Cases What happened to a classic understated look?

I've been looking into buying a new case for my PC for quite sometime. The case I have currently I bought when built myself a new PC 2 years ago is a Colink Lumosity. It was cheap enough and at the time fulfilled the main requirement that it had a 5 and a quarter inch Drive Bay as I still like to use an optical drive.

Sadly the downside is that its not a great quality case. The front fans do not work as the fan controller it was supplied with is faulty. The side panel doesn't sit on the case property either. Now that I've had some time off work I've had some time to dig out all my hard drives and have found I have no room to put them in.

All I seem to find are vulgar cases which are all geared towards RGB, having windows and showing off your hardware. I have never been a very tidy system builder and I really don't want all this shiny light stuff. The light attract the kids and they in turn want to use my PC, and to be honest I want them well away from it.

Are there any understated cases still out there? I'm thinking back to the likes of the Lian Li PC7 etc. This RGB craze and then labelling everything as "Gaming" is mental. I need a case with decent cooling, enough room for all my hard drives and something that doesn't look like a 1980's disco!

 

Yes, but they cost quite a bit more.
A basic minimally-finishes thin stamped steel chassis (with ugly but functional reinforcing ribs) wrapped in a twiddly injection-moulded plastic shroud and studded with distracting flashing lights is cheaper to manufacture in volume than a case with nice smoothly finished sheet metal sides. So volume manufacture does not bother with said nicely finished cases, any you're left with short-run manufacture cases. Those are more expensive as you do not have the savings of mass manufacturing. Most of these are serving the SFF market, but there are some 'large' cases like the Kimera/Sliger Cerberus. I think Silverstone still have some slab-sided cases too.

 

Fractal Design? They're pretty much as understated as you could ask for.

 

Fractal, NZXT, Lian Li, Phanteks and Corsair all have "monolithic" case designs without RGB flourishes and chunks of angled plastic all over the front/top. All fairly decently priced, too.

 

Phanteks P600S I think is an understated case. Cooling is fantastic, has an option without a window, up to 10 3.5" drives. I mean it's not a featureless black box but not OTT either:

 

One of my favourite understated (read basic) yet quality cases is the Corsair 750D and is still available to buy. Yes, it's a little large but the non-airflow edition is still a stunning case if you don't need the extra air intakes.

 

Now that I like. Will have to start saving the pennies to afford it, but thats on my list for certain

I don't mind coloured fans, I just don't see the need for all the bling.

 

Shout out for Be Quiet! cases. If you like understated then the windowless Silent Base 801 with black trim looks nice. But you can dial up the bling if you want to, and if you're clever with cooling then it's actually a really good and quiet case for a powerful rig.

 

I've just seem this, looks rather handsome. Also on the list. I wouldn't say my PC is a beast, Ryzen 5 1600, 16 gig of RAM and GTX 1060 6 Gig, but it handles everything I throw at it with room to spare.

 

I also have one of those! The P600S (admittedly mine is with window and full of RBG) is for my main system and the 750D is home to my server. The P600S is noticeably a 'newer' design though, in that it has more modern features. The 750D's dust filters are average at best but they do the trick. It does of course have 5.25" bays which the P600S doesn't if you need those.

 

Of course if you don't like either of the options above you could just go for this:

 

Someone probably likes that. Maybe.

 

Give it a couple weeks and Antec will have ripped it off...

 

Fully agree with Shirty so that's another vote for the "Be Quiet" option, using a dark base pro 900 here and it does the job nicely, mine has a window (couldn't find a windowless one in stock at the time) but as its under the desk in the office with the window pushed up against the sofa it's not an issue. I highly recommend it, almost silent too with my rig running at 100%.

 

My first thought was that that looks like it could be the head off a Star Wars Battle droid from episode 1, if the graphic artist was tripping on LSD. That's actually so bad I'm finding it more offensive on my eyes than The Phantom menace film now I think about it.

 

Fractal, Be Quiet and Silverstone cornered the market, so everyone else started taking acid.

 

Some of the Jonsbo / Cooltek cases are pretty understated if on the more expensive side.

 

Christmas lights are for Christmas trees, not pc cases. I'm starting a movement #saynotorgb #bringbeigeback

 

NCase M1

Small and expensive, yes, but beautifully understated.


Shameless fanboy plug.