I used to be a "Give me a PC case shaped like a box. No round edges, no bubbly front panels. I want a case with straight edges that has enough bays for my drives. And I want it in black" Of course, at that time, beige was the dominant color and IBM was about the only PC making using back... I still want a square case, but in building my two most recent computers, I admit to some light "fancy-fying" of my case. Both have windows, the Lian-Li has a laser cut BioHazard symbol the SuperFlower has a square window. I got the LianLi window panel on the cheap, and I planned on getting a black PCB motherboard in my black SF case and thought a window would show it off nicely. I have since gone to red PCB motherboard and vid card, since the black sucked. I also have a couple red LED fans with a nice black radioactive symbol fan grill. These fans are off (rheobus) unless I am putting my system under load or want to show off the case, the components and the wiring. As is the CCFL inside. I am not excessive in my mods, but thought if I spend all this money and time I may as well have a case that looks nice. Mine does IMHO. And none of the mods affected performance, nor are my fans loud. I tend to think doing the lighting on cars is for benefit of "looking cool" in other people's eyes. I think I made my PC look cool in my own eyes. I don't LAN party, nor do I really entertain so much and when I do it's not like I say "Come look at my PC!!" It does what I want, and so what if it looks a little different.
I draw the line on rounded case edges and "bubbly" bezels though...
\Dan