Why ignore the stickers? They are very diagnostic here, particularly for earliest possible date.

Windows 98: no earlier than late 1998. Unlikely to be after June 2000 (as OEMs who stuck stickers om boxes shipped WinME after that date)
Pentium 3: no earlier than February 1999, but could be any time after that (P3 was still being sold as low-end overstock in 2002)
Voodoo3: no earlier than March 1999, sold as high-end well into 2000, after that in low end under Voodoo4/5 (or - more likely - replaced by an nVidia card)

So earliest possible use of the case with these stickers on it would be March 1999. However this case could easily be a year older than that, it's hardly bleeding-edge industrial design. Starting 1999 you started to get wavy lines in some cases, starting 2000 everything started to get iMac-y colours (this isn't an AOpen case, but take a look at their HQ45 - 1998 it was plain beige, late 1999 it got a muted blue/green bezel, in 2000 that went bright blue or green transparent). Conversely, someone buying a generic beige case could easily have bought this five years later. But they woudln't have stuck a Pentium 3 into it then.

I would agree with the late 90s guess. The other thing that I'm noticing is the power/reset/etc buttons. This style of buttons screams early ATX to me. Not to mention... isn't one of the lights a turbo light? And that 'sleep' button is very awkward... makes me think this was a hastily retrofitted design from around the time turbo buttons stopped being a thing and that that case had been designed for a turbo button.

The other thing I would suggest looking at is the cooling. With the rise of hotburst starting in 2001, cases started to be a lot more designed for cooling, front fans, bigger front fans, rear fans, bigger rear fans, etc. I don't know what this case looks like from other angles, but from the front, it doesn't look like something designed with a big huge intake fan to keep a hotburst cool...ish.

That bottom drive... is that a straight CD-R? I feel like I had an identical-looking drive in a Dell PIII in summer 2000. Can't tell you 23.5 years later who the manufacturer of that drive was though.

Honestly, I come to the same conclusion as the poster above me - this screams a PIII system built in a generic, mildly-dated case in the second half of 1999.

There is a lot of overlap... when a style came out, it was probably expensive and seen as a high end case, then a couple years pass and it's the mid range, then they're banging them out by the tens of thousands trying to get ahead of the copies and they're cheap/low-end.

So you could see it as a low end case for 2001, a mid range case for 1997, and that style is not unknown as an AT case, so maybe high end in 1993.

dionb wrote on 2024-01-24, 22:39:

Why ignore the stickers? They are very diagnostic here, particularly for earliest possible date.

Because I put those stickers there myself in recent times. They are convincing, I bought them from geekenspiel. They do represent the hardware found inside that I didn't change, apart from the gpu. But the hardware inside was from ca 2000-2001: Socket 370 440bx motherboard with a 1ghz P3 and a geforce 2 mx 200. I should probably have mentioned this, but I am more-so looking to see if anyone had this case in the 90s. I have seen several pictures of this specific case floating around online before, so I can assume it used to be somewhat common.

VivienM wrote on 2024-01-24, 22:49:

I would agree with the late 90s guess. The other thing that I'm noticing is the power/reset/etc buttons. This style of buttons s […]
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I would agree with the late 90s guess. The other thing that I'm noticing is the power/reset/etc buttons. This style of buttons screams early ATX to me. Not to mention... isn't one of the lights a turbo light? And that 'sleep' button is very awkward... makes me think this was a hastily retrofitted design from around the time turbo buttons stopped being a thing and that that case had been designed for a turbo button.

The other thing I would suggest looking at is the cooling. With the rise of hotburst starting in 2001, cases started to be a lot more designed for cooling, front fans, bigger front fans, rear fans, bigger rear fans, etc. I don't know what this case looks like from other angles, but from the front, it doesn't look like something designed with a big huge intake fan to keep a hotburst cool...ish.

That bottom drive... is that a straight CD-R? I feel like I had an identical-looking drive in a Dell PIII in summer 2000. Can't tell you 23.5 years later who the manufacturer of that drive was though.

Honestly, I come to the same conclusion as the poster above me - this screams a PIII system built in a generic, mildly-dated case in the second half of 1999.

I looked at the drive and the manufacture date is October 2000. Specifically this computer was likely put together in 2001 given the 1ghz pentium 3 and geforce 2. The other 2 drives were not originally fitted, those I fit there. So far my earliest "evidence" is 2000.

The sidedoor has venting in the bottom. Cooling was at least a consideration.

Think you may be right about the turbo.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-01-24, 22:56:

There is a lot of overlap... when a style came out, it was probably expensive and seen as a high end case, then a couple years pass and it's the mid range, then they're banging them out by the tens of thousands trying to get ahead of the copies and they're cheap/low-end.

So you could see it as a low end case for 2001, a mid range case for 1997, and that style is not unknown as an AT case, so maybe high end in 1993.

It's frustratingly hard with the non-branded cases because they are truly non-branded. Never the slightest hint of trying to figure out a manufacture date on them, really just have to go by styling or peoples word from experience. It's also a bit fun and an adventure though!

One would think an ATX case with three floppy drive bays would be pretty special/non distinct. Overall aesthetics whisper post 2001-2 to me.

If it had the original PSU might be easier to track down the actual year it was original assembled based on the make/model #. Have a few similar cases and they range from 1996-2000....from what I know of them.
The sleep button is a bit rare but that puts it Win9x era as no XP era case I ever saw has one (not saying they might not, just never saw one...)

Have you checked the inside of the molded case front for a date - some of the cases I own have a date dial injection molded inside. No certainty but should be easy to check I guess. But the vibe I get is 97-98, sort of reminds me of my 98 era AOpen HX08.