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

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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 seen from r/pcmasterraceWe'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 Apevia X-SuperAlien came in a lot of colors (Image credit: Apevia)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.