I got a look at Micro Center’s redesigned flagship store, but I was distracted. I kept staring at a 3D printer the size of a phone booth as it churned out a scale model of downtown Columbus, Ohio — and pointing out where on the unfinished replica I used to work and where my mom went to high school.

The redesign — the Columbus Micro Center location is the second store to get the treatment, after one in New Jersey — is part of a bid to create a more engaging, hands-on experience for shoppers who are after more than the latest graphics card or a good deal on a new TV. (You can still get a new TV or the latest graphics card, but the cards are behind glass.)

The Columbus store is kind of the company’s flagship, because it’s the closest to the chain’s headquarters, so the renovation has been a big deal. On Saturday, the official reopening, the line wrapped back around the store and up the street. I’d heard a lot about the event, mostly because I’ve been shopping here since I was a teenager and “AI” was a movie starring Haley Joel Osment.

My tour guide was Dan Ackerman, who heads the chain’s Micro Center News (and who spent almost two decades here at CNET). He told me the redesign puts a new focus on things that encourage creativity around technology. 

The Knowledge Bar, which Ackerman called “the heart of the store,” provides a space for you to get help with tech, have an expert assemble a new computer out of components you choose, or even work alongside somebody as you put a device together, with a program called Build and Learn. “You can do as much or as little as you’re comfortable with, and they will teach you as you’re doing it,” Ackerman tells me.

Front and center when you walk in is a DIY section, complete with little robots you can assemble yourself. Keep going back past the laptops, and you’ll find yourself in several aisles of 3D printers.

Read more: Looking for the Most Accurate 3D Printer? Our Exclusive Testing Reveals One Clear Winner

The big 3D printer, front and center in the section, is an Elegoo OrangeStorm Giga with a price tag of $2,500. But others (much smaller) are just a couple of hundred dollars. And you can see how well they work — models in each aisle were churning out little figurines, and finished products dotted the shelves. Beyond the printers themselves, there was a long row of filament packages and an index of samples, like you’d find with paint swatches at a hardware store.

The fun stuff at the computer store

The old format of this store had some 3D printers and a section of maker and craft supplies, but it was tucked away in a corner at the front, with Raspberry Pi kits and other items crammed onto shelves. Now all of that is spread out more, easier to see. Robots, including one playing chess, line the endcaps.

Elsewhere in the store are rows of colorful, brightly lit PC cases. There’s an entire section dedicated to customizing keyboards, with Godzilla (and Mecha Godzilla) themed key caps. One aisle has microphones and ring lights for aspiring influencers. Another has collectible trading cards and Lego kits.

The vibe is that technology is something you can use to be creative. Walking around the store, it isn’t just about what is the newest and best hardware. It’s about what you can do with all that gear. How can you make it your own? What can you make?

This is still a computer hardware store. There’s a hands-on quality you don’t get when online shopping. You can buy a laptop from the Apple Store-like display of that company’s products, but you can also buy a case, a motherboard, a processor and everything else and then assemble it yourself. There’s a new focus on hardware for local AI, if you want to run an LLM or an image or video generator on your own device, without paying subscription and usage fees or letting AI companies access your data. You can walk in off the street and touch an Nvidia DGX Spark computer, which carries a price tag of $4,500 and packs 128GB of memory.

The headlines today are morbid. We’re being watched by AI-powered cameras, data centers are drinking up the water and draining our power grid, and trillion-dollar companies are running out of ideas beyond “more AI.” We need an occasional reminder that technology can still bring joy and delight to our lives. Sometimes all it takes is a giant 3D printer.

Jon covers artificial intelligence. He previously led CNET’s home energy and utilities category, with a focus on energy-saving advice, thermostats, and heating and cooling. Jon has more than a decade of experience writing and reporting, including as a statehouse reporter in Columbus, Ohio, a crime reporter in Birmingham, Alabama, and as a mortgage and housing market editor for Time’s former personal finance brand, NextAdvisor. When he’s not asking people questions, he can usually be found half asleep trying to read a long history book while surrounded by multiple cats. You can reach him at joreed@cnet.com

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