Storage unit auction winner finds retro Pentium 4 PC with a see-through, UV-reactive PSU — Y2K time capsule discovered among 100 laptops and hundreds of RAM sticks
Could make for a cool sleeper build.
PC cases today largely focus on subdued, minimal designs in order to appeal to as many people as possible. Compare that to the towers you could find back in the old days, and you'd think no one in these corporate boardrooms has any personality. Such was the reminder that Reddit user u/Witty-Composer-6445 got when they found an old PC build with a bold aesthetic and a PSU to match its uniqueness.
"I found it in a storage unit auction that I won which I initially thought only had like 35 laptops and some junk," the lucky scavenger told Tom's Hardware. "Unfortunately/fortunately for me, it actually had somewhere around 100 laptops, 20 desktop PCs, hundreds of RAM sticks, hard drives, various pc components, and THOUSANDS of random CDs, along with the “Alienware” pc which is actually not Alienware but Aspire instead."
Attempting to clean a vintage Alienware pc I found in a storage unit and it has the coolest psu I’ve ever seenfrom r/pcmasterrace
We're looking at an Apevia X-Superalien case from the Y2K era that screams alien due to its harsh curves and angles. The case is made entirely out of aluminum, features 5 external 5.25" drive bays, and has a packed front I/O. You get 2x USB 2.0 ports, 2x 3.5mm audio jacks, and a Firewire port, all sitting below a small LCD, housed in what seems like an upside-down mushroom.
The side panel of the case is transparent, allowing you to peer through all of your era-appropriate components inside, including the aforementioned transparent power supply. The PSU is an Apevia ATX-AS500W and has a see-through top made out of acrylic, while the bottom is still metal. All the little bits inside that make up the PSU are color-coated, and there are blue LEDs inside, too. The loud, neon green accents are UV-reactive, so they glow in the dark, including the cables.
As a power supply, however, its status is questionable. We found mixed reviews, and because this PSU was sold under many different brands, it's difficult to keep track of exactly which one is decent and which isn't. It's called "Iceberg Power" in some places (this name yields the most search results), while the actual unit is a rebranded YoungYear YP-AB, built by Sun Pro.
A comment in the same thread says the 650W unit is good for about 250W of maximum output. That kind of efficiency puts it out of contention for a potential retro revival. You shouldn't use such an old PSU for that anyway, but you can still use it as a decorative piece, while the case itself looks to be perfectly fine. Many people even posted their own sleeper builds in the comments with similar chassis.
It's important to mention that the Reddit user found this case fully built with a Pentium 4 inside an abandoned storage unit, and they stumbled upon the PSU while cleaning Superalien. Even though their discovery was natural, today we see an increasing interest in retro products with people chasing nostalgia deliberately. Sleeper builds, made in slightly more mundane cases, even have a market now, while transparent or see-through tech is slowly making a comeback.
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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
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bit_user Reply
I'm not directly engaging with this claim, but I'd like to point out that early-2000's was peak "LAN party" era. I think that influenced many case designs and pushed the aesthetic more towards the attention-grabbing end of the spectrum.The article said:PC cases today largely focus on subdued, minimal designs in order to appeal to as many people as possible. Compare that to the towers you could find back in the old days, and you'd think no one in these corporate boardrooms has any personality.
Here's a better version of the picture:
I think think such a PSU housing makes aesthetic sense in cases with bottom-mounted PSUs, but I think such case configurations were only starting to come onto the scene around that time.
The case reminds me of my office PC from back then, which was a generic beige/milky white color and lacked the LCD + knobs. Since I frequently accessed the optical drive, I simply removed the door covering the drive bays. That's the main asethetic flaw I see with such cases. If the case has a door, it should try to look good both with the door open/off, not just with it closed. -
ejolson . . . today we see an increasing interest in retro products with people chasing nostalgia deliberately.Reply
That's because new stuff is no longer fun. It costs too much. -
bit_user Reply
Yeah, but also just looking at nostalgia trends in pop culture, fashion, etc. there's something real at work there. It can be a coping mechanism for dealing with negative emotions, which might include stress over the pace of change in technology and the job market.ejolson said:. . . today we see an increasing interest in retro products with people chasing nostalgia deliberately.
That's because new stuff is no longer fun. It costs too much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia#Improving_mood
That's not to say that nostalgia is only about coping, but I think it's been demonstrated that waves of nostalgia tend to coincide with economic downturns and other negative events. -
vinay2070 Reply
Agree. Stress, fast change in technology, AI affecting job market (biggest hit) - bringing in uncertainity, Housing prices, increased inflation and population(People are everywhere and competition is cut throat). Not to forget the bad influence of social media on how people should be.bit_user said:which might include stress over the pace of change in technology and the job market.
Many people are losing it. This is why most love that 80s and 90s time line. There was a good balance of everything. -
MisterZ Such a good CPU that Pentium 4. I bought a P4 2.4B back in 2002 and it was one of the quietest PCs I've ever owned.Reply -
bit_user Reply
Well, Northwood was pretty good. They even made versions with hyperthreading and a 800 MHz front-side bus.MisterZ said:Such a good CPU that Pentium 4. I bought a P4 2.4B back in 2002 and it was one of the quietest PCs I've ever owned.
I wish I'd gotten one of those, instead of Prescott, but at least I knew Prescott was fairly controversial and it worked well enough for most of my needs. Where my P4 really reached its limits was playing back h.264 at 1080p. 720p was fine, but whether it could keep up at 1080p varied on a case-by-case basis. GPU-accelerated decoding wasn't a great alternative, as it was pretty rough, back in those days.