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Comment by geoffeg | Hacker News Reader

It is somewhat wild to me that PC towers are still a thing. So many other tech products have had significant form factor reductions in the past ~40 years yet gaming PCs have largely remained unchanged. (I understand we've had massive increases in computing capabilities, especially around 3D graphics and the power and cooling required for them.)

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The cases made today are 100x better than even stuff from the late 00s. Better cable management, better air flow, better aesthetics. I think being able to ditch 5.25 drive bays has been a major positive change. Also not ripping your hand open on random sharp metal, always nice.

I’d say it depends upon the era. Some older cases are amazing, and other less so. If we’re talking specifically about mid-90s, super cheap, beige towers… other than my nostalgia; yes, they are complete garbage.

I hate that modern cases don't have 5.25 drive bays. Some of us like having optical drives.

Worse EMC.

PCs have had significant form factor reductions though. From smaller form factors like mATX to straight up embedded SBCs like the NUC to even smaller lighter-power systems like the Raspberry Pi.

Mid-towers have survived for the same reason cars still leave some open space under the hood in their designs: There are incredibly important practical benefits in being able to easily work in a space.

In addition to being able to work in a space, also being able to deal with a wide array/vendor choice of possible thermal solutions, economically, to deal with up to 200W TDP CPUs and high wattage GPUs in a relatively compact enclosure. I wouldn't want to go smaller than mid-tower ATX case if doing something like a really powerful single socket air cooled CPU and a serious gaming video card.

It's only remained unchanged if you haven't decided to downsize: I've been building all mini-ITX machines for a while now. My main PC is in a DanCase A4-SFX, which is a 7.2L case. Even my NAS is mini-ITX. That's all standard parts. You can go even smaller if you are willing to sacrifice standard parts and go for a NUC or whatever.

Don’t jinx it! Really, it’s probably PCI slot form factor graphics cards that is keeping it alive.

We don't have much choice, high performance video card just big and they need a good cooling solution. It will probably take another ten years to reduce power consumption and we would get a small reduction is size and cooling requirements.

There are a bunch of "experimental" and open case sort of builds for people interested in something not quite standard. I'm not sure they have any advantage over the standard case.

When it first came out I was a big fan of the look of the inwin d-frame, but looking at it today I'm not sure its as fit for purpose as a $100 off the shelf box from corsair or whatever.

yet gaming PCs have largely remained unchanged.

I don't think this is really true, lots of smaller form factor devices are now used for gaming. Gaming laptops have been around for a decade+, gaming NUCs started popping up 4-5 years ago, the Steam Deck, a handheld gaming PC came out this year. The tower is still around but 'gaming PC' has diversified a great deal.

I would argue that they are sort of local optima. Box is a nice shape for anything and then you want modularity for space and then the fact it is air cooled.

We could pack them more tightly, but that just make life and many things harder.

Smaller case = smaller fans = louder fans

Having a mid tower case I can only hear my PC when it really ramps up.

My work laptop fan is blasting most of the time.

I would rather work on a tower/desktop PC. Usually has better CPU, GPU, RAM, Storage and much quieter.

A better question is why would they change?

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