Back in 2005 LEGO released set number 10143, a 3 449 piece scale recreation of the Death Star II. Years later and this would serve as the inspiration for South Africa builder who goes by the alias Betteroffburnt to create a custom case for a gaming PC.

Now in 2021 the finished build uses more than 3 500 pieces and stands 62 centimetres tall including a stand, with the main Death Star II structure housing the PC components measuring in around 50 X 50 centimetres.

The heart of the system here is a mini-ITX motherboard from Asus, the Prime H310I-Plus. Socketed into it is an Intel Pentium Gold G5400 cooled by the Cooler Master MasterAir G100M. Many have said that this third party cooler looks like a UFO so it fits right at home in a Star Wars build.

Also included is 8GB of DDR4-2666 RAM at from Corsair, and a Zotac GTX 1050 Ti.

While it’s nice to look at the finished build in the images on this page, it’s been a long time in the making.

“It Started in 2012 when my friend and I were planning on making a computer case for an ITX/MITX system. Most of the cases back then were plain and you could not put them next to your TV screen. Lots of ideas came about and even a PS4 and Apple cylinder style cases went through my head. Somewhere between all this [I wanted] to build the UCS Death Star II, my friend suggested I build a my PC into the Death Star… That was the light bulb moment that started it all,” Betteroffburnt tells us.

After checking that the components could fit and that his wife wouldn’t mind the huge LEGO set looming around the house, the build could begin.

“So 2012 is when I started collecting and ordering the individual Lego bricks, by 2018 I had received all ~3 500 LEGO bricks and started finishing it off. Yes 6 years to build a case is a long time but she is awesome,” the builder continues.

For those outside of South Africa in places like the USA and the UK, getting specific pieces on the second hand market is a much easier affair. Some great BrickLink stores exist locally (BrickLink being the de facto place to buy individual bricks) but our relatively small country can’t compete with the variety and quantity available in the Americas and Europe.

Because of this local builders usually need to wait significant times between finding pieces locally or pulling the trigger on overseas purchases with the added cost and time of dealing with the import process.

Despite these issues the build was finished in 2018, but the PC has been running ever since then which means that we can have some long-term information about how a strange setup like this fairs over the years.

Betteroffburnt tells us that this PC is intended for living room use as a media PC and only occasional gaming. Streaming from Netflix or playing local files has been working just great, as have older games like Spyro, Crash Bandicoot and Dirt.

Thanks to the coolers on the CPU and GPU, along with ample airflow from the construction of the Death Star, heat has not been an issue for this setup.

This Death Star achieves part of its globe construction using a several triangular struts on hinges that fold in creating a circular shape. A version of this building method is also used by LEGO in several of its Millennium Falcon sets as you can see here, here and here. This technique is sometimes referred to as “pizza slices” because LEGO is using triangular sections to create a circular shape.

While the gaps between the “pizza slices” may not create perfect coverage it does help with airflow at the cost of added dust.

On the subject of heat and LEGO it’s worth remembering some key temperatures. LEGO’s own help page recommends cleaning pieces in hot water that is no more than 40°C, but that’s far from damaging or melting any plastic. There’s a handy table created by third party testing which reveals that deformation only takes place over 55°C.

Modern PC components regularly go over that but smart cooling and component placement means that this usually won’t be an issue. It’s not like LEGO pieces are being mounted directing to CPU or GPU dies, and this is backed up by the fact that many people have made LEGO PC cases over the years.

Proceed at your own risk if you’re inspired to make your own case out of LEGO, however.

In the case of this Death Star build Betteroffburnt also tells us that a 3D printed motherboard tray was used to adapt from the LEGO bricks to something that PC components could be screwed into, so this adds an extra buffer.

For the LEGO purists a single brick was modified to accommodate the power switch but, aside from these two small concessions, everything else is regular LEGO.

See below for more shots of the build. The high amount of detail capturing the half-built nature of the Death Star II is carried over from the original 2005 retail set.

[All images on this page are used with permission from Betteroffburnt]