The ULTIMATE Quarantine Gaming PC

Painting

This part was pretty straightforward but obviously time-consuming. Every piece of wood was carefully sanded down and any imperfections filled.

Two coats of primer for most of it, three on some of the tougher areas. Some light sanding was needed between coats on some pieces. However, two days later, the primer was done.

Then it’s pretty much the same for the black coating. We used a satin finish MDF black paint. It went on smooth, dried in about 3 hours per coat and didn’t stink, which is a bonus in my opinion. The finish on this wasn’t quite as nice as I had hoped, but as you’ll see later, I come up with a clever fix for it.

It does look good all painted though, it’s almost time to put the whole thing together.

First Assembly

To put the arcade together, we used a set of screws and plastic blocks. I’ve seen some people use blocks of wood and a load of glue, nails, metal L-brackets. There’s no right or wrong answer, it’s really down to you. I’m avoiding glue though, as I want to be able to make changes easily in the future.

With paint complete, it was time to apply the T-molding. One of the best aspects to finish an arcades look is the edging. We used 12mm black moulding and ran it around both side pieces, as well as on the front of the control panel. Rich’s kit thankfully had this slot pre-cut for us, making the process a five-minute job.

Assembly took a few hours, as we wanted to work out how to fit our monitor. Thankfully, it was simply a case of removing the case from the AOC monitor. It’s a few screws and clips, and we can apply our own bezel later to tidy up that metal frame. Just ensure you handle the monitor with care, as it may have exposed electronics at the rear. At least, it’s pretty much ready to turn on now though.

It was at this point the kids were officially off of school. Facilities were shut, we’re all on lockdown. So, there’s only one thing for it, it’s time to play some more Mortal Kombat! I cheated and used one of the work test benches under the table to run the system at this point, we just wanted to play!

For now, it’s running a pretty basic MAME emulator, but regardless, that’s not going to cut it for this house, we want everything from Donkey Kong to Soul Calibur VI on this thing, and that’s what we shall have!

And maybe apply a comical temp fix on that marquee… It’s not perfect, but it’s better than that gaping hole that was there.