The Best Old-School PC Cases
- All-time Of
- Cases
The Best Old-School PC Cases
Tried, True and Tested
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If you are a power user looking to build a new PC, y'all may exist dissatisfied with the current choice of cases on the market. I hateful, in that location are some great ones that we recommend, but it does seem like there'south a shortage of overnice cases with external drive trophy for an optical deejay bulldoze, a hot-swap SATA bay, or a drawer for USB devices. Perhaps you don't want to supercede your instance as often as you replace your motherboard, and want to be able to add front end connectors that your next motherboard may support, such as USB 4.0.
It too looks similar every example of decent quality has a side panel of tempered glass, which means no side vents for your K.2 drives to get direct airflow, or even a physical hazard if you often carry your PC with you. Even finding a instance with more than ii internal 3.5" bays for a decent price is more difficult than it sounds. A RAID setup never seemed less affordable.
As nosotros've shown, you tin can meliorate an sometime PC instance by calculation drive cages, fan controllers and more, but those methods aren't suitable for everyone. Maybe your case is more than than a few years old, and lacks features that are considered basic today or doesn't take good options to amend airflow. Maybe it tin can't physically fit components that you'd like to add, or you want to switch to a smaller instance. And peradventure you'd rather go on your erstwhile organization functional than reuse the example with new internals.
Old-schoolhouse PC cases are non dead: no matter what's your budget or size preference, you lot can still go a new instance with an external drive bay, no tempered glass, and all of the drive bays y'all need. Here are some of the all-time examples of that, representing different budgets and sizes.
- All-time for Gaming
- Best Upkeep
- All-time Full Tower
- All-time Depression Noise
- Best Small Form Factor
- And More...
Honorable Mentions
Best for Gaming
Phanteks Enthoo Pro
Released in 2022, the Phanteks Enthoo Pro is the best "standard" erstwhile-school PC case on the market. It appears to have 4 external 5.25" bays, but the top cover really hides the instance's forepart connectors (including two USB 3.0 and two USB ii.0) and reset button, so that they don't assemble dust or become pressed by blow.
The Enthoo Pro has 1 SSD mount behind the motherboard, and ii detachable cages for 3 SATA drives each in the forepart. Those drives will be kept cool by the included 200mm front fan. You can replace that fan with two 140mm or 120mm fans. If you are worried that the cages will direct the cool air away from your graphics card, as the example has no side vents, you can install a 120mm fan on the opposite side of each cage.
In the rear, a 140mm fan will make certain that most of the air doesn't escape the case without reaching the CPU area. The summit of the case supports liquid coolers up to 420mm, so if you have a CPU liquid cooler yous may desire to remove the rear fan, every bit it would compete with it for air. The bottom supports either ane 140mm fan or two 120mm fans, simply the PSU shroud and bulldoze cages can make them ineffective.
With all of that potential airflow, information technology'southward good that the case has grit filters inside the front and top panels, and two at the lesser: one that'due south hands removable from the front, and one for the PSU removable from the back.
The Enthoo Pro has several rubberized cable routing holes, and a 6-channel fan connector hub to help with cable management, simply it doesn't accept a physical fan controller. Thanks to the case's external trophy, y'all can add together an aftermarket controller.
The instance is besides suitable for high-end builds: it supports motherboards with viii expansion slots, CPU coolers upward to 193mm tall, and graphics cards up to 347mm long even with both drive cages installed.
The Phanteks Enthoo Pro costs $110 for the non-windowed and acrylic window versions, and $120 for the tempered glass version (with a 140mm fan in the forepart instead of 200mm). The non-windowed version comes without a PSU shroud.
Best Upkeep
Fractal Design Focus Yard
If you want to put together a budget system and don't need many drives, Fractal Design'south Focus G or Focus G Mini are as cheap as nosotros recommend going at $50. The ii are almost identical, with the only functional departure being that the Focus G is a couple of inches taller and supports full ATX motherboards in addition to mATX.
Both Focus Grand cases have ii external drive bays with vented covers, one SSD mount, and a cage for 2 SATA drives. They too support upwardly to half dozen fans: 120mm in the rear and at the bottom, and 2 140mm or 120mm in the front and at the top. The top panel just supports 240mm radiators, though.
What makes the Focus Yard unique is that the case is available in five colors: blue, cerise, grayness, white and black. The huge acrylic side window and white LED on both fans besides helps the series look more modern than near former-school cases.
Released in 2022 and despite their cost tag, the two Focus G models offer most of the features that you'd look from a mod case: tool-less installation mechanisms for opening the case and installing drives, holes for cable routing, a bottom power supply mount, a large hole in the motherboard tray for replacing a CPU cooler with a backplate, and even reusable covers for the expansion slots.
The cases come with two 120mm fans installed in the front end, so that most of the air will enter the instance through the filtered front console. The superlative two vents accept individual filters, which you should remove if you install exhaust fans at that place.
The bottom vents also take a filter, merely it'due south just a perforated slice of paper-thin metal that blocks most of the lilliputian air that can get between the instance's brusque anxiety. With no plastic frame, the filter is spring to go bent and become fifty-fifty more than useless very quickly. In this case, we recommend installing the PSU with the fan facing upwards to describe filtered air from inside the case. Another annoyance with these cases is that their front I/O features one USB 3.0 and i USB 2.0, each connecting with a dissimilar cable to a motherboard connector that could support 2 of them.
If y'all need support for more than SATA drives out of the box, yous may want to check out Thermaltake's Versa H22 ($fifty), but if you can afford several drives you can probably afford a amend example also. Antec's Three Hundred 2 and Corsair'south Carbide 200R are sometimes available for a bit more money and also have side vents.
Best Total Tower
Rosewill Thor V2
The Rosewill Thor V2 is the ultimate old-school case: with ten expansion slot covers, it can fit even the most extreme consumer motherboards. It has half dozen external 5.25" bays, one of which is easily convertible to 3.5". If you desire to be able to brand several copies of a CD simultaneously or back upwardly entire RAID arrays, this is the example for yous.
The Thor V2 comes with four fans: ane 140mm at the rear, and iii 230mm in the forepart, on the side and at the height. No matter what y'all put inside of it, the example volition keep it cool. You tin also replace the top fan with up to ii 140mm fans, and the side fan with up to iv (!) 120mm fans.
The acme console has dragon-like fins that you can shut with a slider when the PC isn't in use to forbid dust aggregating. The side fan doesn't come with a filter, but Demcifilter sells a magnetic filter made specifically for it for $23, and you can also utilise the fan as an exhaust. The bottom vent, where you can install a fan upwardly to 140mm, does have a filter, and so do the PSU and the front end console.
The instance's front I/O includes two USB 3.0 and 2 USB 2.0 connectors, a dual-aqueduct fan controller for up to 6 fans, and fifty-fifty an eSATA port for old external drives.
Every bit a revised case from 2022, information technology can make you use a screwdriver more than often than newer cases. It doesn't officially support radiators inside the case, but with 180mm air-cooler back up and 4 tube holes information technology has enough CPU cooling options. Officially, information technology but supports graphics cards upwards to 330mm long, just fifty-fifty if yous find a longer card it may finish up fitting. The instance has "simply" 6 SATA drive bays, but with the ease of turning 5.25" bays into bulldoze cages, it's non a real drawback either.
At $140 (black or white), this case is in a league of its own. For $200, the Thermaltake's Core V71 has comparable cooling capabilities and official radiator back up, only it's less old-school with tempered glass and only 2 external bays. The same can be said about Fractal's $210 Define 7 XL and the $270 Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900. The Phanteks $250 Enthoo Primo has five 5.25" bays, merely probably doesn't cool as well as the Thor out of the box.
Best Low Noise
Fractal Design Define R5
As a "silenced" case, the Fractal Design Ascertain R5 uses dampening foam and a side-vented front panel to lower the pitch of the noise coming out of it and direct it toward the rear of the case. It even has covers on its side vent and top panel that you should remove if you lot install fans there. Released in 2022, the Ascertain R5 is the last of Fractal's flagship series to offer a side vent, and one of the final to offer two external v.25" drive bays.
The R5 comes with a door that tin exist mounted on either side of the front console, and hides the v.25" bays, a iii-speed controller for upwardly to iii fans, and a removable filter. Up to ii 140mm fans can be placed behind that filter (ane is in that location out of the box), and so you lot can keep the door open while gaming to improve airflow inside the organization. The forepart I/O, including two USB iii.0 and two USB 2.0, sits on the meridian of the panel and doesn't crave opening the door to access.
The case has 2 SSD mounts behind the motherboard, and 2 detachable cages for SATA drives: one for 3, and one for 5. If you remove the 5-drive cage, you'll be able to install graphics cards even longer than 310mm. If you remove both cages, you lot'll be able to install two 140mm or 120mm fans at the bottom of the instance instead of just one. Both of those fans and the PSU share a huge filter which is thankfully removable from the front.
With only 7 covers for expansion slots, the case may not fit some loftier-terminate motherboards, just it'due south suitable for cooling the well-nigh power-hungry desktop CPUs: as well its 140mm rear fan, it supports CPU coolers upwards to 180mm alpine, and upward to 420mm radiators on peak (you'll need to remove the 5.25" drive cage to fit a triple-fan libation).
In addition, you lot can install a 140mm or 120mm exhaust fan on the side vent to forestall hot air from the graphics card'due south area from reaching the CPU cooler. Sadly, that vent doesn't take a filter, so you should probably purchase i if you want to install an intake fan there.
At $110, toll seems off-white for such a example. If you need an 8th slot cover, y'all can become Antec's P101 for the aforementioned price, simply it has just one five.25" bay and less cooling options. If you are trying to save some money, for $fourscore y'all can catch the Be Quiet! Pure Base 600, only don't expect the same kind of features and cooling performance.
Best Modest Form Factor
Fractal Pattern Core 500
Even with a Mini-ITX case, you don't take to give up a full-sized v.25" external bay. In fact, Fractal's Core 500 also supports 3 hard disks, 3 SSDs, radiators up to 280mm -- although y'all'd need to choose between a dual-fan radiator and a long 5.25" drive -- CPU coolers up to 170mm tall, graphics cards upwardly to 310mm long and full-sized ATX power supplies.
How is all of that possible? With clever employ of space: instead of wasting space on an airflow path near the graphics carte du jour, the card is installed vertically next to the filtered side vent, with its fans pulling air direct from outside the example. On the other side of the example, the PSU pulls air through the bottom filter and blows it out of the other side vent.
By default, the rest of the system gets cool air through the filtered elevation vent (the two smaller vents on the sides of the front panel basically lead nowhere), with a 140mm fan exhausting the hot air in the rear. If you have a top-down CPU cooler and an M.2 drive, you may want to employ that fan as a peak intake. You may as well desire to employ the fan every bit an intake if you use an exhaust radiator.
The master compromise in terms of size is the lack of dedicated space for cable management. In this instance, it's actually skilful that the front end panel only has two USB connectors -- both 3.0 with a unmarried cablevision. Besides, as the case only has ii motherboard expansion slots, information technology doesn't back up triple-slot graphics cards.
The Fractal Design Core 500 was released in 2022 with a $60 price tag, which it retains to this day. Every bit an alternative, Cooler Master's Elite 130 costs about the aforementioned and looks similar at starting time sight, but doesn't utilize its space as efficiently (it tin can merely fit CPU coolers upward to 65mm tall and a 120mm radiator), has a less consistent design (especially with the 5.25" bay in use), and doesn't practice an equally good job at directing noise abroad from your ears.
Honorable Mentions
The following cases are besides a good value for your money and include some quondam-schoolhouse features, simply are non old-school plenty for this article...
- Cooler Master Masterbox NR400 ($63)
- Antec DP502 Flux ($73)
- Cooler Master HAF XB Evo ($106)
- Cougar Panzer Max-G ($149)
- Thermaltake Core X71 ($166)
Source: https://www.techspot.com/bestof/old-school-cases/
Posted by: lawrencewrear1942.blogspot.com
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