Retro beige PC case goes from April Fools' joke to retail | Hacker News Reader

Retro beige PC case goes from April Fools' joke to retail

tomshardware.com

97 pointsgnabgib45 comments

Nice Idea, I'm not a fan of the faux floppy drives though.

I was looking at this beautiful case while considering building a desktop PC:

https://www.inter-tech.de/productdetails-155/S38_EN.html

Seems like it's built for industrial applications, but I love the look of it, if anyone knows of similar cases please let me know! Not a big fan of the regular contemporary case designs targeted at gamers and such.

I the two fake 5.25” drives are definitely a missed opportunity.

Maybe a pair of slot loading Bluray drives would have been good.

Further pictures showed the top one folded down for a optical drive's tray, and the bottom one folded down for front usb and things. You almost certainly would be able to remove them and mount a slot loader if you want.

> Looking more closely at the not-shiny new FLP01, the front has a couple of faux 5.25-inch floppy drives to the right. Sadly, they look fake, even from a distance, with the filled-in slots and single-color plastics. However, these two artifices flip open to reveal an optical drive (upper slot) and front I/O array including headphones, USB-A, and USB-C ports (lower slot).

Sure, but making it slot-loading would let you do away with the cover and still look right.

The 90s are back in style, man. If Apple made translucent plastic Macbook Pro models like they did back then the tech world would lose its collective nostalgic mind.

I really want Sony to bring back translucent PlayStation controllers. They already have a lineup of different colors.

If we're going to do the (early) 90s, let's do the good parts. Give me a proper NeXT cube replica.

I loved the translucent/transparent electronics of the 90’s. It was so neat to see the internal components of things like landline phones and other devices.

Sorry, do you this could be a marketing team ploy to generate buzz? Maybe I’m just possibly being silly.

They've certainly marketed to the right place!

Having been along the ride for a few decades now, this is probably the era of computer industrial design that I have the absolute least nostalgia for? About 1985-2000 or so. Just ... bore.

With a few exceptions, it was all so conservative. Some exceptions I can think of... The BeBox case, the NeXT cube, various SGI workstation cases, the odd other Unix workstation here and there, the Atari Mega STe / TT030 case, the Sharp X68000 series. Can't think of any others off the top of my head.

As silly as the translucent iMac was, it really shook things up a bunch.

FWIW, any 4U case can be used as a desktop. You can even use a 3U if you don't have a discrete GPU (most desktop GPU coolers extend above the height of a 3U).

I return, you can actually fit most desktop cases in 5U or even 4U, if you have something to stack them onto. Just be careful with possibly covered side vents.

I should note a few special products in this space.

The Sliger CX4712 fits a 120mm fan in the back, this is extremely rare, the Supermicro 742 did it but that has been out of production for a long, long time.

These days you can even find 120mm tower coolers fitting in 4U, Thermalright True Spirit and the Noctua NH-D12L both are less than 145mm tall easily fitting the ~153mm space. And yes, the new CM Hyper 212 also fits at 152mm but I am not a fan (ahem).

I'm sad that Sliger is ending their ATX cases for desktops. I hope that they have something interesting to replace them.

Cases? There was only one and they AFAIK didn't design it, they manufactured it yes but it wasn't a core product. They also note on the Cerberus X

> We also wish to inform you that Sliger will be releasing a new line of Desktop cases in the near future, and to keep an eye out for further information.

> Sliger CX4712

One of the few legit attempts at a "homelab" friendly design, with ATX PS and 120mm fans.

The 2.5" SSD "cage", USB ports and power switch are all on the wrong (right-hand) side. Headers for all those things are nearly always on the opposite side given ATX motherboards, so you have to cross over the whole case, in the path of cooling air, with long wires. Huge miss.

The fan mount plate could have rolled slot(s) on the bottom to pass cables under a foam rubber flap, reducing cable length by not routing all the way around either side of the fans. Positioned properly (i.e. higher) the internal 120mm fans would allow ample room for that. Minimizing cable length is important for signal integrity.

Don't think much of the brush solution to gap filling. That is not effective for controlling air pressure: some volume of air will just cycle around in a loop through those two brush "seals" and their cable induced holes.

A really great design would have modular drive cages for various storage form factors: 2.5", 3.5", U.2/3, etc.

iStarUSA makes affordable cases that take ATX PS as well, but not 120mm fans. Also a lot of them have vent holes on top of the case which makes maintaining airflow with negative pressure challenging. I ended up covering them with foil-tape, which helped.

3U and below use risers and pack tight. That's where those passively cooled GPUs come from.

You can fit full-height server and workstation GPUs into 3U.

I've got a few Intel based Macintosh Pro Servers from 2012 that could each probably host a Beowulf cluster of Raspberry Pi 5s.

No turbo button?

Modern computers allow to set the power and cooling to "quiet, low power" or the default "let er rip" mode with the fans going full speed. Ironically is is quite turbo-like.

What I'm saying is yes, you could have a functional turbo button.

Now I want to see fake CRT monitor with mini-fridge or coffee machine inside.

Now they just need a bulky beige CRT to go with the PC.

How about this?

https://www.checkmate1500plus.com/

That's dope, do they ship to the USA?

Total Apple move: be late to the game but act like you were first to market.

EverCase (http://www.evercase.co.uk/) has been selling 'retro' cases for years, though I don't think they would call them that, more like utilitarian.

Since when have PC cases been required to have acrylic windows and rainbow lighting? I've always thought it was foolish.

They are specifically making the case similar in style to certain older Japanese computers, that's the retro aspect. They do not act like they are first to market, they made a joke ps pseudo-pc98 product and people liked it enough to make it real

They should make a case looking like an X68000 next.

The dream. One side for the MB/CPU and the other for the GPU with a weird little pcie bridge in the middle. Pleasssse.

It's odd living in the tech designs of the past. While thinking of the x68000 Elite I remembered the "BMW Design Level 10 Case by Thermaltake" (just say no to the GT and GTS versions) and started wondering if/how long before that complete goofball of a case gets a cult following and a remake. Then I started wondering what are the designs folks younger than myself have fallen in love with? I'd love to know.

Are you reading April as Apple? SilverStone (FTA, 2013[0]) is older than EverCase (2016 [1])

[0]: https://archive.is/3ZOsS

[1]: https://archive.is/LbW3q

Your last point is really a sore point of mine nowadays, it appears I can only get aquariums instead of a proper PC tower like in the good old days.

For anyone not feeling like building a custom PC tower around my region, it is either a proper case with sucky hardware like i5 CPUs, or proper hardware configuration, packaged in rainbows from all forms and colours.

> it appears I can only get aquariums instead of a proper PC tower like in the good old days.

https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/define/define-...

That case is okay, but a solid front that limits airflow is still a bit tilted a bit away from proper in my mind.

I like this case for the huge fan and having a bunch of drive bays: https://www.phanteks.store/collections/enthoo-series/product...

They also make several alternative options, such as https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/meshify/meshif... or https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/torrent/torren... for high airflow applications. Build quality of these is excellent, and they’re still reasonably unobtrusive solid black towers.

I have a Meshify 2 for my main desktop with a 5800X and a 3090 for airflow, and a Define 7 for my home server with 10x HDDs, for quietness’s sake. The frustrating part now is opaque sided cases are lower volume parts, and usually more expensive as a result :/

Some retailers on my European corners, nice.

The Asus ap201 has a configuration thats all mesh rather than acrylic. It gets kinda tight though with external drives.

Looks indeed nice, thing is, getting a local vendor that actually has it with a good configuration.

Plain black box cases are not exactly rare, pretty much all major manufacturers produce them in masses

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/case/#sort=-rating&f=2&B=1...

You missed the part of not wanting to build a custom PC, and getting a computer in a local vendor.

That seems like a problem with your local vendors.

What do you mean by proper? Is it a synonym for good?

From the look of it evercases do not include last 15 years of discoveries around cable routing, variable screw slots for fans, etc. SilverStone case seems to be modern intestines in retro outfit.

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