ATCs, and now Windy! Soldam gone bust.

monkeybutt said:
Well, someone will bring out other cases with quality in mind. Just a matter of time.
Click to expand...

The market is not nearly as profitable as the light up monster head case market. :(

PC building has become more mainstream, so more younger kids have gotten into it, and instead of like me buying a £90 Xaser III they can buy a £4 to make £60 gaming case with a giant head on the front thats dire, but will hold a PC.

No market for the high end build quality cases, as you buy one and then it wont ever break. :p
 
They did a special edition case for a Shuttle barebones, the SB75S, which was available in North America. Not sure if it ever reached Europe.
 
The thing is though, who actually buys cases? It's easy to think that people build their own PCs and the percentage of people that do this is going to rise forever. I can tell you now you are in a tiny minority. It's all well and good having a Lian-Li built like a tank, but I'd rather do a hardware service job on an OEM case. Those customed designed Optiplex and ThinkCentre cases just totally lend themselves to easy access, so much that the fact they aren't quite built as well doesn't matter - they are only holding computers, after all.
 
Last edited:
Agree completely with the largest amount of the market uses generic cases, that will be built in once and maybe serviced once.

But subject them to 20 builds, and they wont take it. But they were not designed for that afterall.
 
The upgrade market isn't big enough to make it worth putting 20 builds in a single case. I doubt anyone here has put 20 builds into a single case. Even if you replaced your PC twice a year that's still a case that you bought 10 years ago.

Does a case need to be built to take 20 builds? As far as I care, if it gives easy access to what's inside, that's good enough. The case gets chucked out with the machine.
 
I know quite a lot of cases that have had 10+ builds, if you think 1 build per user, and the case being around 10th hand...

Each to their own, but a quality case can improve the overall feel of your pc, from a cheap generic one to one you think is more appealing.

Generic Case = £30.
Lian Li PC7+ = £53.
Antec Super Lanboy = £33.

They are not THAT much more expensive, but I will agree with you that you need more money than sense to buy a case above the PC7+ price bracket for anything but a specialised rig.
 
Caged said:
The upgrade market isn't big enough to make it worth putting 20 builds in a single case. I doubt anyone here has put 20 builds into a single case. Even if you replaced your PC twice a year that's still a case that you bought 10 years ago.

Does a case need to be built to take 20 builds? As far as I care, if it gives easy access to what's inside, that's good enough. The case gets chucked out with the machine.
Click to expand...

I think the idea is that they can take 20 builds, not that you will necessarily do it. At the end of the day, if you look at PC cases from your prospective (which is most consumers), then a PC is just a white good that will come and go, case and all, which is fine if your not interested.

However, you did ask who buys these cases, and yes, the answer is enthusiasts. We know that these cases won't be around for ever as computers change, but the current issue is the falling demand and profit margins of the high end cases, which appeal to a tiny percentage of the already small percentage who buy custom PC cases!

Windy isn't really that much of a loss and won't really effect us. However, I think it shows that these companies are in a much more precarious market then some of us realise.
 
Alu_ATC from our talk about Soldam and ATCs and me saying they had a year left in them maybe, I was miles off, only had 12 hours left in them!

Has been a bit of a wakeup for me really, Lian Li and Silverstone are in a slightly better position, but they will either need to improve the profit margin on their cases by reducing quality or upping already comparatively high prices just to make enough money. (Lian Li especially).

I am worried that the case market may have peaked with the v1000 / TJ07 / S80 and the way foreward is more along the lines of the Akasa Eclipse. Sad but could turn out to be true. :(
 
I think the future for Lian Li and Silverstone is going to be a return to cases all built on the same chassis but with different external features. e.g. the ATCS 201, 111, etc. They were the same internal chassis and had different external looks. But I think it will have to go further than that. You'll see maybe three or four variants on the same model to save costs.
 
Or they will lower their standards to increase profit on each case.

Built poorly, sell more, sell replacements and spares.

Sad, but it would work aswell.
 
Soldam seem to be back in production. Checked them while going through old bookmarks, and they're taking orders.

Had no reply to an enquiry e-mail I sent over a month ago. So unless you got someone who can buy one on your behalf and send it on to you, you're stuffed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom