kalm_traveler wrote:

What I mean specifically is that modern cases have WAY better airflow (and quieter airflow) options than oldschool cases had (loud fans is not part of me enjoying a retro experience)

I agree, however... most of my old beige boxen aren't loud at all. The 486 in particular is hardly audible. My first order of business: Replace the fans. All of them.

I use brand new 80mm NMB fans I got from Digikey to replace all the PSU fans. They're not quite 120mm stealth fan silent, but they're about a whisper, and in those AT PSUs, the fans have put in their time and are due for retirement anyway.

For CPUs, there are 40/50/60mm fans available that are considerably more quiet than those on old S7 / S370 heatsinks from the day.

The loudest fan I have is the one on my Radeon 9800 Pro. I replaced the PSU fan, the CPU fan, and tested the (already quiet) case fan on that P4 build and finally realized that the racket it was making was entirely from the video card. Haven't quite decided what to do about that yet... but a case change would not make any difference.

Definitely the loudest thing in most of my older PCs is the hard drive. That's a judgment call whether to live with it, embrace it, or jettison it for flash media.

Now, I have to admit, hands-down my quietest PC is my modern Core i5 build. That thing is so quiet I have literally had it powered on for months and didn't realize it. (The case LED is extremely subtle. You really have to look for it.) Unless you have your ear within a forearm's length, you just can't hear it, even with a CPU fan, GPU fan, and PSU fan.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Looks like we have a double up of threads that could be combined

Thread merge.

kolderman wrote:

Thinking of old AT cases.....did ANY comes with removable side/top panels or did they all require the heavy steel tank armor to be removed each time you wanted to get inside?

A few, and a few more had tilt-up covers on hinges.

SirNickity wrote:

I'm a big fan of cable management. I have started crimping my own ribbon cables to get everything exact length, rounded, and routed in a clean way. Definitely looks nicer, but it's not quite as easy to get in there and fiddle with things. I'll even modify the cable bundle from a PSU by adding extra Molex plugs or removing the useless 6-pin aux motherboard connector that came out around the Athlon era -- or just reducing the length of cables that would be better suited to a full tower than a mini.

I noticed the sliced IDE cables. I did that back in the day, I think I have a couple left. Only ruined 1 in the process. The trick was to use your fingernail or a spudger to do most of the work - peeling not cutting most of the way. Split them into 5-or-so line segments, tie them together, instant airflow/neatness improvement. Well, near instant.

Ironically longer cables can make for a cleaner case because you can route them out of the way, so things like front panel and sound wires can be your achilles heel when trying to clean up an AT case, or older ATX cases. Dell was on the cable management bandwagon early, IIRC.

Merovign wrote:

kolderman wrote:

Thinking of old AT cases.....did ANY comes with removable side/top panels or did they all require the heavy steel tank armor to be removed each time you wanted to get inside?

A few, and a few more had tilt-up covers on hinges.

Yip. My first 286 has that as does my current Redstone XT Turbo. Great for working on. I can't remember having any heat related issues with any system due to cable management. Connect the components as best as possible, test, close the lid and use.

For Pentium 1 and earlier, I lean for desktop cases all the way. They evoke so many memories and an added benefit is they raise the monitor to a good eye level.

Pentium II onwards was / is for me the era of the mid-tower. Later on, SLI and the need for multiple audio sample storage (I had 6 320GB HDDs at one point) around 2004 meant I went for full towers. I salivated over the Silverstone Temjin TJ-07 but ended up with a Lian Li PC-V1000 - in the Mac Pro cheese grater days.

Since last year I’ve been on a strict ITX / SFF path. Unless I decide to SLI my 3090s I can’t see myself ever going back to anything over 15L or so - the Sliger SV540 is pretty much as big as I’m willing to accept in 2021. I also have a Louqe Ghost S1, a boxed Raw S1 and an NCase M1.

In regards to rebuilding retro / vintage rigs, I am very much in the vein of keeping things period correct (I have a 3 year old who I want to educate well on the history of computing, dammit!) but I also can’t wait to stick my WIP Pentium II build on a Streacom BC-1 and see how it all looks in its best open air light.

I’ll be keeping an eye on whether I can craft a suitable acrylic dust cover case for my Pentium II build on the BC-1 though. I’ve been inspired by some of the ribbon origami and can’t wait to try it out myself.

But at the end of the day - give me the original case look for the original insides 😅

I for one don't like if a case is bigger than it's absolutely necessary and don't like when it's non-standard. I don't mind if it's modern, but prefer to have a retro feel to them. The thing is, there are some decent compact modern cases, but I think the peak of that is already retro. The case of my Pentium MMX build which can house a full ATX motherboard and 3×5.25" drives, yet it's smaller than most modern uATX cases or the case of my main PIII PC which can take a uATX board, full height expansion cards, a normal size 5.25" optical and 3.5" floppy drive, yet gives most modern mini ITX cases a run for their money. Cases like these are a wet dream for me.

For a modern case, though it's a lot bigger and more limited, is the Fractal Design Node 304, the case of my NAS and the Raijintek Metis. Technically both are ITX, but there are certain uATX borads that can be fitted into them, like for example the Biostar H81MHV3 and others with similar layout which allows two expansion card slots but otherwise it's the same size as an ITX board. The cases mentioned above allow for two full height expansion cards, so you can fit a single slot (in the Raijintek double slot possible) graphics card and a sound card making it a good choice for an ultra compact XP-desktop with true EAX, though you have to give up on the optical drive.