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Hardware Technology

3XS Isotope - 11 Sided Gamer's Computer 150

Kez writes "For those who want to show off, then a undecagonal-faced prism case might be worth consideration. Scan's 3XS Isotope is certainly a very unusual system. It takes micro-ATX motherboards, so you can still use high end hardware in it. Perhaps the perfect LAN party system? HEXUS.net has a review, pointing out that this is the sort of system you will either love or hate."
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3XS Isotope - 11 Sided Gamer's Computer

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  • I bet... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23, 2005 @07:42PM (#12325941)
    my six year old would think this was pretty cool, but I certainly wouldn't want this beast in the living area. What's next, a one sided computer? "Why carry your computer to a LAN party when you can roll it there."
    • Re:I bet... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Janitha ( 817744 )
      To be honest, this wasnt very impressive. Its six sided, and thats all, plus the build doesnt look very solid.

      Everyone turns to slashdot, including my self, to look for new innovations and ideas. This article on the other hand, was more like comparing physical state of a chemical. Something going from Gas to Liquid to Solid is simple, it can be done by everyone, such as in this case a simple box computer is put in a multi-sided case. What would have been really nice is if it had something more to offer, s
    • What's next, a one sided computer?

      That's not actually as daft as it first sounds, the mobious strip [wikipedia.org] has only 1 side and can form an interesting sculptural piece when made from a suitable material.

      I suggest constructing such a case with a brushed steel effect as a vertical figure 8 mounted on a polished slab of black stone.

      Should look rather stunning and there is bound to be somewhere to squeeze in a mini-itx case.

  • We might as well talk about Family Guy, because the picture is missing from the linked page. There is, however, a huge gray area. Perhaps part of the page got slashdotted.
    • Re:Missing? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Sparr0 ( 451780 )
      Yeah, but only the first page. I saw all the other pics, including the interior ones, on the later pages just fine.
      • Does this look like a prop from the movie "Silent Running"? More importantly, am I the only one who remembers that movie?
        • Yes, and no. :)

          I haven't seen it in many, many years, but I remember it, it was one of my favorites when I was a kid.

          Thanks for the memory... I'd forgotten about it for a while. So I just got off my ass and bought a copy from Amazon for a few bucks. I'll have to plan seeing that with enough time to really enjoy it.

          That movie was on my mind a couple years ago for some reason...couldn't find it in any library system I could search IIRC

          Cheers!!
          SB
          • I loved "Silent Running" as well. I have not seen it since the mid-1970s. However, it took me much less than a second to immediately think of the film when seeing this computer casemod.
      • By the way, this, being 11 sides, would be an Undecago.
  • by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Saturday April 23, 2005 @07:43PM (#12325955) Journal
    But it turns out that this is just a specially-shaped case [hexus.net].
  • by sznupi ( 719324 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @07:44PM (#12325959) Homepage
    I'm waiting for hypercube-shaped cases.
  • Yawn (Score:5, Funny)

    by fallendove ( 875598 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @07:44PM (#12325961)
    Still waiting for an unseptacircular hexagasm
  • Lan parties... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Eric(b0mb)Dennis ( 629047 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @07:44PM (#12325963)
    With the price you'd pay for that thing, why not get a decent gaming laptop? That's what me and most of my friends use for lans now.. have the 802.11 ready, a good mouse... it's fun

    Plus for the hardcore, "I ate pizza all night", bathroom breaks.. you can take the game with you D:
    • well.. i guess it all depends, you can't exactly get Athlon64 4000+ and a beefy video card on your laptop, but laptop does have its advantage (you get a screen, keyboard integrated etc)

      to each of their own i guess
    • by NeuroManson ( 214835 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @08:16PM (#12326133) Homepage
      I think it's simply for the "I want a really cool looking custom PC, but don't want to risk losing digits to my dremel" crowd.
      • Come on... digits is for noobs,real men risk eyes.
        Nothing beats having a cutting wheel disintegrate into your face for ruining a day, especiall if you "only want to make that little cut, there cant happen anything...".
        • non-morons would use eye and probably ear protection at the very least. consider it equivalent to make -n install :-)
          • Ear protection with a Dremel? That's a little overkill.

            • I work on cars for a hobby rather than computers, so I use air tools; in place of a dremel I'd use a die grinder, angle grinder, drill, blah blah blah. All of them are fscking noisy. I use some aircraft-mechanic earmuffs :-) Convenient, though; no recharging batteries, and the "power point" is at the near end of the air hose rather than a metre or two away at the end of a cable. Switching tools takes hardly any time at all. They're generally cheaper, too. I'd often want nose/mouth protection, too. In
    • Plus for the hardcore, "I ate pizza all night", bathroom breaks.. you can take the game with you D:

      So "taking the game with you" is what they use for an excuse these day to go into a bathroom with a computer.
  • Can you say... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23, 2005 @07:45PM (#12325965)
    SLASHVERTISING?
  • I can't wait to have a computer so small that I have to use a pin to press the power button! Seriously though, I'm all for this, but only in some cases. Do we need to make stuff so much smaller? It makes it more inaccessible to most self-builders. I would like this for an HTPC though, because I want enough power to convert media, but I also want to make sure it doesn't look like I stuck a small PC in my room, rather it should look like my VCR grew up a tad.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    If your goal is to kick your competitors computers to see how far they roll.
  • It's not 11-sided (Score:5, Informative)

    by S.O.B. ( 136083 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @07:52PM (#12326000)
    Not to be picky (OK I'm being picky) but it's not 11-sided. The front and back are also "sides" making this a 13-sided case.
  • "unusual" cases for unusual people.
  • Advertising (Score:2, Insightful)

    by puck13 ( 102616 )
    Looks like the submitter has an email address at hexus. Free PR!
    • I have no shame - I don't hide that I'm submitting articles to a site I work for, I prefer being honest (I use the nick Kez now, which has superceded Unts, but I signed up for Slashdot some time ago, just in case you were wondering.) What would suck is if I was a Slashdot editor, but I'm not, so you're safe!
  • Coral link (Score:3, Informative)

    by CompSurfer ( 759218 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @08:04PM (#12326072)
    Coral-ated Link [nyud.net]
  • Local (Score:4, Interesting)

    by k3v1n ( 262210 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @08:05PM (#12326076) Homepage
    Just make sure your LAN party is local, don't think airport security would take too kindly to this ;)
    • That would be a HUGE carry-on. Did you see how it makes a Shuttle-style case look like a pipsqueak computer? And that's not counting the necessary monitor. It's also over 10kg (~23lb), given that neither geeks nor gamers are the typical weight lifters, that might be a strain for some in the crowd.
    • Wait, I've seen this before [slashdot.org] . . .
    • Just make sure your LAN party is local, don't think airport security would take too kindly to this ;)

      Especially if it has DOOM and Half-Life stickers on it.
  • Is rip out that foxconn board and put something that has a few more TEETH into it.
    The second thing would be to try to clean up that wiring mess they got in there! Ich!
  • allure? (Score:5, Informative)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @08:23PM (#12326167)
    Part of the allure of the ISOTOPE, to some at least, is having it pre-modified to accommodate a series of lighting gadgets, ranging from a couple of cathodes through to neon string and, would you believe, a strobe light.

    Um...I thought the whole 'allure' of stupi...er, I mean, custom looking cases was that they're unique and YOU built it. You know, instead of having that dull grey case that everyone else has, you have a case with neon and cutouts and 50 fans. Just like everyone else, but at least YOU botched the installation and didn't get it quite square and so on, so it's still...uh...unique.

    So how is this supposed to be alluring? Next year, everyone's going to have one of these things.

    Sorry, I forgot to put in [click to read more] after every sentence...

  • For those who want to show off...

    how unbelievably geeky they are
  • When did?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @08:28PM (#12326191) Journal
    when did knowing what an isotope is, when did that become cool?? i got my ass kicked for being a nerd, now the stuff i liked is cool. in college, i learned to drink to make people like me, to fight to make people respect me. it almost is enought to make me want to blow shit up. why did my h.s. existance suck? i wish i knew what i now know then so i could have struck back. *crying*
  • ... the webserver uses this lol!!!11

    Wait, that doesn't make sense...

  • I Propose... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PhunkySchtuff ( 208108 ) <kai&automatica,com,au> on Saturday April 23, 2005 @08:36PM (#12326227) Homepage
    I Propose a new categoryu for Slashdot stories:

    Advertorial

    Anything, such as this, that is nothing more than a free (?) advertisement posted to the front page of /. should be marked as such, and then subscribers (of which I am not, for this reason among others) would have the option of easily skipping it.
    • You might be on to something.

      Of course, it is also possible that the poster saw this thing and thought, "Hey, some of the /. crowd might like to see this."

      Also... blurb is pretty short. After a quick skim you could probably tell whether you were in the "interested" crowd or not.

      What I think is funny is how many mod points are given out to posts which do nothing but bitch about /. on /. . If it's so bad, go somewhere else, no one is forcing you to continue reading here.
    • The sad thing is, no matter how obvious it may be to us readers, or how much we cry foul, the editors will never do anything about it because we keep reading, and they keep generating ad revenue.

      Unfortunately, the only real way to let them know how you feel is to stop reading Slashdot, a decision that becomes easier to make with each passing slashvertisement that gets posted.

  • As others have pointed out, the case is actually 13-sided, not 11, as the front and back count as sides. This makes it an irregular tridecahedron (which doesn't tell you a whole lot about the shape, other that the number of sides), or more specifically an undecagonal right cylinder.
  • Undecagonal-faced prism cases are just another chapter of the quest to show your individuality by purchasing a mass-produced product. This can be done better ...

    I used to program for Coleco, the company that made the Cabbage Patch Kids mass-market edition.The main appeal of CPK was that every kid could have something individualized that was the same thing as everyone else!

    Instead of messing around with funny-faced PC cases, someone should market cases gauranteed to be unique, if only by the pattern of th

  • ... As this silly design was already covered more than a week ago at a more appropriate site [gizmodo.com] for hardware fanboyism and unpaid product advertisement.
  • I understand the desire to have a custom modded computer, something that someone would build themselves to make it unique, and I also understand the desire for a computer that is more asthetically pleasing than most standard towers, but I've never really understood the desire to buy gaming rigs like this.
    When you buy a machine like this, it automatically takes away the first reason, personalization, to own a non-standard machine like this, and most of them are dead ugly.
    Plus, the extra charge for these ma
    • I think one reason why this one is so ugly is the combination of an 11-sided shape with the rectangular computer components. While both shapes by themselves are regular and esthetic, their combination creates weird angles that are not so regular. That's why rectangular cases can be quite pretty, even though they use the same old shapes that beige boxes do.
  • Just me, but I think that that's probably the most hideous box I have EVER seen. Beige anyone?
  • Ugh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NonSequor ( 230139 ) on Saturday April 23, 2005 @09:37PM (#12326487) Journal
    How do people develop such a warped sense of aesthetics that they like this sort of thing? The entire case mod "scene" has got to be one of the saddest things I've ever seen. It's kind of like when you see a car painted yellow, green and purple. I'm not claiming I have impeccable taste, but I know ridiculous when I see it.

  • It's just a right, nonagonal prism!

    OK, I guess it might qualify as an undecahedron...
    • Did you look [hexus.net] at it? The front face has eleven sides, so that face is an undecagon (or 11-gon), and the whole thing is a right undecagonal prism.

      I'm not sure what an "undecagonal-faced prism" is, as written in the original write-up, though. Also, the case has thirteen faces, rather than eleven.

  • It looks like something I'd need to pick up while I'm in the game!!
  • 11 Sided Gamer's Computer

    Hrmm, I don't know many 11 sided gamers. Most of us used to use 12 sided dice, until everyone started moving to D20.
  • Is that the most un-holy, ugly-ass power button ever? Or just me... Other posts have pretty much covered this, but in these days of slick ipods, and anti-beige-box design, what are they thinking?
  • Their servers getting a little slow so here's a mirror of the images:

    http://www.hairykrishna.f2s.com/3x3.html [f2s.com]

  • The funniest part of TFA in my opinion, was the part about the red strobe light obstructing the PSU fan and "that it might be a good idea to add an extra 80mm fan to push air over the cpu and into the psu" to compensate for that.

    Who needs a red strobe light inside the case anyway!

    Besides, adding /another/ fan into that case will turn it into a veritable hoover - there are a couple of fans in there already that turn at 6000 rpm (the chipset fan and the graphics card fan I believe). What's more fan noise be
  • It looks extremely cool which may be enough for some people. But for me it has a fatal flaw, which is that has you can see in one of the pictures, you are going to gradually get the creeps looking at it until you are so paranoid it will roll off onto the floor that you end up pseudo-nonchalantly placing things next to it so it can't roll away. It needs a semi-undecahedronal cradle and a big "this side up" arrow on the front. When you put it down somewhere you are going to spend twenty seconds parsing its
  • OK, points for cleverness but utility?

    1) ever go to a LAN party where there was a surplus of table space? "Hi guys, check out my new bitchin' computer that's going to take up 3x the space of all of yours!"

    2) (subsequent to above): I know, let's design a computer that is easier to tip/kick over!

    This reminds me of the 100-sided dice. Neat idea, clever design, but for the 90% of the time when you're not rolling on a mathematically-perfect flat & level surface, IT NEVER STOPPED ROLLING BECAUSE IT WAS

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