I Like My Gaming PCs Al Dente
James Bruton's latest PC build isn't just for gaming — it also makes you pasta that is always piping hot right when you hit a break point.
If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to eat a bowl of pasta while I was gaming, I’d finally have five cents, after seeing James Bruton’s latest project. He has built a gaming PC that cooks your pasta while you play games, because having two devices would be one too many. It’s just basic math that no one can argue with. Anyway, how could mixing boiling water with a running PC possibly go wrong?
For some strange reason, you can’t exactly pick up a pasta-cooking PC from Amazon, so Bruton had to build the beast from scratch. He started with aluminum extrusions to serve as a case, with carefully spaced standoffs for attaching the system’s motherboard. The rest of the hardware for the computer, from the ASUS PRIME motherboard to the GeForce RTX 5060 GPU and RGB LED cooling fans were all standard off-the-shelf components.
So far, so good. But the automated pasta cooker threw Bruton some curveballs. A system of linear actuators and 3D-printed gears was designed and installed in the case to move the pasta dish, lift its lid, and stir the contents. To kick things off, a coffee maker was repurposed to dispense exactly 200ml of hot water into a pasta bowl when it is in the proper position. The bowl is then slid underneath a spinning mechanism with a spoon attached that stirs the pasta. After stirring, the spoon is ejected and left in the bowl because no one wants to eat pasta with their hands.
The entire mechanism is driven by a user interface on a small, 2.8-inch touchscreen display. But who has time for that when they are gaming? So to automate the process, Bruton used software called Game State Integration. This identifies what is happening in a game and can be used to determine when a player may be nearing a break, like a loading screen or the end of the game. Using this information, cooking times are synchronized with the game so that the pasta will be ready during a break.
If you have lots of free time and absolutely hate microwaves, then this pasta-making PC might be right up your alley. If not, the video is still worth a watch.