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Article "A call to PC case manufacturers – bring back 5.25in drive bays"

AnitaPeterson

AnitaPeterson

Diamond Member
This man gets it. There's no reason why we can't have modern cases with standard room for optical drives or peripherals like the SB Platinum breakout box.

"We can make room for screens spanning the gap between glass panels, huge lighting arrays, several unused PCIe slots, and multiple fan mounts all over the place. Is it too much to ask for a decent case with a front-facing drive bay as well?"

www.club386.com

A call to PC case manufacturers – bring back 5.25in drive bays | Club386

Drive bays aren't just about installing optical drives, but also expanding your PC with new ports and features.
www.club386.com www.club386.com
 
It's slim pickings for sure. There are 2 Phantek full towers Newegg still carries. I have an OG model about a decade old now, with the acrylic window, to which I added a LG BD burner. Removed the HDD cages to fit my GPU.
 
I'll probably grab the Phanteks Enthoo Pro for my next build. Fractal has the Pop Air and older Focus G.The bigger problem right now is the optical drive manufacturers not making drives. I managed to grab a Pioneer BDR-S13UBK and a Pioneer BDR-XD08S for decent prices. There's a few Pioneers on Amazon from 3rd parties at $200 and up. The XD08 drives, looks like the stock was bought up by Billycar (1500+ units) and crossflashed for UHD for around $350 (makemkv forums).
 
Here's an option: Fractal Design Define R5. It's still in production. If you don't have a high power GPU, it's fine.
Price has only gone up $20 since I bought it. Less than inflation!

Oh - he mentions he's still using an R6 for that reason. Well, that's out of production
 
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gdansk said:
Here's an option: Fractal Design Define R5. It's still in production. If you don't have a high power GPU, it's fine.
Price has only gone up $20 since I bought it. Less than inflation!

Oh - he mentions he's still using an R6 for that reason. Well, that's out of production
Click to expand...
Been using my R6 since January 2021. No reason I can't keep using it for many more years and builds. Personally, I don't see anything these days built as well, and lined completely with sound deadener.

Used my previous Antec SX-800 for 20 years as well, it would also still work fine today.

But drives are disappearing from the market. A Liteon DVD burner used to be $14, now they are $50+, when you can find them. Not many options either. I bought a couple spares in 2019 when I first noticed supply drying up, and prices rising, for $20 each.
 
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AnitaPeterson said:
This man gets it. There's no reason why we can't have modern cases with standard room for optical drives or peripherals like the SB Platinum breakout box.

"We can make room for screens spanning the gap between glass panels, huge lighting arrays, several unused PCIe slots, and multiple fan mounts all over the place. Is it too much to ask for a decent case with a front-facing drive bay as well?"

www.club386.com

A call to PC case manufacturers – bring back 5.25in drive bays | Club386

Drive bays aren't just about installing optical drives, but also expanding your PC with new ports and features.
www.club386.com www.club386.com
Click to expand...
Meanwhile, I asked in another thread whether anyone can see any SATA optical drives for sale.

Fractal Design Focus G case here, still available to buy new. Fine wrt 5.25" bays (I'm using both), but IMO to use both 3.5" bays, one would have to commit crimes against cabling. It's also got a 2.5" bay tucked behind the PSU that I'm probably never going to use.
 
I don't get it at all. Is this a case of FOMO?

I'm not a youtube queen, so I don't need my cases to be display pieces that I beg people to admire. 😉

Point being, why does anyone over, say 20 years old, need to buy a new case? I mean among the tech literate people on forums like this one.

Do you just throw away perfectly good cases in favor of whatever seems more fashionable at the moment?

I have thrown away /recycled many cases, but not to buy new, was just about keeping the pick of the litter once the industry switched to ATX and then stayed there for so long.

SO... many of the cases I kept, don't have USB3 bezel ports. I don't keep cases on my desk, is just a waste of desk space, so a USB3 hub makes more sense.

Likewise, if you have your case buffered by desk/wall/etc, you don't need a half dozen fans to keep airflow under an audible hearing limit, can run them at a little higher RPM and still not hear them above background noise - unless you have some OCD about noise and if so, I'd hate to live that far from civilization that this is possible to attain.

I don't want to insult people but this is a colossal waste, nobody needs to buy new cases today with so many out there unless building a very unique system where standard cases won't work... and paying a premium for a Fractal Define R6 then pretending it's so dated that it deserves an article - it's madness.

Does no one understand standards, cooling, or just wants some shiny new toy - the latter I can accept and agree with,, we all like our toys if it were a matter of it being smack dab in front of me on my desk, which is the worst outcome I could imagine for my purposes.

I shove my antiquated cases out of the way where I don't hear or see them, and cannot justify buying the latest case when what I have work fine.

Just sayin', if you have been building systems over decades like many of us have, how can you not have a spare usable case and need to buy one?

Anyway, at least I agree that the 5.25" bay should continue to exist, because you can always adapt something smaller to fit into a larger bay but not the other way around. Heh, in one system I have a 4x SSD raid array in a 5.25" bay, where I just took a couple pieces of plastic for side plates and put holes in for screws to hold the SSDs together as a unit. It didn't even need to especially latch into the drive bay, just to sit there because SSDs don't move around in use. In retrospect that was a waste of time, when I could have just duct taped them together. Just kidding.

Who out there is trying to claim that they need the latest case design for some legitimate reason? If you're going for an o'c record and need water blocks, liquid nitrogen or similar, okay then, but for everyone else, how do you justify the waste of discarding ATX cases and continually buying new ones and pretending that is necessary?

I do realize everyone has a different situation, some people are selling their whole old systems so they need a new case, and some people are duped by marketing, and some just want the visual effect, but it strikes me as ironic that I so often see people who have philosophical problems with seeing *wires* because they want a clean looking setup, but then they want to see their case?


To me it has almost nothing to do with support of optical drives, rather it's about ridiculous waste of existing cases that just happen to have the bays for them. Even some OEM case from the year 2000, it's going to have a 5.25" bay, and if it doesn't have ample HDD bays, what does that really matter? Who is putting a boatload of 3.5" HDDs in their extra fancy modern case where they'd want the 5.25" instead of 3.5" case rack space? As soon as I ask that, someone's going to tell me that they do this, but that's what a separate NAS box is for.

This is just one opinion. I'm good at fabricating what I need and some people aren't set up for that, but in the back of my mind it seems more about ego, about creating something that looks pretty when I'd rather not have a lit up monolith in my eyesight at all. YMMV. [/rant]
 
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@mindless1

Most of the ATX cases I've used for computer builds (for myself / others) are not large compared to what has been available, but a single case uses up a fair bit of space, let alone storing an entirely empty case/s in a manner that shields it from the elements sufficiently for let's say a decade before it *may* get used again. With rising rents and house prices, the idea of storing such an item in say 2015 or earlier (when 5.25/3.5 bays were still standard features) in case the industry decides to work against the strengths of the desktop form factor in favour of bling bling would have been absurd.

There have also been advancements over the years like cases no longer using lead, or leaving the CPU backplate open for easy access, or sufficient room given for what once would have been an absurdly huge HSF.

Knowing what I know now, using an old ATX case versus my Fractal Design Focus G would have been a more compelling argument (though I still would have had to saw off many of the 3.5" bays to make room for a larger graphics card, and DIY is not my strong suit), but for example my Haswell build was in a case with a power button so notoriously fragile that I bought a stack of spare power buttons from Cooler Master and I felt that committing to a case with such an obvious flaw (and the dwindling stack of power buttons as I used the same case for many computer builds over the years), seemed like a very silly idea. Also I sold my Haswell rig after I migrated to AMD7000.

Also, probably >90% of the cases I've bought over the years have been £30-£40. Knowing then what I know now, then back then I might have looked high and low for something for myself which was somewhat better quality and make it the case that I'll never need to replace again, but then I've seen plenty of bad designs in cases over the years and good quality is not easy to discern by looking at some publicity photos of a case, for example realising afterwards that they've used some kind of awkward arrangement making it nigh-impossible to replace say the front I/O panel.

Given also my time-sensitive (read: business) need for my PC, the idea of taking my Haswell rig out of action so I could build my AMD7000 rig seemed pretty silly for the sake of £50-£60.

I still have a now essentially obsolete spare AM3-era PC I built in a circa 2010 case that's a bit better than my old one (a sturdy power button for starters), which I will probably put into storage once I gut that PC.
 
^ I always keep a couple of spare cases so a new build (to replace something in service) doesn't disrupt what I'm replacing. Everyone values their storage space differently, but I value having some and putting it to use for things I will reuse. What's that old saying, as soon as you throw something away, THEN is when you're going to need it?

No longer using lead? I am in favor of lead paint *for certain applications* but I am doubtful that any of my cases ever had any lead, unless you count the solder on a PCB for a front bezel I/O or power/LEDs, and I'm even more in favor of solder with lead in it.

Regardless I don't have children or pets chewing on my computer cases and as far as the environmental impact, is it worse to have a case with lead paint, or worse to put it in a landfill?m I can agree with not producing new products with lead, but not at all with abandoning anything that already had that lead. IMO lead is mostly a concern for parents with young children where they have lead paint chipping off the walls and that's not relevant.

I've got the storage space for a few cases among many other workshop related materials, and if I had to guess, my oldest case still in use *at the moment* is a circa '00 Enlight EN7237. IIRC I replaced the 3.5" internal HDD rack along with the 2 x 3.5" external portion for a 5 bay rack, so including the 4 x 5.25's it's got 9 x 3.5" drive capacity without being ridiculously large. I actually had a few of those EN7237 but got rid of the ones with an inverted U-shaped shell that serves as the left and right side panels while their later designs had separately removable panels. I think I paid an old friend at a computer shop, about $5 a pop for those used.

Supposed improvements in modern cases don't fill any need that I have. I'm doing a build, using it, then replacing it every few years. Nothing about my older cases makes that any more difficult, besides the very old ones that I put (cut out or replaced a panel to facilitate) larger fan mounts on, which was a one time thing and then they're set till... the industry does away with ATX.
 
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Just get an external enclosure...or an external drive. I have both. My Be Quiet Dark Base Pro 900 rev.2 has the option for 5.25" drives, but I'd rather have the 3rd front fan.
 
I've got a couple of cases that I have on storage racks. Cooler Master ATC200. It was an all aluminum case that came out in 2000. Will use that for a retro build. I think I have an Abit Socket A board in that one. The other is an Antec P183 with my late wife's build in in. I think that was FM2. Plus, I havea Define 7 with an LG BluRay. I even have a stack of PATA burners. But I just don't use them any longer. I suppose I will have to use one if I build a retro machine.
 
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