Xbox’s ‘design your own controller’ scheme.
There are two ways to look at hardware, really. One is to scan the horizon for consumer products that best suit our needs and aesthetic sensibilities, and then assemble them, swapping parts in and out as your tastes change and product specs move on. That consumer behavior profile is the bedrock that the industry built itself on, but culturally, there’s perhaps an even deeper foundation: making it all yourself.
The origins of PC modding, whether you’re talking about cases, peripherals or aesthetic adornments like modern RGB lighting strips, harks back to a time when computing hardware was made with productivity in mind. A time before there was a gaming sector, before marketers realized they could sell us dedicated gaming versions of everything we used to interact with games.