PC Cases With Character

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I have a beige really old style desktop ATX case that's still waiting for the right computer to put in it. They do exist, but not new. You need to look around a bit on eBay.
 
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The Checkmate A1500. Its made for the Amiga series but you can put a microATX board in there too. Love to get one, but the $200 price tag stings.
 
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@The Real SVP That's what I understood. The first time I heard abut this new case with all components it was around 3-400 eurobucks. I checked it out in the meantime, seems it got cheaper. Interesting about this case is that it's done by the same guy who did the original IIRC. It's fine for Amigas, for a heat producing PC though I'm not so sure. Plastic doesn't transfer heat well. Without a high performance (and loud) fan it'd get hot in there pretty quickly for your average modern PC of resonable performance. Dedicated GPU I don't even wanna imagine.
 
Personally, I prefer big, minimalistic block designs for PC cases, like Fractal Design's Define 7 XL. It's sleek, elegant, neutral, and it does the job. I'd love to get that case, but it costs like a motherfucker.
Define_7_Sheetmetal_Black_XL_Front_Above-810x810.jpg
Define_7_Sheetmetal_Black_XL_Left_Front_Above.jpg

And as for retro PC cases, the one that AkBKukU found for his MS-DOS PC build truly has some character. It's ridiculously tall, has a massive power switch, and a turbo display. The perfect 80's/90's heavy duty PC case.
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Was mentioned a page earlier, but had the Cooler Master HAF XB Evo for a couple years now, and outside some teething issues I've had, it's a pretty good case.
 
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RightToBearBlarms said:
View attachment 1359692
The Cooler Master HAF XB EVO was an absolute pleasure to build in and included so much that I've been chasing that high ever since. Hotswap bays, 5.25" bays, infinite fans, carrying handles.

Horizontal Mobo alignment in a full ATX case is really rare which is why with the computer after that I went with a Lian Li PC-V33:
View attachment 1359697
Click to expand...

Mein Neger!

I built my current system in the Cooler Mater case. It was a fantastic.
 
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Used to have a Silverstone SG13 but now with my upgrade of everything but the GPU, I got this, the Kolink Rocket. It's way smaller than it looks in this image. It is positively tiny, though not as small as the Dan A4, but it has two front panel USB sockets as opposed to just one on the Dan.

It's a similar layout though, being an ITX case with a "back to back" design. There's a single plate that goes down the middle the length of the case with motherboard standoffs on the right-hand side and a PCIe riser cable bolted to the left side. This is snaked under the motherboard to plug into the PCIe socket and allows the insertion of a GPU up to 12 inches in length. There is also space for an SFX power supply which is at the front, of all places, and an extension lead. Cables are managed by ramming them below the PSU.

First things first, this won't even fit an AMD stock cooler. Nor are there mounts for an AIO radiator. Your cooler choices are either Intel stock cooler (no thanks), Noctua L9 (which in turn limits you to a Ryzen 3600 or below at stock clocks), or the Alpenfoehn Black Ridge (which I have, and which is a bastard to mount because you have to balance it on the thermal-pasted CPU then turn the board upside down and insert the bolts from that side and hope that the brackets are in place and that you haven't smeared the paste all over the socket edges). Intel? Lol good luck given their yuge TDPs these days.

However, once you have got it together and fumbled the front panel connectors into the board in the crevice between the CPU cooler and the power supply, and made sure the riser isn't jamming the top fan, and forced full speed on all case and CPU fans in the bios, you get a PC that is smaller than a standard shoebox but can max an awful lot of games at 4K. And it looks lovely with all that brushed aluminium and things.

And then you find out that Nvidia Ampere is going to be triple slot for its top end RTX 3090. Fuck. Not that I could afford that without selling my soul, which as a ginger I don't have, but that means the RTX 3080 is going to be similarly excessively sized.
 
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Slav Power said:
Personally, I prefer big, minimalistic block designs for PC cases, like Fractal Design's Define 7 XL. It's sleek, elegant, neutral, and it does the job. I'd love to get that case, but it costs like a motherfucker.
Define_7_Sheetmetal_Black_XL_Front_Above-810x810.jpg
Define_7_Sheetmetal_Black_XL_Left_Front_Above.jpg

And as for retro PC cases, the one that AkBKukU found for his MS-DOS PC build truly has some character. It's ridiculously tall, has a massive power switch, and a turbo display. The perfect 80's/90's heavy duty PC case.
Click to expand...

The Fractal Design's Define cases are beautiful. I just got an S (small), and it's so easy to build in too. Even if it's "small" it's huge, so I can't imagine how massive the XL is.

edit: This is the one I got. No annoying red lights for me, because screw that shit. It's dead silent too compared to my old prebuilt HP. Would recommend.

www.newegg.com

Fractal Design Define S Black Silent ATX Midtower Computer Case - Newegg.com

Buy Fractal Design Define S Black Silent ATX Midtower Computer Case with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
www.newegg.com www.newegg.com
 
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c-no said:
Can thr Corsair Air 540 count? Not minimalist though I don't know on the gamer end but I love the cube shape it has.View attachment 1329648
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That's my current case. Very spacy, nice airflow. Negative points are the flimsy drive hard bays and that you have to be careful with the hotswap bay connectors.
 
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Does anyone make a PC case that looks like 1970's Hi-Fi gear? That is, wooden exterior and brushed aluminium panels with high quality switches.
 
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The Grognard said:
Does anyone make a PC case that looks like 1970's Hi-Fi gear? That is, wooden exterior and brushed aluminium panels with high quality switches.
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I wondered this too after walking past an audio store and seeing a lot of the higher end speaker setups going for the '50s home durable goods look - which I totally get, it's nice. I couldn't find anything like that, though - partly because gamer shits dominates the market, partly probably because of costs and partly maybe because the thermal properties of this stuff aren't good (not sure on that one). If it ever happens, I suppose it'll happen within the next ten years as an increasing number of hardcore nerd types get better salaries and get married to wives who insist there not be anything totally embarrassing in the house that ruins aesthetics.

I did see some case mods out there for the case I have that changed it to a wood look - eg
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... This particular mod does pain me though because this case already has airflow problems and a bunch of irritating design decisions (why so little airflow out the top? Why a solid front door that majorly fucks airflow? Why offset the powersupply in the bottom in a way that makes it very hard to fit fans on the bottom? Having part of one of the side panels be removeable to add fans is nice, but they're in the solid panel which means if you want use of them you'll have to block the view of the interior...)
 
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