WTF?! Thanks to the internet and the generally higher levels of tech savviness these days, it's rare to see stories of people buying something cheaply and getting more than they expected. It does happen, though, as shown by the redditor who paid $23 for a PC chassis only to find it contained thousands of dollars worth of hardware.
A redditor going by the username LlamadeusGame writes that he participated in a small auction that took place in Columbus, Ohio, which was local pickup only for items.
He bid on several things, including an air fryer, compressor, and some cookware. He also saw a Fractal Design Define 7 XL E-ATX PC case that would be perfect – i.e., big – for building an AI development rig.
LlamadeusGame paid $23.50 for the case – not $32 as the post title incorrectly states – which would have been a bargain in itself as the case goes for around $240 to $255.
I bought a "Case" for $32 at auction
byu/LlamadeusGame inpcmasterrace
However, the case contained a very nice surprise. It was actually a fully built workstation PC containing an RTX 3080 Ti graphics card, priced anywhere from $450 to $2,000+ on eBay, and a custom GPU mount.
In addition to the high-end Ampere card, the PC was packing an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X. We gave the 24-core, 48-thread, 280W chip a score of 90 in our 2019 review, and while it might be six years old, the 3960X still goes for above $500 on the second-hand market – it was $1,400 at the time of launch.
This workstation PC was also packing a monstrous 256GB of DDR4 and an Aorus Pro Wi-Fi TRX40 motherboard.
The branding on the inside of the case revealed it to be a Puget System workstation. Someone from the company who saw the thread said it likely sold for around $8,000 in 2021. Not a bad purchase for just $23.50.
This isn't the first time someone has taken to Reddit with a story of getting lucky with a PC/case purchase. In June, a user wrote that their dad found a PC in their local Goodwill store that had been donated by a mother after cleaning out her kid's room. He paid $30 for it, a reasonable price considering it had an MSI RTX 3080 Ti and a Ryzen 7 3800X inside.