April Fools’ joke results in Japanese firm making a beige ’80s throwback PC case

Putting out a joke product on April Fools’ Day can sometimes be a clever way to quietly gauge the reaction to a wild idea without having to really commit to it.

Nerdish purveyor ThinkGeek did this a few times with the 8-bit tie and the Tauntaun sleeping bag. Pokemon Go crystallized in some ways from a Google Maps joke. And just recently, PC case-maker SilverStone has decided that so many people were into its beige-tastic FLP01 case idea, tossed onto X (formerly Twitter) late on March 31 Tokyo time, that it will now release it in early 2025 in Japan for the USD equivalent of $130.

As shown off at SilverStone’s Expo 2024 show in Akihbara last weekend (and spotted on Tom’s Hardware), the FLP-01 is a combination of simulacrum and serious, with heavy NEC PC-9800 homage. It has fake 5.25-inch floppy blanks, but they cover real optical disc drive and button/port modules. At SilverStone’s Japan Expo, the firm packed a GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, Intel Core Ultra 7 256K CPU, and full-size ATX motherboard and PSU. There are, of course, power and disk activity LEDs on the front. As displayed, SilverStone’s demo unit had three intake fans and plenty of room for whatever else you could pack in here.

The whole thing looks like a modern case flipped on its side, so your modern system-building and wire-routing skills won’t go to waste. It’s 17.32×14.25 inches and 6.7 inches tall in its (literal) desktop configuration, and the case is reinforced enough that you can use it as a monitor stand.

There is no word yet on whether this case will be available outside of Japan. Maybe with enough enthusiast input, the joke can go both real and global.