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PICS: case shrinkification: my preferences as i've gotten older

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I prefer quiet and simple looking, but I want a mid-tower for sure. I have 2 PCI cards and 2 PCI-E and that's enough to make me not want to fiddle around in a small cramped case. Definitely have no desire for a laptop or PDA.
 
I started out with a huge Antec case (mid-size server case, I think) five years ago; since then the size of my case has been halved, and I'm contemplating dropping one hard drive from my computer and shrinking the case down a little bit more. i don't have the space or really the time to deal with a large, clunky computer.
 
been using this since 5 years ago. i don't see it breaking within the next 20 years and it'd be such a waste to throw out a perfectly fine case so i'm keeping it for the next 20 years.
 
Same here OP.

Well sorta. Started with a 486 desktop, then bought a Directwave which was a mid-tower. Then finally built my own in a huge Inwin Q500a full-tower (this case is still around today housing my parents rig). Then I upgraded but kept the full-tower. Then off to college so I ended up with a cheap, POS Raidmax with a lovely human window. I still have it cause I'm too lazy to find something new.

When I upgraded in Feb to a Opty + 7800GT I wanted to get a SFF case. But the Shuttle XPCs are ridiculously overpriced, and though the Aspire Qpacks are sweet, they are a little pricey after you need to toss that crap PSU in there and get your own anyway. BUt mostly I was worried about reading things that people said high-end video cards wouldn't fit in there, not enough room for good cooling, etc.

But I run pretty minimal. One PCI-E card, Audigy Platinum taking up two PCI slots unfortunately, but that's it. Two hard drives, one optical.

I still might try out a Qpack or something similar cause SFF would rock. If not I just want to get a quiet, light (possibly aluminum) mini or small mid-tower. I originally went to a full-tower since it was a PITA working in cramped mini-towers and whatnot, but now I can deal with it, plus if I get a SATA drive finally that'll make it easy. And I could bring one of the PATA drives out to an external enclosure.

So I think I could make a SFF case work. But wait, I bought a ATX mobo... there was hardly any worthy NF4 mATX boards. So I guess I need to find a quiet and smallest mid-tower I can find.
 
1996 .... mini tower, low cost budget cheap case.

1999 .... bought a new mid tower .... kept side panels off of both chassis. Stacked the minitower on top of the mid tower. Had only 1 PC at the time, however, the minitower was being used to house 4 hard drives that wouldn't fit in the mid tower. (Was experimenting with refurb cheapo scsi drives at the time.) Used the AT power supply from the second chassis to power those 4 drives. Essentially had a full tower ... but it was 2 chassis. I have pics somewhere, but no access to them from work.

2001 or so ... full tower Foxconn chassis ... 12 bay

2004 or so ... upgraded to full tower chieftec ... 14 bay, fans in front of hard drive cages

Still using the Chieftec tower
 
I've gone from building my own exclusively to the Dell in my sig. I just lost interest in it, and overclocking doesn't seem worth the hassle anymore. So far the 9100's been great.
I am, however upgrading the Dell to a D 940 3.2 this weekend.

One of these days I might just get rid of my desktop rig and get a 20" iMac. Less clutter.
 
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