This Harry Potter gaming PC, based on Emma Watson’s portrayal of Hermione Granger in the movies, has cast a spell on us, and we mean that in a good way. The image of Hermione’s face is made from acrylic cutouts, and there are all sorts of other nods to the world of wizardry and witchcraft as well. Amazingly, its maker, PC modder Bry Aliado, isn’t even a fan of Harry Potter, but he’s put in a load of effort to keep his client happy.
Custom PC has been celebrating the best PC builds since 2003, and our Facebook group has over 390,000 members. We’ve seen many custom gaming PCs, from case mods to scratch builds. Here we chat to Bry about how he made this Hermione PC build.
The Hermione PC started out as a different project altogether, which Bry built for a client. ‘Actually, Hermione is more of a rehousing of an old build for my client,’ Bry tells us.
‘That build was originally themed on Mikasa in Attack on Titan, but the client wanted to switch to a Harry Potter theme.’ There was a slight hitch, however. ‘Sad to say, I’m not much of a fan of Harry Potter,’ Bry admits to us, ‘but i tried to research it a bit.’
It’s based on an Aerocool GT case, but the end result bears little resemblance to this standard desktop tower chassis. ‘The case orientation and dimensions were dictated by the client to fit on his hanging shelf,’ Bry explains. ‘I cut the bottom off the case (the PSU mount) just enough to clear a micro-ATX motherboard. I also made a hole in the 5.25-inch drive bay to relocate the power supply.’
With the frame of the case now being a (smaller) skeleton of its former self, Bry needed to create the custom panels that are the defining feature of this PC. All the panels are made from Plexiglas (acrylic), and Bry then used a laser cutter to cut details such as the Gryffindor vent in front of the graphics card, and the distinctive face of Emma Watson.
‘I grabbed some images online and made an image trace out of it,’ Bry explains. ‘I then imported it to a format that would be compatible with the laser cutting machine.’
Bry doesn’t always use a laser cutter for his PC modding work. ‘To be honest with you, I can do it better by tracing it manually.’ However, he had limited time as he had to finish the project quickly. He managed it too. ‘Since this was a previous build of mine, and I only needed to procure the acrylic and paint, it only took me roughly four days, spending 12 hours or less each day on it.’
With the panels cut out, the next job was painting them. Some of the paintwork, such as the flat red and yellow colors, were straightforward. ‘The paint I used was just off-the-shelf acrylic spray paint,’ Bry says, ‘and some glitter.’ However, the tough part was getting Hermione herself to look right.
‘The hardest part was painting the skin tone areas,’ says Bry. ‘They were done manually by combining primary colors in a cup (literally blasting the spray can on a cup), then once the color was satisfactory I applied it using a paintbrush.’
Is Bry happy with the end result? ‘Sad to say, I’m quite unsure – maybe 50/50,’ he tells us, ‘due to the fact that I’m not that knowledgeable with the chosen material chosen.’ He also admits that a friend of his who’s a Harry Potter fan also told him ‘that the colors are off.’
The main thing is that the owner of this Hermione PC loves it. ‘I’m just happy that I made a kid (client) happy with my work,’ says Bry. He’s currently working on a new rig based on Pochita from Chainsaw Man, which looks very different from your usual PC.
Hermione Harry Potter PC specs
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G APU
- Motherboard: ASRock A320M-HDV
- Memory: 16GB (2 x 8GB) ADATA XPG Gammix D10
- Graphics card: Zotac Mini Nvidia GeForce RTX 1070 Ti
- Storage: 240GB Kingston A400 SATA SSD, 1TB WD Green hard drive
- PSU: 600W Super Flower P12N SE
- Case: Aerocool GT
- Cooling: Deepcool Ice Edge Mini FS 2
Bry might not be entirely happy with this Hermione PC, but we’re impressed by his custom panels – the Aerocool GT is completely unrecognizable. As a test, I also showed it to my eight-year-old son, who now thinks I should have a Hermione PC as well. Nice work, Bry, we’ll be keeping an eye on your future projects as well.
What do you think of this tribute to Hermione from the Harry Potter movies? Join the conversation to discuss this PC build with our 390,000+ strong member Custom PC Facebook group, where you can also submit your own PC build or gaming setup for consideration. If you want to see more outstanding custom PCs and gaming setups, check out our massive guide to the best PC builds.