Meet Heartwood, a one-of-a-kind custom gaming rig that combines beautiful woodworking, powerful hardware and an ingenious cable-management design.
A custom gaming PC called Heartwood is turning heads online, and it’s easy to see why. Built by Reddit user Mithiral67 over seven years, the machine combines wood and brushed aluminium to create one of the cleanest-looking desktop setups imaginable.
But its beauty isn’t just about appearances. The build features an unusual cooling system that takes much of the hardware and cabling outside the PC, underneath the desk and all the way into the basement.
Originally spotted by Wccftech, Heartwood was shared in Reddit’s PC Build community, where enthusiasts have been praising its creativity and attention to detail.
A PC that blends wood and aluminium
The system is built around an InWin 909 case, featuring a semi-open design that leaves the motherboard exposed rather than enclosing it behind a traditional rear panel.
Wooden detailing, brushed aluminium and integrated lighting give the machine a distinctive, polished appearance. However, the real engineering achievement is how the creator managed to keep the setup so uncluttered.
Rather than squeezing all the cooling equipment and cables into the case, Mithiral67 made the desk part of the overall design.
The surprising cooling trick
The liquid-cooling pipes and power cables run through the bottom of the PC and into the desk. From there, they travel underneath the furniture, down one of its legs and through the floor into the basement.
That’s where the main water-cooling equipment is located, built around a Mora 400 system.
By moving these components out of sight, the creator has achieved an exceptionally tidy setup without sacrificing the performance of the machine.
The wood alone cost around $4,000
Creating Heartwood was clearly no small investment. When someone on Reddit asked about the material costs, Mithiral67 revealed that the wood alone cost approximately $4,000, without even factoring in the woodworking tools.
The hardware is equally impressive. The PC features an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor paired with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, making it a powerful gaming machine beneath its handcrafted exterior.
Seven years of waiting for the right graphics card
Although the project took seven years, the creator explained that much of the delay came from trying to secure a graphics card at its recommended retail price.
“For those asking, 7 years was mostly waiting for a GPU at MSRP, literally took 4 generations to get lucky at Micro Center,” Mithiral67 explained.
The project began before the pandemic, and the difficulty of finding a reasonably priced graphics card stretched the timeline considerably.
Even getting the RTX 5090 at the equivalent of its retail price required buying it as part of a complete PC. Fortunately, the additional machine allowed Mithiral67 to keep gaming while completing the painstaking work on Heartwood.
(Image credit: Mithiral67 on Reddit)
A custom build earning plenty of admiration
The finished setup has received enthusiastic reactions from Reddit users, with many impressed by the combination of design, craftsmanship and functionality.
One commenter described it as the most beautiful setup they had ever seen, praising everything from the wood selection and colour scheme to the overall design.
Others even joked about the amount of RAM inside the machine, particularly amid the current memory shortage and growing demand from AI data centres.
Ultimately, Heartwood is more than an expensive custom gaming PC. Its clever cooling arrangement, carefully selected materials and seven years of work make it a remarkable example of how far creativity can take a desktop build.