Turning an old iMac into an aquarium is easy; the monitor is already hollow and lifeless, so there's really no risk of ruining it. Mike Schropp over at TotalGeekdom has taken the flora/fauna desktop mod a step further, actually modifying his own working PC to grow wheatgrass from atop its tower.
Stuck on the idea that the heat produced by a computer could be harnessed to encourage germination and growth in plant life, Schropp, hardly a botanist, poured over various university studies and papers.
He began the project by hollowing out a computer tower to rebuild himself using bespoke pieces and a self-designed internal architecture. In an office with little sunlight, the plant-life is dependent upon heat generated by the working system; the CPU, responsible for a majority portion of the produced heat, sits strategically just beneath the soil.
Schropp is able to regulate the case temperature, and thus that of the soil, with the variable speed control fans he installed for both the inlet and the outlet.
Acrylic tubes filled with soil run down into the center of the computer, where they pick up additional heat and help with drainage. There top and side panels of the machine are also encased in acrylic, so that Schropp can keep an eye on both the plant growth and the computer's performance. [Inhabitat]