Introduction

For those of you who aren't familiar with C3, it's the "Consummate Computer Competition." Try saying that three times fast. Most people just refer to it as the case mod competition for obvious reasons. The first fully sponsored and official competition was held in the summer of 2001 and sponsored by Bawls offering cash prizes for the first three places in two categories. One being looks, and the other performance/overclocking. Since then, it seems that case modders have really stepped up for competitions presenting some of the cleanest, coolest, and most advanced mods on the planet. The setting for this competition is at the 2002 Summer CPL Event deep in Dallas, Texas at the historic Hyatt Regency Hotel. Everything seems to be in walking distance from the hotel. Including the Dallas County Jail, a real train station (first for me anyways =\), and Dick's! I love Dick's!

Dallas County Jail

Train Station!

Dick's!

The event itself is pretty much every gamers dream. Unfortunately the network was plagued by a virus and denial of service attacks causing loss of internet and file sharing access for a large portion of the event. The main attraction however was the $100,000 Counter Strike tournament won by SK from Sweden. But that's not why you're here... so on to the modding!

The Experience

I came to find out that like most other modders there, I was finishing my mod in the early hours of the day the event started. They procrastinated; I on the other hand plan to do things at the last minute. Some modders were even up in their hotel rooms finishing on the second day of the event. I arrived there early afternoon on Saturday, tired and fatigued from working on my case, I quickly got setup and finally sat down and rested for a while after standing in line for about 2 hours.

Thanks to our friends FrozenCPU.com I had lots of VH swag to give out... mousepads, t-shirts, fan grills, and a truckload of VH badges. So many, that I decided to save some for Quakecon. If you want a couple, come by and see me there! I was thinking of just dumping a couple hundred on a table and yelling "FREE STUFF!!!" but I was afraid of possible injuries... the free stuff is the bread, and the people are the Pigeons, I hope you get the picture.

VH SWAG!

If you've never been to one of these events, or any other very large LAN, just picture 600 gamers over the period of 5 days with the smallest amount of sleep possible. Good times! If you're in the Dallas area, you need to be there. Hell, people from around the world come to Dallas just for the event.

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