The 21st century equivalent of the souped-up hot rod, a modded PC packed to the gills with glowing LEDs and other over-the-top adornments can be a unique way to show off your wild personality, or now even your Zen-like temperament , with a new PC case featuring a tank on top you can turn into a fully-functional and relaxing aquarium full of fish.
Chinese PC case maker MetalFish has recently added the Y2 Fish Tank Chassis to its lineup, which gets straight to the point when it comes to the case’s most marketable feature. Tom’s Hardware crunched the numbers on the case’s dimensions, which put its size at about 27 liters in total, although it appears as if the upper aquarium portion occupies about half of that, and if you go the fish route, you won’t be sticking any components in that 13.5 liter tank.
The Micro-ATX Y2 Fish Tank Chassis can accommodate a Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX motherboard inside its 1.5mm thick aluminum body, as well as a single 2.5-inch drive, a pair of 90mm fans, a graphics card up to 22cm in length (although a 20cm option is instead recommended), a 90mm tall CPU cooler, and a 1U or Flex ATX power supply. It also features colour-adjustable LED lighting inside the case, controlled by an included remote.
The aquarium up top is made from 5mm thick glass panels, with a 3mm thick panel of acrylic on the bottom keeping all the water and wildlife separate from the PC components below. A strip of LED lights arching over the aquarium’s open top provides daylight-simulating illumination, while an included pump and filtration system draws power from the PC case below using a USB connection.
The most obvious question that comes to mind with a creation like this is whether or not the excess heat from the PC can be used to keep the aquarium water warm, and, in turn, if the water in the aquarium can be used to help keep the PC running cooler. But with a price tag of around just $US75 ($104) for the Y2 Fish Tank Chassis in China, it doesn’t seem like MetalFish has gone the extra engineering mile to create a mutually beneficial symbiont relationship between the PC components and the aquarium. It’s just an over-the-top PC design that’s all but impossible to move or reposition once the fish move in.