PDXLAN 2019 - An Event to Remember

November 21, 2019 Garrett Collier Comments

PDXLAN is one of the smallest events that we have attended so far, but with this being said it would have to be one of our favorites. The community that gets together to hold this kind of event is one of a kind. They seem more like a family then a random group of people wanting to get together and game. From start to finish we felt welcomed and appreciated for attending with multiple current and future customers coming to our booth to talk about watercooling. PDXLAN is amazing and if you ever get the chance to attend one I hope that you do.

As our trip began we all left home and met in Portland (with some of our travels taking longer than they were supposed to) with that taking up all of our day we decided to rest and get started setting up in the morning.

As we arrived at the event center we met Matt Conwell the CEO of PDXLAN, he showed us where our booth was to be and that our pallets arrived safely, unlike Quakecon. As we set up our booth Calen Safler of Envious Mods showed up with his build Onyx to show off at our booth.

With Set up complete we headed out with Calen to eat and prepared for the next day. Being the day of the event and with time to kill until 6pm (which is when PDXLAN officially started) we headed out to Portland. We were able to see some of their iconic spots such as Powell's bookstore and the Original Voodoo doughnuts. With 6pm drawing close we headed to the event to prepare for the night, as the doors officially opened and attendees setting up their rigs we decided to walk around and check them out. We were rather impressed with the amount of Custom loops and Watercooled PCs that were at the event. We stayed for a few hours talking about watercooling and selling some Ethernet cords to people who forgot them (as this is a common thing we hear), as the night started to die down we decided to head back to the hotel and rest for the next day. We hit the following days even harder than the previous. Together with the PPCs team and Calen from Envious Mods, we were able to talk to 100’s of attendees and even hold a rigid tube bending demonstration. During the demo Calen gave tips and tricks on how to bend both PETG and acrylic tubing. After his demo we let attendees come up and try their own hand at bending the tubing. It was amazing to see the enjoyment everyone got out of this simple demonstration.

Not only did we get to meet up with some less experienced modders, we also got to see some of the most talented PC builders in the community. PDXLAN holds a modding competition every year at this event with Nvidia and GeForce Garage, which brings out the best of the best. From completely custom scratch built systems, to extremely well thought out case mods and theme builds, we could tell we were among some very talented people at this event. Calen even went on to place 2nd in the modding competition

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The PPCs team decided to also hold a little mod competition of our own through our Facebook group, PPCs Builder’s Club. With this each member of the team, as well as Calen, picked our favorite builds from the LAN and posted pictures of each for the group to vote on. Over 100 members voted on these builds and decided on a winner, which we approached on camera with his prizes and a few questions about his experiences. You can find all of this content on our Youtube channel here. It was truly our privilege to have the ability to recognize and reward so much skill in this community. Next year we plan to make this little competition even better! On top of the skilled members that attended this event, we also saw some more well known members of the community including Rod and Bob from BS Mods, Nestor from PrimoChill, and Ron Lee Christianson. We all had a great time hanging out and shooting the breeze.

Overall we felt that PDXLAN 2019 was an event for the record books. We all got to meet up with some old friends, as well as make many more new friends. Being able to attend an event like this where such a big part of the community gets together to enjoy the passion for PC’s that we all share is an amazing feeling. On that note, we hope to see even more people at the next PDXLAN we attend!

A special thanks needs to go out to all of our sponsors, without these people we would not be able to make events like these a possibility. Thank you Daniel Cannon and Singularity, Kat Silberstein and EKWB, Bitspower, and Hardware Labs for all of your generous contributions to this event.