Folks shopping for high-end gaming rigs are well-known for wanting something besides a boring grey or beige box. Although a plain-and-simple enclosure will certainly make the pixels fly, serious competitors seems to go in for molded plastics, interior and exterior lighting, transparent panels, lots of blinking, and…well, things that add some menace to that space under a desk in a dark room.
Boutique PC marker iBuyPower is taking that notion one step further, announcing it is that only system builder to be offering the Thermaltake Level 10 enclosure as an option on its PCs. The Level 10 enclosure was designed in partnership with BMWGroup Designworks USA—yes, that BMW, they bought up the design firm in 1995—and features a case design that…well, seems to eliminate the box. Instead the motherboard, drive bays, power supplies, and expansion cards get their own housings and skeletal, black-and-red look that’s sure to turn heads.
“We are constantly searching for the best components, cases, and peripherals to use in our systems,” said iBuyPower VP Darren Su, in a statement. “The Level 10 system is just another example of our drive to offer gaming rigs that can deliver the performance and aesthetics our customers demand.”
BMWGroup Designworks originally rolled out the design concept for the Level 10 tower for Thermaltake, which specializes in heat management and cooling systems for high-end PCs. The case took a bronze prize at the IDEA 2009 design awards.
iBuyPower’s Level 10 system features an Intel Core i7 processor, 6 GB of DDR3 memory, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 285 video card with 2 GB of video RAM, 1 TB of hard drive storage (plus a 128 GB SSD for the operating system). As befitting a boutique maker, a ton of options are available, including Blu-ray drives, an LCD control panels, and high-end networking cards.
Does all this come cheap? Nope: prices for the iBuyPower Level 10 start at $2,499.
