I am searching for the case of my first PC and can't find it. It's cursed, as if it never existed. The render is a recreation from memory, so it may slightly vary to the real thing, but I am sure I got the basic shapes and proportion right.

What I remember

  • hp system
  • was bought in a bundle (?) with an hp printer and a dell monitor
  • bought in Germany around 2006
  • ran windows vista
  • mid tower (probably atx or micro-atx)
  • one disk drive
  • recessed i/o with SD-Card reader
  • air intake at the front bottom (at least that's what I think it was in hindsight)

There are many hp cases of the mid 2000s that match the design language, but they are all different to my case. If you recognize it, let alone have any information on it, let me know :)

Edit: Thank you all for your guesses! I'll try to respond to you all, but I feel bad for responding "nope, sadly not it" to most of your suggestions. But you gave me some ideas what to check out next, hopefully it will help me identify the case after all :)

Edit 2: picture time :D -- it's just a different angle

Edit 3: randomblock1 found it. It's a Hyricane PCK01978. I formerly would like to issue an apology for claiming it was hp. xD Thank you all again for your help :3

all 44 comments

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[–] 44 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You sure it's HP? The circle in the front makes me think of Dell

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    It sure looks like a Dell XPS to me. Those old XPS cases were nonstandard so it was very hard to upgrade the parts later on.

    eMachines had cases that look like that too back on 2006

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Found this, looks pretty close

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    YOU FOUND IT!!! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU FIND IT?!

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Dell Dimension 2400 or a descendant of that?

    https://www.dell.com/support/product-details/en-us/product/dimension-2400/resources/manuals

    That was THE computer to have in college when I went.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    It looks a lot like the eMachine cases you’d find all over cyber cafes and business centers in Europe in that era.

    Edit: sample

    2000s era emachine mid tower

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Lol! I remember owning this keyboard. It was not the one my PC came with, but funny still :D

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  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I know it's super low resolution, but the Acer B300 desktop I found on their website in the Wayback Machine looks really close to your render.

    Acer B300 Desktop

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030625223227/http://www.global.acer.com/products/desktop/index.htm

    I can't seem to find any other images of it though.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Not an answer but another idea for jogging your memory. I don't know what PC magazines were popular in Germany, uhh well ever, but it's not too hard to find archived copies of popular magazines here in the US from that time.

    Here is a random copy of PC Magazine from some month in 2006.I didn't see any PCs that matched your rendering, but there was an Acer Aspire that I had completely forgotten about.

    https://vintageapple.org/pcworld/pdf/PC_World_0606_June_2006.pdf

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    That is a dell looks like those 2005ish towers that still had xp standard

    Probably an Inspiron

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)
    [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Yeah I remember that case. That's Kevin.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Oh yeah Kevin! What a legend. Do you know what he's up to these days?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    All these years later I hear he's alone and quite empty inside. Sad fate for such a champ.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Quick question, you said air intake at the front bottom. Is that what the black oval at the bottom of your render is? Or is the black bar USB ports?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    If it's not a Dell it's an HP Compaq. HP bought Compaq and used the name for branding for a while. It would have been one of the last Compaq branded towers.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    It reminds me of a Compaq we had around then. HP had bought Compaq at the time and used the brand on some of their low-end PCs. I don’t know if they were sold in Germany under that name, but it might be another angle to pursue.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Reminds me of an emachine.

    Here's a ET1161-07 from 2009:

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    This is as close as I could get within the data given.

    Duckduckgo leaves something to be desired, but figured I'd try

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