Death Stranding's official PC case needs more BB Boys, if you ask me
Where's my water cooled BB jar?
Death Stranding's been a big hit on PC, judging by publisher 505 Games' recent financial report, and now Japanese peripherals maker Tsukumo are showing it some love with an official Bridges-themed PC case. The custom case has been designed in conjunction with developer Kojima Productions, and it recently launched in Japan for ¥26,800 (that's around £186 if you want to import it). It's a lovely-looking case, capturing the monolithic design of the game's Bridges buildings down to a tee. But let's be honest. If there's going to be an official Death Stranding PC case, why is it not shaped like an orange BB jar?
Don't get me wrong. If it wasn't so expensive, I'd be tempted to get one of these official Death Stranding cases myself. I love all the little details, from the orange fan vents running up the front side of the case, the big red and white stripes and 'Special Delivery Team' logo on the front, the actual orange fan in its rear exhaust, and to the "Caution: Confirm Connector Orientation" lettering around the USB ports. Equally, though, I sort of wish it also looked like this custom fan-made case inside, because come on, everyone knows that the pumps from a CPU water cooler are pretty much the spitting image of Sam and BB's chest tube.
Alas, we'll have to make do with this Tsukumo case for now, which, let me reiterate, is still very handsome. Based on Fractal Design's Define 7 Compact, the Death Stranding case supports ATX, micro-ATX and mini-ITX motherboards (and ATX power supplies), and measures 474 x 210 x 427mm. It also comes with seven 120mm fan mounts (or four 140mm and two 120mm, depending on the size of your fans), two 3.5in HDD mounts and two dedicated 2.5in SSD mounts. There's a good selection of front I/O ports, too, including one USB Type-C port, two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, dedicated headphone and microphone jacks, plus your usual power and reset buttons.
Tsukumo have also said that they're planning to release two fully specced desktop models that will be tailor made for playing Death Stranding (including the custom case), although sadly these will only be available in Japan. These will be entirely AMD-based machines (which is quite odd, considering Death Stranding is one of the few Nvidia DLSS games available right now), with the standard model coming with a Ryzen 5 5600X CPU, 16GB of RAM and an RX 6700 XT graphics card, and the 'upper' spec bumping all that up to a Ryzen 7 5800X, 32GB of RAM and an RX 6800 XT.
In any case (sorry), both specs should be more than enough to play Death Stranding in all its weird ultrawide glory should Japanese gamers feel so inclined, as it was by far one of the easiest blockbusters of 2020 to get up and running smoothly. Indeed, I didn't have any trouble with it in my Death Stranding PC performance tests, and it remains one of my favourite games from last year. Would you go as far as getting a Death Stranding PC case, though? The more I look at it, the more tempting it becomes...