iBUYPOWER Snowblind LCD Side Panel Finally a Complete Product

We just published our final video walkthrough of iBUYPOWER’s ongoing “Project Snowblind” enclosure, which uses an NZXT Noctis 450 and custom LCD side panel assemblage. The setup has been in our coverage for several months now, starting with PAX Prime in September, followed by an office visit in October (with several upgrades), and now concluding with CES 2017.

In its simplest form, the Snowblind enclosure offers an LCD side panel (rather than traditional case side panel) which is capable of graphics playback or Rainmeter overlay. Really, it can do anything that an extra monitor could do, it’s just limited by visibility and contrast. The Snowblind uses all white/black internals to ensure the side panel’s output remains as legible as possible, and further uses ultra-bright LEDs along the inside wall of the side panel to provide the effective “backlight” for the display. iBUYPOWER is using an expansion slot in the case to host a small card that bridges comms between a DVI link (from the GPU), but the card does not use any motherboard slots. A simple DVI pass-through runs from the video card to the expansion card, which then runs the wiring to the LCD side panel.

So far, everything’s the same as our last visit with iBUYPOWER and the Snowblind. The major difference for CES is that it’s now entering production, and to do so, iBUYPOWER has strengthened its side panel, thickened the glass to 5mm tempered material, and reinforced the inside with cable routing to hide things. The system on display also had a white-painted set of AIO tubes and radiator, just as a nice touch for the display.

The panel should actually make it to production, from what we’re told. It’s looking like a $200-$250 buy for the enclosure (N450) and the LCD side panel, and will be available exclusively with iBUYPOWER system builds. We’re told that the systems should be configurable sometime in February of 2017.

Check the video above for more of a hands-on.

Editorial: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke
Video: Keegan “HornetSting” Gallick