Building A Hot-Rodded Corvette Computer

Corvette owners are hot rodders at heart. Let’s face it, the world is full of mediocre cars that would suffice for personal transportation. But, the reason we chose Corvette is because we have a deep-seated desire for speed. In many ways, we’re not too different from the folks who build their own computers, and sometimes, we’re both.

Matt started with the bare cases and painted them white to match his Corvette. Then the task of assembling all of the hardware could commence.

One such individual who craves speed on both the street AND the information superhighway, is Matt Herman. Sure, he’s got a supercharged, 700-horsepower C7 Corvette to get him around town, but when he wants to surf the world-wide-web, or manipulate some massive files on his desktop, he still wants to burn a little rubber from time to time. His talents make this possible, and stand as a testament to his computer-building abilities. He has recently started a thread highlighting his efforts on a computer enthusiast forum, which explains further about his creation and the reason for building it.

Matt used carbon fiber tubing to route the coolant throughout the system. There are 118 white fittings throughout the entire build! Each section of tubing was measured, cut and then smoothed in preparation for sealing.

While some Americans are just getting over their fear of using a computer, there are others who have jumped head-first into the deep end of the pool and are doing amazing things with those digital components that can unlock the world. Matt Herman is one such individual. We recently shared his Corvette-themed video game console that he custom-built to help him get through those times when he wasn’t driving his C7. He recently shared that to counter the long Ohio winter, he took on the task of building his own personal computer and like his recent arcade game, he decided to give it a Corvette motif.

The cooling system consists of reservoirs and fans to keep the coolant temp within range. There are also lights to highlight each of the components.

The Hardware

Matt is a gamer, but he also needed a computer that was equally capable of editing video and other forms of content creation. That meant there were a few decisions to be made – go blazingly fast or increase the computer’s capabilities? His choice gives him equal capabilities in each category.

To keep processing speeds in the stratosphere, Matt added three separate solid-state NVME drives –two 500 Gigabyte and one Terabyte drive, which can read at over 3 gigabytes/sec! He further explains the build, “The reason I choose the AMD Thread-ripper 32-core CPU, along with the two Nvidia 2080ti video cards is so I would have a PC that would allow me to play all the latest games with the highest level of performance at a 4K monitor resolution. It also will be amazingly fast when doing video and photo editing. It may not be the fastest gaming PC, but it sure is close, and it also will do a great job ripping through content-creation software tasks.”

With all of the components and cooling system installed, Matt decided to give his computer a little class.

Now, for those who enjoy computers, but may not know what those numbers and names truly mean, Matt puts it in layman’s terms, “It is very fast – probably in the top 1% of all high-end desktop PCs in the world.” Yes, that’s right, your wiz-bang, store-bought, marketing-hyped home PC is most likely found somewhere in the lower 99-percent behind Matt’s home-built creation, so far as computing speed is concerned. But don’t take it too hard, I mean, what would you expect from a computer that has its own radiators and liquid cooling system?

Matt can't always enjoy his 700 horsepower C7, so when he's at the keyboard, it's the next-best thing.

That’s right, Matt’s computer needs a radiator. You see, much like supercharging, computers can be “overclocked” to make them work faster. He explains, “The high-end water cooling allows the components to be overclocked. Which basically means I can push the components far beyond their original specifications. When you do this, the result of adding more voltage, is more heat, so the extreme cooling components allow me to squeeze out every bit of performance possible. It is very similar to adding a supercharger to a Corvette!” And Matt should know, as he’s also the owner of a highly modified, supercharged, 700 horsepower Corvette.

Now, building all that PC performance does come at a cost. We asked Matt about that and he admitted that you could purchase a really nice C4 Corvette for the amount of cash it took to build this PC. And, it took over three months to plan, design and build this computer into what you see here.

Matt made the custom Corvette headboard by cutting out 26-gauge steel and painting it white, like his Corvette. The C7 logo and carbon fiber Corvette lettering make the connection to hardware in Matt's garage quite nicely.

Matt knows the considerations of running on the ragged edge of performance, whether in cars or computers. He explains, “As with a Corvette, when you push it to the bleeding edge in terms of performance, you have a much higher chance of having something going boom! If any main component does have problems or needs to be replaced, it is quite an ordeal to drain the system and remove the water cooling tubes to gain access to the bad parts. Other than that it should run trouble-free for a long time and I have a one-of-a-kind, custom PC that will be powerful enough to play pretty much any game that comes along for probably the next three years!”

So, how does Mr. Herman’s personal computer do while out on the world-wide-web? We asked him to put the performance into layman’s terms so that even we could understand it. In his words, “With 32 cores and 64 threads of processing power, it rips through calculations like my Vette goes from 0-100 with 700HP!” Spoken like a true hot-rodder, in even a way that we can relate to!