The look of the beast
Following the Cobra SLI system's sales success for Scan (they sold nearly 100 of those extremely high-end systems to customers), the company decided a follow-up was justified. With knowledge of NVIDIA's recently released 7800 GTX and plans afoot to work with a famous cooling hardware vendor, the idea for an even more outrageous boutique PC took form.With the same SLI basis and concrete plans to use Socket 939 nForce4 SLI for AMD processors, things started to take shape. Newer mainboards than were available at SLI's launch were there to choose from, the dual-core Athlon X2 was about to become a valid processor choice for the Chameleon if they needed it and the main reason for the Chameleon name became available.
Elan Raja, Scan's driving force behind the Chameleon project, decided that the SKU had to be about more than just the components and the performance, if it were to cement itself into the same playing field as other products from boutique PC vendors like VooDoo, Alienware and SavRow. The chassis customisation Scan did to the Silverstone TJ-05 the Cobra possessed had to be taken a big step further.
Remember the Cobra's paint? A £200 option for that product, the blue or white pearlescent paint applications were straight from the automotive world, applied to the steel chassis with the same care and attention by Scan's secret weapon - a case modder par excellence - as he would a chassis of his own.
The Chameleon's paint option is a significant step on from that, Elan selecting and giving the go ahead to researching and finally approving a whopping £1000 customisation choice for the Chameleon SKU. The name gives it all away, the paint changing colour dependant on its environment.
Remember those T-shirts that changed colour depending on your body heat? Imagine the same thing applied to see-your-face-in-it perfection on a Silverstone TJ-06, via nearly a dozen layer applications of base coats through to laquer, but with a striking colour change effect to really show it off.
Imagine a PC that starts off almost jet black when it's cold, but whose hotter areas will change colour to a high-contrast white or gold - Elan is yet to decide on the final colour effect you'll get, to keep things under wraps until the final unveiling - as you use the PC. I'll find it hard to show you in pictures, hopefully you'll be able to see what I mean and imagine the effect in real-time, when you come across it later in the article.
Combine that paint effect with laser cut Chameleon logo and the other significant chassis tweaks that you'll shortly see, and there's a whole lotta PC to be enjoyed. And that's just from a looks perspective. I'll chat about how Elan and the boys came up with the hardware specs you'll see in the prototype and final system first, though, before I show you just how good it looks.
