About me

Chris · Creator of I83X

Born in the good old 80s with a pretty classic path: secondary school, apprenticeship – nothing spectacular, but solid. I grew up somewhere between treehouses and floppy disks, cable chaos and the smell of warm electronics. Which isn’t surprising when your parents run an IT business.

My gaming life started early: Commodore 64, Amiga 500, joystick in hand, swapping disks and staring at loading bars. Later came my first PC – an Intel 486 with a CRT monitor, Soundblaster and a 56k modem. Loud, slow and still the center of the universe. Games, mods, swap networks and burned CDs changing hands on the schoolyard were just normal back then.

Turning 18 meant my first car and jumping straight into the wild tuning scene of the early 2000s: lower, wider, louder – usually more passion than budget. But deep down I was always a nerd who basically grew up with bits and bytes. Creativity didn’t stop at the curb though – it just moved to the desk: PC modding, coding and DIY water cooling setups chasing the last MHz and FPS. Built from industrial radiators, random hardware-store parts and pond pumps, filled with distilled water and coolant.

In the mid-2000s, after a few years in the family business, I started my own thing focused on custom PC builds and water cooling – long before it went mainstream. Selling custom builds and mods online was more experiment than business model. B2B work mostly paid the bills. But over time the downside became obvious: lots of customers with big ideas and small payment discipline. Eventually it became clear that passion alone doesn’t run everyday life, so I went back to a more stable setup.

These days I’ve been keeping IT infrastructures running for over 15 years. The creative side never disappeared though: web design, marketing and social media projects. In 2017 my first 3D printer showed up – the perfect mix of tech and creativity. Pretty quickly I learned one thing:
"With a 3D printer you start discovering problems you never even knew existed."

At some point my projects needed a name. Gaming tags - no! Then I83X (pronounced: Ibex) came to life. Simple, personal and timeless.

That’s also where ibex.gg comes in. People often ask what you can actually do with 3D printing – and why I somehow ended up with several printers. So instead of explaining it again and again, I started this small personal blog where projects can be followed from the first idea to the finished part in action. And honestly, it’s also my little web playground.