bennett tried it on his Android Wear-powered LG G smartwatch.

And it worked. As you can see for yourself in the video, Half-Life's unforgettable monorail scene starts up and runs on the tiny 1.65-inch screen. The framerates flux anywhere from 2FPS to an impressive 30FPS, and of course, the game is practically unplayable in itself, but it only goes to show you how versatile Android really is.

Set out to ensure your AMD Radeon R9 Fury X is single-slot in sizing, EK Water Blocks has designed and announced its new full-coverage water block.

Set for sale soon, this water cooling block is rumored to be released in two different materials according to TechPowerUp - exposed copper and nickel-plated copper. These materials will sit alongside clear acrylic and acetal covers.

Featuring a single-channel for the GPU and VRM, there's an included micro-channel lattice for the GPU and the extended option to purcahse a single-slot bracket for the Fury X display I/O.

Computex 2015 - Complete with a G1 Gaming battle elephant and a GIGABYTE titan, this motherboard and video card manufacturer has joined the modding movement, adding a few alternate and awesome builds to its arsenal in Taipei, Taiwan.

The Elephant offers a Z97-XUD5H motherboard and was designed and built by Suchao Prowphong from Thailand, featuring a great yellow and black color scheme complete with a top-mounted cannon. Known for his amazing ThermalTHOR and Core X 2 Furious mods in the past, this is another fantastic rendition by the Thai modding master.

As for the Titan, we unfortunately don't have much information beside that fact it looks incredible.

Suchao Prowphong is no newbie to master mods, showcasing his amazing ThermalThor hammer mod in mid 2014 to the public.

Hailing from Thailand, this full-time farmer is certainly nothing to scoff at and has titled his new entry 'Core X 2 furious' - it is becoming apparent that Prowphong certainly loves his action movies.

Complete with two different Intel i5 CPUs and a great white color scheme, the only other Thermaltake CaseMOD entry we have covered so far with such a setup is Stuart Tonk's (AUS) dual Intel Xeon entry.

Hailing from the United Kingdom, master modder Richi 'rchiileea+richi' Bowzer has been selected as one of seven modders to go head to head with other big names that TweakTown has already covered in Thermaltake's caseMOD invitational competition - check out Stuart Tonks (AUS) and Fabio Moma (JP).

Looking a little different from most mods you will see in this day and age, Bowzer quotes his expansive computer history as part of his modding know-how, stating "how old am I? well old enough to know you can run a AMD K2 without a heat sink for a few minutes, and to also know a small company called abit only released mobos with German translated manuals" all while navigating through a dial-up connection.

With the theme of this case being titled as 'Illusionist', Bowzer has gone about integrating the Thermaltake Core X9 case on offer with a fancy painted color scheme coupled with a cool 16GB of Avexir Blitz 1.1 RAM.

Thermaltake has been promoting its global modding competition like crazy recently, with seven modders chosen from countries around the world to represent their homeland in a 'mod-off'.

Bringing his best to the table is the Australian modder Stuart Tonks, showcasing his build which features a dual-CPU laden ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard coupled with three ASUS NVIDIA STRIX GeForce GTX 980's and no less than three SSDs.

If that's not impressive enough, the full Thermaltake watercooling setup within is finished off with a built-in 24" 1080p touchscreen.

We've covered this gigantic chassis before, seeing numerous modders around the globe tackle this Goliath in their own special way.

Milo Majlow Lihoťan has just shared his own stacker project, named "Vodovodárenske" and featuring SLI video cards alongside a complete and custom water cooling setup.

Running on the backbone of an MSI MPower X99S, with two MSI GTX 780 Lightning video cards and a full water cooling setup featuring parts from companies like EK Water Blocks and Alphacool - this build really does 'stack up'.

As seen on the Watercooled PC Facebook page, modder Ilija Dakic has posted his preliminary plans and intentions for a seriously awesome PC mod project.

As you can see from the image above, he's looking to take AMD's CPU project literally - producing a 'BULLDOZER' build featuring an AMD chip as its core.

He has begun the journey by making these few drawings to illustrate the design concept and idea, following it up with some real life sticky tape-laden examples and then furthering it with specific measurements and analysis.

Built by a modder named Hukkel from Dutch Lion Customising this fantastic Antec P830 is packed full of goodies from MSI, GeiL, Bitspower and more.

This SLI-graphics system packs some seriously beautiful watercooling routing with the utmost care being taken in order to make sure every single tube looks like its part of an art feature, helping tie the project together as a whole.

What's different about this build also is the engraved company logos alongside the Antec cutouts, helping make this one of the best modded systems we have seen yet.

Bitspower are once again in our spotlight, with Łukasz Płonka sharing his new project in progress on the Watercooled PC Facebook page.

This fancy photography shows off what is probably the cutest and also most beautiful water cooling components that I've ever seen. There's something about the dark metal contrasting with the crystal clear shell displaying a cool blue liquid interior that makes this something special.

We can't wait to see what Lukasz comes up with, stay tuned for updates as his build progresses.

It's almost completed and it sure does look amazing. Math Military Modding has put a few more touches on this real carbon fiber build, using R/C plane carbon fiber rods in place of your general rigid tubing options.

Sponsored by ASUS France, Seasonic, EK Water Blocks and Kingston Technology HyperX, we've covered this build in detail previously, highlighting exactly how special it is.

Well here's another quick update, as you can see the custom-build chassis is all ready to go and almost all of the components have been put into place. The carbon fiber rigid tubing being laid out neatly and professionally and all that's left is to add the video cards, fill up the watercooling and put a few minor touches on the build as a whole.

Making Wiz Khalifa proud, this black and yellow build spotted on the EK Water Blocks Facebook page is jam-packed with ASRock, Intel and EK Water Blocks components.

Finally a build that isn't featuring rigid tubing, this mod project has interestingly placed the Kingston HyperX SSD Na'Vi Edition directly onto the power supply, likely due to space constrictions.

Alongside providing yellow died liquid for aesthetics, even the RAM has been properly color coordinated alongside brilliantly sleeved cables. This fully water cooled system only features one video card this time, but it's still going to be enough for general duties.

Set to be stuffed full of high-tech components including GTX 970's in SLI and an Intel 3770K slotted into an ASUS Maximus V Gene - this work in progress build by Simplemodz sets out to be a little different from the rest.

This Fractal Design R2 Mini has been custom-painted and cut up, displaying the molecules proudly through a green and white color scheme.

There's also a few display windows cut on the reverse side in order to display the HDD and Corsair SSD alongside Bitspower liquid cooling products currently being installed to help keep the system at low temperatures.

If MSI's GTX970 KRAIT edition didn't already look awesome enough, Math Military Modding has given it an all-white makeover.

This graphics addition would certainly look great on our previously covered sticker-bombed black, white and grey project by Corsaronero333.

It's possible that this video card will be placed within Math's new carbon fiber project, however there's no being sure just yet. We will certainly cover the build as it progresses to completion.

Thanks to our Facebook fan 'Daniel Ozankan', we've been told about another great sticker-bombed PC project. This CM690 II isn't quite as in-depth as our previously shared HEX GEAR R40 black and white build, but we've shared it because it's something a little more realistically obtainable for most would-be modders( including myself).

We've always been happy to share more simply modded PC builds, there's always $10,000 monster builds out there with multiple GPU's, SSD's and crazy water cooling loops - just like there are a thousand Ferrari's to gawk at online. But how about something you can actually do for yourself?

Janac has gone about modding this Cooler Master CM690II with a 'JDM style' sticker-bomb set, creating a shroud to cover the PSU and radiator - further display the sticker goodness.

Generally in modding circles we will see a sponsored or personal build running one companies products mainly as a whole - be it MSI, ASUS, GIGABYTE or more. In an attempt to break the trend, High Resolution Computers Shop (HRC) has produced a stunning red and black build with components from a vast array of companies, including:

This PC is running a stunning Mayhem Pastel Red + Mayhem X1 Red die combination, complete with custom-PSU sleeving, rigid-tubed watercooling and an Intel i7 790K to top it all off - this computer is a dream build for many.

We'll add this PC to yet another list showcasing the might that is rigid tubing and its great to see someone changing up the normal build process.

It seems that basically any large-scale build in this day and age is not complete without a full rigid-tubed liquid cooling loop. Besides wacky color schemes and cutting numerous holes in your chassis, what else can you do to truly set your system apart from the rest?

Math Military Modding has developed their own special method of water cooling design - real carbon fiber tubes. The images you can see are part of the latest update on the ASUS Strix modding project and help symbolize the projects goal, which is to be designed and built from the ground up - allowing for a scratch-built and completely custom project.

The carbon fiber tubes have been purchased from FlashRC and will be circulating coolant around the system. It looks very interesting and is quite light - but is it worth the cost or will it perform properly? That's up to you to decide.