Building a contemporary gaming PC inside a tower relationship again to 1999 sounds just like the worst method a gamer may take—except that tower occurs to be from the enduring Hot Wheels-themed PC launched again in 1999 and emblazoned with flame graphics on the edges. How may you not deliver this beast again from the useless in case you had been fortunate sufficient to seek out one?

Produced by Mattel and the now long-gone Patriot Computer over 20 years in the past, the Hot Wheels PC wasn’t precisely leading edge when it debuted in 1999 alongside an alternate Barbie-themed model. As with any PC it may very well be upgraded and customised for extra energy on the time of buy, however in an previous flyer featured in Shank Mods’ video, a $700 configuration of the blindingly blue PC included a 500MHz Intel Celeron processor, a 10GB laborious drive, 64MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive, a 15″ CRT monitor, Windows 98, and even a matching steering wheel controller with pedals.

It wasn’t essentially a foul advertising and marketing thought, the Hot Wheels and Barbie theming undoubtedly inspired a youthful demographic to beg their dad and mom for their very own pc, but the earliest models shipped with a faulty power supply, after which Patriot folded a yr later, leaving numerous youngsters with unusable {hardware}. That fiasco has been principally forgotten, however the Hot Wheels PC stays a logo of the glory days of the desktop PC.

So when Shank Mods (who you might remember as the genius behind the handheld portable Virtual Boy mod) managed to find a Hot Wheels PC tower in decent shape, it inspired them to track down all of its original accessories, including a trio of CRTs. But instead of restoring the PC to its original form, they decided to perform a miraculous upgrade and turn it into a modern gaming beast.

As you can probably imagine, squeezing modern hardware into a case that originally used the mini-ITX standard was no easy feat. A hole had to be cut in the back to accommodate a Nvidia RTX 3060, and while there was surprisingly room left to keep the PC’s original floppy disc drive, the CD-ROM drive was upgraded with Blu-ray compatibility instead.

All of the modern hardware was successfully squeezed into the tower like a can of sardines, but it didn’t leave a lot of room for airflow. Even with a liquid CPU cooler in place, both the processor and the graphics card were getting problematically hot, requiring the addition of an 11,000 RPM fan to keep everything inside running at safe temperatures.

Trying to play a sport throughout three CRT shows with monstrous bezels seems to be like an actual problem, however the upgraded PC can simply deal with as much as 9 screens at a time. So the larger problem may be searching down six extra Hot Wheels PC screens in good working situation to totally full this retro setup.