Gamers are amazed by the design of a limited-edition case from 2011, which will finally get an upgrade

PC cases rarely survive more than a couple of upgrades. Usually people swap them out along with the motherboard, or just when they get tired of the old design.

But sometimes hardware comes along that gets built once and never lets go for decades.

This is about the Thermaltake Level 10, the concept case designers at BMW Group DesignworksUSA created for Thermaltake back in the late 2000s.

The 2011 prototype shipped in a run of just 300 units, and one owner's example finally got its final upgrade after 15 years of service.

Living inside was a GTX 1070 Ti that still runs fine even with a slight overclock, and it's now getting passed down to the owner's daughter.

The Level 10 looks like something out of a Star Wars set, with separate modular drive bays that have their own fans and lighting, all locked with a key. That key ended up being a source of real pain – it got lost during a move, and a locksmith had to drill out the lock.

The holes left behind for the locking mechanism turned out to be perfect for running an external water loop, so the owner isn't in any rush to seal them up. The case picked up a Red Dot design award, which was rare for hardware from that era, since almost nobody was making cases that looked like furniture back then.

Calling the Level 10 practical would be a stretch. Fully loaded it weighs around 50kg, cuts into your legs when you carry it, and according to the owner, "probably attracts lightning to my house." Thermal performance is questionable too, but none of that stops people from wanting one badly. One commenter put it this way:

"It feels like an old muscle car, wildly impractical but oh man"

As people pointed out in the comments, the case is basically the one part of a PC you actually see all the time, so treating it like an art piece worth investing in makes plenty of sense.

One person in the discussion couldn't help but feel nostalgic for an era when cases had personality instead of turning into glass aquariums full of RGB lighting.