Is real case modding dead?

  • Thread starter Thread starter DHR
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Too many options nowadays for cases, so no much appeal for all the cost and hassle.
Some new projects are beautiful though, but very expensive as the main reason is aesthetics.
Back then, I remember from spray painting black the interior of a crappy TT case, spray painting optical drives, rearrange pins to lock fans on 7V or 5V instead of 12V, adding a side glass to window to a Enhtoo Primo, etc. even a PC in a desk…
Cold cathodes, swappable rings on Corsair fans (red, blue), bay reservoir, bay controllers… a blast from the past for sure.
 
Drumroll said:
Some new projects are beautiful though, but very expensive as the main reason is aesthetics.
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This is one of the main reasons - there's just little need to do anything overly extreme these days. I built my watercooled loop, but the need was principally aesthetics and even then, the majority of what I needed to do could be achieved with off the shelf parts. The most I did was drill a hole in the back of the case for a drain port and 3d print some parts, but there was no need for case modification.

Long gone are the beige boxes - New cases these days appear to be mainly made of glass anyway, so there's not much you can do to them anyway! (and yes I own a o11D XL and yes I want one of the new cases that have the borderless glass - these things are just too pretty!)
 
So many nice cases available off the shelf these days along with many different options for fans there doesn’t seem a lot of point.

Air cooling has narrowed the gap v water considerably too along with off shelf AIO’s fewer are spending hundreds and hundreds on a loop just to look smart.

The diy element has disappeared on one of my other hobbies too and kind of miss it.
 
I suppose it's a shift from sort of, cottage industry beginnings to fully fledged business now. I do miss it, I spent hours checking out what other people were doing back then.
 
Yeah its changed, as has the whole scene as things become easily available, I don't mean to brag but my rounded IDE cables were the bomb :D
 
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Many of the things we used to do have since been adopted by the manufacturers themselves. I’m not complaining, my H9 flow case is beyond anything I would have dreamed of when I started with PCs.
 
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I managed to pickup a old ABIT Athlon XP board so I'm thinking an old school case modded build may be on the cards

I think I only had an 3200, the mobile chips were meant to be great overclockers though, tempted to try and source one for the Abit... and era accurate case though Likely a struggle.
 
DHR said:
I managed to pickup a old ABIT Athlon XP board so I'm thinking an old school case modded build may be on the cards

I think I only had an 3200, the mobile chips were meant to be great overclockers though, tempted to try and source one for the Abit... and era accurate case though Likely a struggle.
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Barton mobile 2500XP, DFI Lanparty (nforce 2 ultra 400), 2x256mb Corsair BH-5. I was in the 4k memory bandwidth club with 250mhz FSB 1:1 on the RAM :D

Swiftech watercooling and a rattle can sprayed antec!
 
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Most mods I remember back in the day were simple things that are kind of standard nowadays. Black case interiors, windowed panels and appropriately placed fan holes.
 
Those days were the heydays, some friends thought I was nuts with some of my mods.

Remember the fad of completely clear acrylic cases? Yes, I had one of those, no hiding the IDE cables no matter how round they got! I even designed and built my own :D.

I'm trying not to think that my latest case and it's mods might be last PC I build with modding in mind.

I think the reason why case modding is becoming a dying art is a combination of case manufacturers doing most of the hard work for you, the cost of modding (cases, materials, tools etc) and the latest generation just not being interested or too lazy :D.
 
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DHR said:
Overclocking I get, but modding, is it just a lack of need or creativity? Suppose I only started in order to quieten my deltec fan down, get a case window and mess with airflow really.

Some of the case stuff the nerdforge team have done aesthetically is mind-blowing, but in saying that I've kind of answered my own question. I think it's the combination of needing to do something to solve a problem and wanting it to look good or different that I miss.
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I think a lot of it has probably become unnecessary, or limited. Considering a lot of higher end cases now are a good 50% glass to give uninterrupted visuals of the inside of the case, it kinda limits what you could actually do with it.

Also consider the removal of things like optical drives, fan controllers etc, internal lights. I think most people now prefer a cleaner/simplistic setup and having RGB embedded in the components instead.

Don't really see it coming back in any major form really. More people are opting for laptops or mini PCs etc because they can provide a good level of performance with a tiny footprint. I don't tend to upgrade often anymore and even I'm contemplating just having a mini PC on my desk instead.
 
I think its just lack of creativity, and manufacturers now adopting them as the norm when they build their cases etc

I remember when my brother used to build rigs, he modded a fighter jet type toggle switch to the back of his machine to reset the cmos, but now motherboards come with a switch to do this for you, or making cases more streamlined like an invisible slot loading drive bay or even modifying the power switch to use those bulgin ring light switches.

Gone are the days where you would mod a case to fit a radiator etc
 
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Ace Modder said:
Fan controllers with dials vs PWM software driven fan speeds.

Surely that's like having a car with a manual choke from the 80s or a new car that automates it with the ECU computer?
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Username doesn't check out :p

I still like the older aesthetics such as soft tubes, exposed copper and UV lighting/fluid.

It's partly why I've been reluctant (although tempted) to get a more modern case.
I've got an LCD Lamptron fan controller that I need to fit (to replace the akasa one I currently have, on which one channel only works at a specific speed and the LCD has degraded and is barely visible).

It was also very satisfying to cram 2x 240mm rads in a bitfenix shinobi - removed the HDD bays and cut the top fan mount out, suspending a home made fan grill just below it to allow room for a radiator with the top mesh still in place :)
 
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Enlight 7237, Virtual Hideout, Globalwin 802, Blow hole trim, Windows, CC lights. Man, the good old days.

I remember doing the Stealth CD Bezel mod on my Lian Li PC-60 trimming one of the bezels down, and gluing a small screw to the back of it. Press the corner to eject the tray. Also has a PC-70 with danger den water block and a chevy heater core as the rad to cool my Mobile Barton XP 2500+.
 
Thekwango said:
I had a lovely fan controller that fitted in one of the spare dvd trays (remember those!) that showed each fans rpm - there was something so ‘meaningful’ twisting the dials to adjust the fan speed.
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I still have a Scythe Kaze fan controller doing that for me. Could never find a sweet spot with the cooling profiles offered by the ASUS MB. As I always game with a headset on, I don’t mind a noisy PC and being sat in a room that’s 35°C in summer and 16°C in winter makes having instantly adjustable cooling very handy.
 
Wasnt there someone on here who moded pcs professionally ? I'm sure I remember seeing a post sometime in the last year, I think it was a one off for intel or someone
 
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