10 years ago Silverstone announced a case that was unlike anything we've ever seen before
and is unlike anything we've seen since.
Designed in collaboration with Charles Harwood, the creator of Murderbox,
the X-forma MBX Mark II was meant to be the ultimate marriage of timeless aesthetics
and uncompromising performance. The perfect case. There was only one small problem.
At a price of $1,250 plus accessories, it was out of reach for most mere mortals.
So even though Silverstone only ever made 250 of these, so many of them remain unsold
that Silverstone offered me a deal I couldn't refuse. They would send me all the cases and in
exchange they wouldn't have to be the ones to store them anymore. I mean there can't be that
many of them can there? Yes there can be. Oh lordy. Let's have a look at what they sent us,
shall we? And let's have a look at this message from our sponsor. It's probably worth noting that
while I respect Charles's work as an artist and do think the case is incredibly cool,
I didn't actually want three pallets of them. You shouldn't have asked for it then.
Well it was less that I asked for them and more that if I didn't take them,
they were headed to the scrapper, which I felt was not cool. And I know that Tony from Silverstone,
who was the one who reached out to try to save these, feels much the same way.
See the MBX Mark II is not an entirely ground up design. It's actually based on an older
Silverstone case, the TJ07, which was gifted to me by my then-girlfriend-now-wife and I used
for my daily driver for many years. It also happened to be a passion project of Tony's
when he was a young project designer. Oh man, look at how much dust is on this thing.
This has been in the warehouse for a very long time. This one was apparently for Joe.
So was this one. So was this one. Dude, do you think that's the worst of it?
What color do you think this X is supposed to be? Whoa, probably closer to that red.
And I'm pretty sure some of these are scuffed on the inside too. Replace all screws
damaged from flood. How many of these do we have? I mean they only made 250.
How much of the total production do we have here? We might actually have like a significant
percentage. Like, let's see. There's nine per pallet. No, no, let's count. We'll count. We'll
make a pile. Let's make a pile. Okay, so here's the stitch. We've got 27 total boxes for cases,
but two of them are labeled side panel only. And then we have five boxes of accessories.
These could include any number of things, ranging from the case basically doesn't really function
without it, all the way to, wow, that is the most superfluous bullshit that I've ever seen.
Most of the case boxes, 23 of them specifically, have similar markings. Something about being for
Joe and needing a VV panel with a red tag. Those we piled up here. The ones we're more interested
in are these, flood damage, sample case, side panel only, and okay, this one's also for Joe,
but it has a smiley face. Two of them actually. What's the deal with that?
First up then, this is for you Joe. My case finally arrived. I've been waiting a decade.
It's been 83 years. One tricky thing about the TJ07 and its derivatives is because it uses a
unibody design for the top, front, and bottom. It's actually bent rather than being welded or
riveted or stamped or anything cheap like that. It's really heavy. Would that have also contributed
to the high cost then? Absolutely. Even without the modifications that Charles made,
all of which made it far more expensive, the TJ07 was a $300 to $400 case back in the mid-2000s.
Oh, it stinks. Does it? Oh, wow. Yeah, that's, it smells like vinegar. Check this out. Have you
ever seen one of these? Not in person. We had one kicking around the office for a long time.
Charles actually did a build in it for us personally, but it got quite outdated for a showcase PC.
So to give it a chance at a new life, we gave it away at the Christmas party and Colton won it.
This is it. Holy cow. That's cool. It's still beautiful. Wow. The goal was timeless design
and Charles and Silverstone nailed it. Wow. The original case was full of five and a quarter
inch bays in the front. Charles was extremely forward thinking and saw that five and a quarter
inch was going the way of the dodo, replacing all those bays with this incredible looking
machined light slit. That's not to say he didn't want you to have the option for an optical drive.
This slit right here actually accommodates a slim optical drive loaded in through the top.
All right. That's kind of cool. Even if it is data tech, it's kind of cool.
Another ahead of his time touch is that because Charles's philosophy was that cable management
meant making your cables beautiful rather than hiding them, he actually had Windows on multiple
sides of the machine, one on the front and one on the back of the motherboard tray. I didn't even
see that one at first. This was meant to show off individually sleeved cables, something that Charles
was one of the key drivers of back when that first hit the scene. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.
Got a lot of history behind this little guy. It's a very cool case. I mean, even just this like
one continuous like cut with a little bit of slits in it, it just looks so stylish. Yeah,
too bad it was a nightmare to manufacture. But these were Charles touches. The original case
had a couple of small exhaust fans here and actually accommodated dual power supplies,
which is a cool feature, but not really a necessary feature. Yeah. Charles's impossible
standards are both the reason that the case is so incredible and also the reason that it was
probably always destined to fail. That's so sad. You can't build a super high end boutique product
in a commodity industry. Sure. Or rather you can, but it's really hard to find commercial success
with it. Why do you think every case is stamped sheet steel? Because it's cheap and then people
will buy it because it's cheaper. Even just this piece is like got weight to it. Is this what goes
at the front there? Oh, it totally does. That was a very satisfying click. Okay. So that's what
for Joe looks like. Why don't we put Joe aside and have a look at a couple of the other interesting
ones? Yeah. What are you feeling next? The sample one, because if that was the production unit,
I want to know what a sample looks like. Sure. This one has both side panels. So that's something.
Oh, interesting. Oh, and it's got stuff in it. Yeah.
There we go. Oh!
Comes off like that. There we go. Okay. Dude, these are in great shape so far. Yeah, they look
fantastic. My understanding is that some of them are here because they didn't meet Charles's standards
and he determined they couldn't be sold. So maybe that's what for Joe meant. Like Joe had to like
inspect them or look at them or something. We need to find out who Joe is. The great Joe mystery.
This is a diffusion layer with a gradient on one side. The idea was that I think it goes
behind these guys right here to give the lighting kind of like a diffuse look. Oh, that's kind of
cool. Kinda cool. That's really cool. One thing I'm noticing as well is you mentioned the stamp
sheet metal before. It looks like this whole case can just like come apart because of all the screws
and everything was like each its own sheet. Everywhere screws, no rivets. Oh, that's so cool.
The model number is SST-CPF04. Give me three guesses what it is. It is
a bracket to hold your GPU. It's a repurposed box full of a whole bunch of other random stuff.
We have number 169. We have a label for 169. Let's go. I'm confused.
Mm-hmm. Neat. Like what is it? Not sure. Okay. Oh, I'm even more. Oh wait, no, this is like a fan.
So you can power your GPU off your fan headers. No, I think it's, it's gotta be for one of the
accessories. Okay, okay. I'm so confused. And the last baggie here, which has two standoffs
and this. Oh, yes, this. Do you know what it's for? No. Okay. But I know what this is for.
This is for slimline optical drives. Oh, okay. So you could use the front one here. Yes. Cool.
Oh, we missed something. Oh, did we? This has a quad radiator mount in the bottom
and a giant fan filter. Oh, so you could put a quad radiator down here. I actually modded
my TJ07 to fit a quad radiator in the bottom. But seeing all those accessories honestly raises
more questions than we had before. Dude, I don't even know if we have enough of the accessories to
build systems in them yet. Yeah, that's actually very true. What were all those cables and why did
we need them? If we need them for all of, okay, let's just, okay, take a step back. Yeah. You
know what I'm feeling next Elijah? Side panel only. That looks heavier than the other boxes.
No, you, I'm just hamming it up. Go for it. Okay.
My bag. Oh, Lord. Whoa, I see some color. Okay. Well, that's not a side panel.
Holy crap. We have a lot of radiator mounts. What a weird way for it to ship.
With just the one side panel and then the other side panel, which you definitely totally need
be like this. Maybe that's just how Silverstone shipped it to us.
But this wouldn't exist if that hadn't been part of the idea behind it. But like this is so
jankily made. There's no way it's shipped to you like this. Well, no, it actually does kind of make
sense because the way that you bought this case was through a configurator. There was no just the
case. I see. Okay. Yeah. You had to go through a whole almost PC builder level process to determine
what all the options you had were. So there might be other side panels that I forget about
that were not this. So that's why they're not in there. I see. That makes more sense then.
And for a low volume thing, you'd be surprised how janky stuff can be. Is that all that's left in
there? The only one I noticed is this one's white, but I think the rest of them are just
the exact same. Nope. What's that say? Loose grill. Okay. Maybe it means it didn't pass QC.
Oh my God. This failed over this gap. That's insane. Dude, Tesla? Tesla'd be like send it.
Logo plates. Ten pieces. Let's go. This is the flood damaged one. That's right. It was there
when the master chief was defeated. It looks totally fine.
Huh. Little watermark there. Oh, and it's off. What else is, is anything wrong with this?
Okay. You know what? There is some corrosion. This one just flooded. I think this thing got hit
with like salt water. Check out some of this corrosion. It's good enough for our customers.
Tell you that much. What customers? I don't know. Maybe we'll build systems. Oh, that'd be pretty cool.
Maybe we can like auction them or something and make some premium systems for some people.
See what happens. I don't know. I don't know. I'm thinking. I'm cooking.
Let's each pick an accessory box and we'll let the audience vote for who picked the coolest one.
I want the small one. Well, someone was bound to want the small one. I want the heavy one.
Oh yeah. What are these? Is this just a bag? Oh no. No, it's literally just a box of these.
There's hundreds of them. I, on the other hand, have what appears to be the entire shipment supply
of those random brackets that we found earlier. I have one. You got one. I got some cable management
clips. Okay. All right. That's something. Oh, front grills. Oh god. This is an accessory box.
Oh sure. This is what would go with each case then? Good. Good. Now things get even more
interesting because I have sub boxes. Look at all of these O-rings. What would they be for? Like
reservoirs. Yeah, buddy. They did a custom res for this case. Okay. What else we got? Is this more?
These are bottoms. Oh. Yeah. You'd be able to really beat me to it. Damn it. Whoa.
SATA backplane. Would this go in like the five and a quarter inch bay area? Yes.
Are these not in the cases? Do the hard drive bays of any of those even work? Hey,
I answered your question. This is what those random fan headers and four pins are for. Cool.
So they're doing, what the crap is all this? Look at all these three pin fan headers.
So this is like a janky old school fan hub. And then even more SATA ports? Is that that? Yeah.
No, these are the input. And then there's your optical and your three hard drives.
That's, wow. I kind of speechless because I didn't expect it to look like that. I see one in here.
Wait, no, this is a different one. It's like a mini version. Oh, that's PCB one. You compensating?
This is one man something and one man something else, but
am I the guy who got the trash or the treasure? Well, it's cool. The value of these, it might be
treasure. Is it though? The last one apparently sold in April of this year for 2200 US dollars on eBay.
What? So like, if we actually have as complete of a system as that one was,
we have like 40 grand of cases.
Extra hard drive cage. Something. Oh, that's the fan grill for the top. There was an alternate one.
Oh, I see. So these weren't installed in all of them. There was a way cooler one.
I don't know if we're going to have any here though. Here's a new cable. Just little tiny
three pin fan extension, mail to mail. Sure. What have you got? This. Ah, yes. Of that. Okay,
here comes another accessories box. Ah, yes. More SATA cables. Ah, ah, ah.
You ain't seen nothing yet. These are all the slim line ones for optical chips. Oh my
dude, you can tell these weren't a hot seller. No, they had to make so many cause they sold so many.
What do you got? What do you got? Oh, this is what was like a checklist of what was included
in the accessory box. Oh, excellent. We are not going to have a lot of this stuff. Like this
acrylic light block that's supposed to be in the included accessories. We got one of those.
The Duratrans media strip, we got two. At least it'll help us maybe complete some of the other
boxes or shift it around. Wow, it came with a lot of cables. Well, yeah. Oh, these are like LEDs.
Yeah. No, no, they're not like LEDs. Those are LEDs. Oh, and then here's your all of your like shrink
wrap, I think. Yeah. 382. Someone counted these. Not good use of time. Should we get someone to
count that to verify? No. Okay. Grommets. Cheese grommet. Oh, okay. Cable management magigs.
Even more. Whoa. Oh, we got more. Oh, buddy. We got different colors. We got different colors.
Okay. Okay, that's cool. Okay, we're back in business. We can sell these now. I don't know what
to do with them, to be honest with you. Oh, there's the acrylic pieces. Here's all our acrylic pieces.
We're back in business. The only question that remains then is what do we do with them?
Pitch one. We start a boutique system builder that sells only to people named Joe.
We might be able to sell one. I mean, there's a Joe who works here. He needs a PC.
Is there? It's a little plain support, Joe. Oh, I was going to ask Joe who.
What about option two? Maybe we make some of these the whale PCs for our whale land event.
Assuming whale land is able to go forward, still pending some details.
That's not bad. We could save at least a couple specimens for our next charity stream.
Just an idea? Yeah. They might take forever to build in, though. That's kind of my concern.
Oh, we can do it. Our last stream was like eight hours. We've got nothing but all day.
Or maybe we just need help from you guys. Yeah, let us know if you have any brilliant ideas.
And let us know if you ever heard of our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video,
you might also like the vibe of the time that we got these cooling towers and unboxed them.
Found them in an alley. True story.