I went to PAX Australia and all I got was a glimpse of this $17,000 gaming PC shaped like Medusa that's a commentary on AI's inability to grasp the importance of mythology stories in human culture

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Custom gaming PCs on the showfloor at PAX Australia.

(Image credit: Hope Corrigan)

Last weekend I witnessed the return of PAX Aus, the biggest gaming convention in Australia. The show delivered its usual spectacle: whether you're into cosplay competitions, odd new 420 themed indies, or even Cult of the Lamb themed weddings, PAX Aus had you covered. I always love to spend time roaming the show floor checking out the eye-catching, and often even eye-watering (if you look at the price), PC builds, and this year did not disappoint.

Medusa

As a lover of mythology this Medusa build by Aftershock PC Australia, immediately grabbed my attention. Its expressive stone-look depiction of Perseus' triumph over the Gorgon is said to be a commentary on AI's inability to grasp the importance of these stories in human culture. I'm not too sure about whether it hits that mark, but it does look really freaking neat.

The imagery isn't the only beastly bit of this build, this PC has the specs to match. The Bykski Granzon B-CE-X Open Frame Chassis packs a Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC 24GB card paired with AMD's excellent Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU. With 3 TB of SSD storage and 32 GB of DDR5 ram, Medusa and Perseus should be the only thing freezing up on this machine. That, of course, is only if you have the cold hard $16,995 AUD (gosh that's an extra digit than I'm used to seeing) to throw down for this legendary rig.

That's the sale price, too. It's usually $18,000.

Alien

First things first. You don't need to worry about the price tag on this one because it was only available to win during the show. This Xenomorph sculpt is to coincide with the release of the new Alien: Romulus movie, as if we needed an excuse for something this cool to exist.

Unsurprisingly, specs wise these PCs are pretty similar. Once again, we see a Bykski Granzon B-CE-X Open Frame Chassis but this time with a Xenomorph alien bursting its way out of the build. Much like Medusa, this ultimate killing machine houses an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D with the Gigabyte RTX 4090 Aorus Master GPU.

Shark

Cooler Master also had some of its more adventurous builds on display, and that included the Shark X. We've covered this killer fish case back at Computex and still hold that it's wicked. This build is the brainchild of Inony from Thailand, back in the 2019 Cooler Master World Mod Series, and now it's available to preorder for $7,000 USD. That's a bit hefty for the Intel Core i7 14700F and Geforce RTX 4070 Ti Super 16G under the fin, but this great white is definitely more about the case.

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While photographing this full ARGB monster, I had several people ask me what it was and then not fully believe me when I told them it was a PC until I started pointing out components. I've never seen a Mini-ITX build that managed to be so secret by simply not being discrete at all.

Shoe

Once they got over that, I'd point to the Sneaker X, another wicked case that looks like a bright red shoe a small transformer might wear. This case has been around a bit longer, and is even coming out in new colours, but still managed to turn a lot of heads. You can get this Intel i7 13700K, Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti 12GB for $2,200 USD off the Cooler Master site, but you can also find the case around for cheaper if you've got your own guts.

The rest

While these were some of the most out of pocket builds I found on the floor, there were also plenty of more traditional but very cool gaming PCs. Themed rigs were huge with some taking inspiration from games and fandoms like COD, Monster Hunter, Transformers, and even bubble tea. Others may have been less flashy, rocking a more sensible case with matching RGB lit colour scheme, but often packed seriously powerful hardware. This included PCs running Intel's next gen Arrow Lake chips, and a lot of fully decked out flight and racing sims.

Feel free to peruse this gallery of wild hardware I saw on the show floor, while I eagerly await next years' lineup—probably a bunch more cases inspired by anything and everything other than a PC case.

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here. No, she’s not kidding.