After digging through my newegg order history, and realizing that my CPU/MOBO/RAM is ~7 years old and my GFX card is ~2 years, I decided it was time to work on a new PC. I get on newegg to look for cases. Easy requirements, or so I thought. <$150 Mid-tower to short full tower, 4-5 5.25" bays, preferably 1 3.5" bay, no door on the front, no window on the side ( adding sound dampening inside, 500 mm fans over top the GFX card and CPU fan letting all their noise out, prevent that from working right ) And finally a clean, simple look. So I get on newegg, figuring I'll find a coolermaster case as usual. (CM Centurion serving me currently) Nope. Not a single candidate in stock on newegg. (The CM gladiator was close, didnt really need all the big fan holes on the side. ) Then searching more manufacturers, besides a few cases that were close, all the other hundreds of cases on newegg vary from a few just not being my style, to ***** repellent, to the results of a Reaper visiting planned parenthood, with dr terminator doing the procedure. Other than Lian Li, who thankfully stuck with simple clean lines, but only the pricy mega towers are in stock. Luckily Amazon had a windowless Lian Li PC-8N in stock. WTF happened that coolermaster turned into a NZXT/RAIDMAX sort of case Mfr, and a whole lot of new (to me) companies dumped a TON of ugly onto the market? I mean I've seen some ugly/wtf mods on here, but with good craftsmanship to appreciate at least, and its at least to that persons taste when they are working on it. But stuff like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133192 is like buying a 1992 honda CRX thats been riced to the max off a used car lot. Like seriously, the molds for injection molding that would cost thousands(Even in china, thats a crap load of different moldings) , plus CAD/CAM work to prepare for that, on top of actual supplies/materials, how do they sell enough of those to turn a profit. /rant ****, am I turning into a crotchety old man?
Eventually, Yes. Unless you are a woman. Face it. We are no longer the target demographic. If you like clean lines, you are obviously an old person, and old people supposedly have more money than teens. ...Even though we know the younguns shed money like water.
Get a Fractal Design Define R4. It's well within budget and very quiet. Yes, it has a front door - but that helps to dampen the sound from the HDD bays. Also you could get a Lian Li case.
I'm actually on the same boat. I was looking for a good PC case but didn't find one that I really liked the same as my current Mac Pro. So, I decided to build my own case... If you don't mind a little bit of modding, get an old PowerMac G5 case! They look awesome, have an awesome airflow and awesome expansion possibilities. And they are less than 150$ as well.. It just takes some time to make everything perfect. If you want to use ATX boards, you need to get a new backplane, if you decide to use mATX, the backplane works fine. Go google it...
TOTALLY agree on the lvl 10! nice idea, but executed in the most insidiously ugly way! there are a few GOOD mods of it, compared to hundreds of butt-ugly pie-face the 3rd mods of it. course i also hate the *cough* bf prodigy *cough* with a passion im about to get flamed, arent I?
Not from me, high five! Could get something like the corsair obsidian series? bitfenix shinobi? silverstone temjin series?
Hmm, well the PC-8N showed up and it calms me, makes me not want to punt babies as much. And looking at the actual thermaltake Level 10 (NOT the GT) that looks very nice and is an interesting concept. However, the Level 10 GT looks like a deal-extreme copy of it ( I.e. http://technabob.com/blog/2011/06/25/game-station-p1-4000/ is a dx'd ps2 )
I don't think they have really. You could say they have diversified their product range. Lets not forget that they still make this beauty too....
i've always like this one lain li http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112389 like if just going to mod it anyway you can get any better of a starting point for a basic case that also depends on what your doing to it.
sound absorbing foam and dampening material out the wazoo, now we're talking. Only major case thing left is to figure out how to keep a ton of sound from CPU/GPU from coming out the front fan hole. I think the 3.5" HDD mount is getting removed and reworked to break direct line of sight from the internal fans to the front intake without hindering flow too much, and to make space for http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186064
