PC Hardware Design Sucks

Sure, pick the silliest-looking case you can find and claim it's a typical PC.

Apple is able to make everything slot into the motherboard because they control the design of every part, and sell enough volume in that exact configuration. There's no standard place on the motherboard for your hard disk connections, so you can't do the same for arbitrary motherboards.

You could sell a PC case that only took one motherboard, one that hard drives slotted directly. But realistically, once you've chosen the motherboard that severely constrains your choice of processor, and probably memory as well. It would mean giving up everything that makes the PC great.

And really, who cares? The engine bay of my car is pretty ugly too, but it's not like I'm showing it to guests; when I pop the hood it's because there's a specific problem I want to fix, and as long as it all works it doesn't matter that it looks like a mess. The inside of my PC is exactly the same.

That is trolling. The cable problem and ease of access has been solved, my rather modest PC case (Carbide 500R) has place to accomodate everything with not a single cable showing or interfering with the airflow. And I somehow manages to put there the mighty D-14 as a cpu cooler.

Every decent case made in the last 5 years have very easy access to the CPU and very good cable management. Also we have detachable hdd cages and place for insanely huge VGA cards.

Of course building this kind of rig requires modest skills. Like being able to build anything from lego.

There's plenty of room in the market for both design philosophies: ugly beige boxes, sleek designer aluminum enclosures, and everything in between.

FWIW, I do think PC cases in general have evolved somewhat from the ugly beige boxes of the late 90's.

The alienware PC is strictly designed to appeal to teenage boys with a penchant for bloody first person shooters-- and guess what, there's room in the market for that niche too.

Turning my $40 beige box into scrap metal at each motherboard upgrade is a ridiculous solution to a non-problem.

> That big silver box is the CPU. You can get them with dual CPUs too.

Not from the screwdriver shop up the street, I can't. Non-commodity hardware deters tinkering. Industrial design that promotes learned helplessness is so flawed as to verge on unethical.