Modder Crams Powerful 1000W Gaming PC Into a Tiny Desk Drawer

A high-end gaming PC often requires a lot of room, with full-size tower cases, large fans blowing air all over the place, and wires coming out of everywhere. Zac Builds, on the other hand, takes the other approach: he stuffs around 1000 watts of performance into a typical desk drawer, keeping your workstation neat and hiding all hardware until you need it.

This is his third attempt at the notion; each has been a refinement of the prior one, but the first two times around he encountered some serious barriers. Airflow concerns, heavy components drooping, and tangles galore have forced him to go outside the box to solve these challenges while keeping future updates under wraps.

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The essential components of this system are a powerful Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU and a Gigabyte X870E motherboard. An RTX 5090 graphics card takes care of all the hard lifting, even demanding games. Its size and power requirements (almost 600 watts) were difficult to manage, so he installed a special water block to deal with the heat. It has a whopping 128GB of DDR5 memory, a 4TB NVMe disk for storage, and a 10GB network card for further performance. The power comes from an MSI 1250W supply, which gives him some wiggle room while the system is cranking.

To keep everything from overheating, a homemade water loop is used, which includes a big radiator salvaged from a previous build and several high-performance fans. The pump and reservoir are freestanding, making them easily accessible. The rigid tubing is routed through several carefully bent sections and connected with some quick-release connectors for easy future maintenance. He also has a unique thermal interface material on the CPU to keep temperatures low; no more paste issues.

For increased airflow, he enlarged the front of the drawer (almost 50% additional intake, for you numbers geeks) and chopped out several areas to improve port reach. The drawer itself has undergone a few changes, including narrow slides instead of the originals to accommodate the GPU width, a custom printed tray to support the motherboard and other components, and some printed mounts to prevent the GPU from placing too much strain on the slot. The power supply has a new home up top to clean up the cabling and provide greater access to the back.

The wiring is all channeled up into nice tiny modular bits, and there’s a front shroud to direct air over crucial regions like the RAM and VRMs. To be honest, putting it all together was difficult; the tubing bends took a long time to perfect, and he had to do a few runs to get the loop right.

Assembly required a high level of precision, as fitting the tubing into the tight spaces was a real challenge. He even had to flush the loop with chemicals to remove the old residue before refilling it with new coolant. The fans received printed dust filters to keep them clean, and he threw in some walnut panels with laser-cut and engraved features to add some beauty to the inside of the drawer.

A Thunderbolt 5 dock allows you to bring all of the ports up to the desktop surface, and a printed webcam stand provides a comfortable login seat, eliminating the need for cords or awkward posture. He’s even got a UGREEN NAS to handle backups and perform various services in the background, freeing up resources on the main machine. Zac believes this is the most difficult construction he’s ever completed, combining tremendous power with dependability and ease of maintenance. What was the result? A beast of a gaming PC that from the outside appears to be no more than a standard desk drawer.