Old School Computer Case for next build

[dandanflake]

I've been planning my next build for some time. I probably won't be building it for several more months yet. One of the biggest issues I've been having is deciding on a case. I'm debating on making one on Mountainmods, buying an In Win, or... possibly getting an old school case like an Addtronics 7890a, or something off of my old Gateway 2000. I'm planning on going big with this; I even considered a mineral oil machine (at which point I'd just buy a fishtank for my case), but I'm wondering what would be entailed with using a vintage case with modern enthusiast hardware?

[jdcarpe]

If it's really old, you may have to get creative with mounting things like the power supply and motherboard. As long as you're comfortable with sawing holes in the case, and drilling/tapping screw holes for mounting standoffs, you should be fine.

[dandanflake]

If it's really old, you may have to get creative with mounting things like the power supply and motherboard. As long as you're comfortable with sawing holes in the case, and drilling/tapping screw holes for mounting standoffs, you should be fine.

Yea that's no problem on my part. I'm wondering about cooling though. I might not be able to air cool with an older case given that I figure they really weren't designed back then to adequately handle the heat loads of today.

[SamirD]

You shouldn't have a problem with cooling as long as you have fans in the right place inside the case.  Cases haven't really changed all that much in the last 3 decades.   They still have vents to move air in and out, so as long as you have the fans, you'll be good. 

[Darkshado]

As long as it's ATX, the rest should be reasonably straightforward.

Consider which power supply you're going to use and how you plan on installing it since older cases aren't set up for now common bottom-mounted, outside-vented PSUs.

One other consideration is the lack of front-facing USB 3.0, often USB anything ports. That can be worked around with an internal flash card reader installed in a 3½" or 5¼" drive bay, lots of those have a built-in USB hub or pass-through ports.

Some models might also have audio or FireWire, if you care for those. Maybe someone's even made beige models, I haven't looked that hard, otherwise there's always paint.

If you don't mind drilling, you could get panel-mount connectors and DIY, maybe with a spare drive bay cover.

I've set aside an old 1999 vintage, small server / workstation style full-tower that originally housed our Pentium III 500 Mhz for a future build. When I get around to it (no ETA at the moment), I intend to have functional flash card, 3½", 5¼" and Zip 250 drives for the heck of it

I've already got the diskette drives and spare Molex connectors, and there's a few options for providing USB connectivity out there. (I know of the FC5025 and KryoFlux. CatWeasel seems difficult to source and compatibility with future motherboards is going to be a problem.)

I also obtained a circa 2006 beige mid-tower that housed a dead Athlon64. Not sure what I'm going to do with that one yet.

[tp4tissue]

Old cases are good,  because they've got alotta xtra steel inside.. which means you can put holes everywhere, and it's still quite sturdy..

[0100010]

Go 8080 or 8086 old.

[Red October]

Go 8080 or 8086 old.

Yes.  This.  I've always wanted to do this.  The big red switch on a 5155 feels like you're really powering up a serious piece of equipment.  Modern drives with black fronts will look fine; you'll have room for just about every drive you could want with the two full-height bays (room for 4 modern optical drives) and there are period-correct half-height had disk bezels and trays to put modern 3.5" hard disks.   Bonus points awarded for making one or both of the 5.25" drives work.  Double bonus points for getting a modern LCD into an IBM 3290 plasma display case.

[Leslieann]

How old are you talking?
Pretty much anything newer than 486 will be ATX, which means it will all bolt together (other than SSD). As for cooling, some of the older ones had good cooling, some were terrible.

Not many older than 486 were towers of any decent size, most were sold as desktops. If you want older, you really need to consider server towers. These have the added benefit of better cooling, however, don't be surprised if you pay far more for shipping as you do for the box. Also, these are getting harder and harder to find. They were getting rare 10 years ago and unlike many things, we don't keep old computers, and most with a system like that would recycle it due to data issues, especially these days.

As for the oil bath...
Pointless. Yes, it's neat, right up until the day you have a problem and spend the day filling, emptying and testing over and over . Not to mention you will probably never get all the oil out of the parts. Oh, and make sure no dust gets in and makes it conductive... Even water cooling is all but pointless today except for extreme overclocks, and even then a decent all in one setup would work in most cases, and next gen chips and cooling solutions are only going to reduce that further.

While I like the old big boxes, they're bulky and unnecessary, short of overclocking, you can fit the same power into a shoebox that is just as quiet and weighs 1/10th as much.

[Findecanor]

ATX started to come in the Pentium MMX era when Pentium II was new but still too expensive for most people. The  internal layouts of cases from back then were still to support the older AT form factor.

Another big change is that power supplies have changed from blowing air right through to blowing air from the top or bottom.
Back in the day, the power supply fan was the only case fan, and there weren't any mounts for other fans.
These days, the power supply has a separate airflow and cases have multiple fan mounts on both front, back and sometimes sides.

[tp4tissue]

How old are you talking?
Pretty much anything newer than 486 will be ATX, which means it will all bolt together (other than SSD). As for cooling, some of the older ones had good cooling, some were terrible.

Not many older than 486 were towers of any decent size, most were sold as desktops. If you want older, you really need to consider server towers. These have the added benefit of better cooling, however, don't be surprised if you pay far more for shipping as you do for the box. Also, these are getting harder and harder to find. They were getting rare 10 years ago and unlike many things, we don't keep old computers, and most with a system like that would recycle it due to data issues, especially these days.

As for the oil bath...
Pointless. Yes, it's neat, right up until the day you have a problem and spend the day filling, emptying and testing over and over . Not to mention you will probably never get all the oil out of the parts. Oh, and make sure no dust gets in and makes it conductive... Even water cooling is all but pointless today except for extreme overclocks, and even then a decent all in one setup would work in most cases, and next gen chips and cooling solutions are only going to reduce that further.

While I like the old big boxes, they're bulky and unnecessary, short of overclocking, you can fit the same power into a shoebox that is just as quiet and weighs 1/10th as much.

Water cooling still very relevant for Graphics cards..

Not so much on our quad core CPUs..

6/8 core can still very much use the water cooling.

[Findecanor]

Water cooling could become relevant for an old-school case if the case has an unusual layout and you can't get good airflow where you can fit the components: you could use water to move the heat to where the airflow is.

I started learning about water cooling because I had got a case for a vintage workstation... but it was too thin to fit a tower cooler and water-cooling seemed to be the best way to get good cooling. I did not follow through on the project though ... because I could not find any small fans that are good enough.

[tp4tissue]

Water cooling could become relevant for an old-school case if the case has an unusual layout and you can't get good airflow where you can fit the components: you could use water to move the heat to where the airflow is.

I started learning about water cooling because I had got a case for a vintage workstation... but it was too thin to fit a tower cooler and water-cooling seemed to be the best way to get good cooling. I did not follow through on the project though ... because I could not find any small fans that are good enough.

I actually dont' see a point to pursue Actual vintage cases.

Take any modern case that is squareish without round edges.. Paint it Beige-white,   and it'll look old-school..

[Findecanor]

Then you would miss out on drive bays. You don't see floppy drives any more for instance.

And not all vintage cases are created equal. In my case it was a purple SGI box. I could see mods of vintage IBM 8088 PCs or PowerPC-era Macs but most PC towers from the '90s onwards are just ugly.

BTW, this should be posted here:

Lengthy thread on Overclock.net:
OCN Beigemodders Club - From Trash to Treasure.

[tp4tissue]

Depending on how OLD you wanna go..

It makes more sense to get a modern case,  spray paint it that nice "beige"   and call it a day..


If you want OLD OLD OLD..  then you gotta go buy them..  but if you just want RETRO,  it makes ZERO sense to get the old atx cases, because of how much work they'd need from you drilling holes all over the place.

[Leslieann]

Water cooling still very relevant for Graphics cards..

Not so much on our quad core CPUs..

6/8 core can still very much use the water cooling.

Use, yes. Need, nope.
It's not like a decade ago where coolers were barely able to cope under the best of conditions. There is no cpu or gpus that "need" watercooling and even then, it's only due to marketing. You don't NEED watercooling unless you are pushing way beyond factory specs and most simply are not.

[tp4tissue]

Water cooling still very relevant for Graphics cards..

Not so much on our quad core CPUs..

6/8 core can still very much use the water cooling.

Use, yes. Need, nope.
It's not like a decade ago where coolers were barely able to cope under the best of conditions. There is no cpu or gpus that "need" watercooling and even then, it's only due to marketing. You don't NEED watercooling unless you are pushing way beyond factory specs and most simply are not.

the 8 cores are uncoolable without water @ just 4.6ghz, no way to get to 4.8ghz.

[Leslieann]

Water cooling still very relevant for Graphics cards..

Not so much on our quad core CPUs..

6/8 core can still very much use the water cooling.

Use, yes. Need, nope.
It's not like a decade ago where coolers were barely able to cope under the best of conditions. There is no cpu or gpus that "need" watercooling and even then, it's only due to marketing. You don't NEED watercooling unless you are pushing way beyond factory specs and most simply are not.

the 8 cores are uncoolable without water @ just 4.6ghz, no way to get to 4.8ghz.

As I said, way beyond factory specs.
For a 5960x, that's a 50% over factory clock and double the wattage. What do you expect when you are dumping 250-300 watts of heat out of something the size of a dime.

[Leslieann]

Water cooling still very relevant for Graphics cards..

Not so much on our quad core CPUs..

6/8 core can still very much use the water cooling.

Use, yes. Need, nope.
It's not like a decade ago where coolers were barely able to cope under the best of conditions. There is no cpu or gpus that "need" watercooling and even then, it's only due to marketing. You don't NEED watercooling unless you are pushing way beyond factory specs and most simply are not.

the 8 cores are uncoolable without water @ just 4.6ghz, no way to get to 4.8ghz.

At "just" 4.6? You don't say... 
A 5960X at 4.6 is more than a 50% overclock and is using twice the factory wattage, just what do you think constitutes "way beyond factory spec"?