THE CONCEPT

UPON OPENING THE CHASSIS and dodging the cloud of dust containing every respiratory disease known to man, we bore witness to the true horror of an unloved PC. The panels, once standing proud, pristinely showcasing the hardware within, sheared off the side of the case with an eerie screech, the filth and grime breaking free as the thumbscrews gave up their long vigil protecting the beating heart of the machine inside. Fan blades littered the floor—the slow ravages of hard time in this technological gulag had stripped the polypropylene scythes from their housings. As once free-moving bearings glinted in the ephemeral twilight of the photography studio, we began to realize that this was unlike any horror we’d witnessed before.

The executive editor’s PC lay in ruins. Working hard, day in, day out, for years on end, to produce one of the world’s best-selling custom PC magazines, it was a rig that had suffered much. Yet all was not lost; this was not the end for the BitFenix Shinobi. Its pseudo Japanese-German heritage would live on, we would make sure of that.

The challenge that lay before us was undeniably daunting. Even though it was only five years of age, this machine had been through a lot. And with its vast arsenal of computational prowess within, once the pride of its generation, now falling defunct in its dotage, it stood in stark contrast to the other mechanical mammoths beavering away in the MaximumPC office. The task at hand was simple: Sanitize it, gut it, and install the latest available hardware, bringing the lumbering beast of burden back to glory, to bear its might upon the transistorfused world once more.