It's long overdue for me to build a new desktop. My current is a 4790k, so no DDR4 (much less 5), no TPM2, and I sacrificed half of my PCIe lanes to install a card with USB C and 3.0 (or 3.1?) ports, even though I'm sporting an Ati 6900 XT.
Main issues: I MUST have a BD burner/player. I currently have 2, in fact (one BD, and a slightly faster DVDRW).
My current case doesn't have any USB C connectors or 3.1 connectors in front. It has 2 2.0 and 2 3.0. I would like to modernize that.
I also use mechanical 3.5HDDs. MAME alone is enough reason to not want a completely M.2 setup... and I currently use like 5 HDDs, and 1 SSD (no M.2), on top of my 2 optical drives. I guess I can live with 1 optical drive, but I'm not ready to get rid of all of that mechanical storage.
Current case is a beast, as you'd expect from 8 SATA devices running... Storm Trooper case.
So what would you guys replace that with?
EDIT: I Guess I can afford to get an M.2 to replace the SSD, and if I must go down to 1 optical, I could do that, leaving 6 SATA devices.
Just broke my personal record for number of consecutive days without dying!
This is the main issue with today's cases. Either not enough 3.5" slots, or no 5.25" slot for an optical drive... I wish I could simply update the front connections on my current case. Even if I could, it wouldn't be "simply" lol
Just broke my personal record for number of consecutive days without dying!
I've had a 1/2 dozen cases so far but the Rosewill Line-M Micro ATX Mini Tower Case is my current and favorite:
For internal storage I've got a blue-ray drive in the top 5.25 bay, a 128GB SSD for the OS and a 1TB M.2 drive for emulation-related stuff. Also have a couple of 256GB thumbdrives where I offload stuff when necessary.
It's very cramped but has forced me to rethink my needs. I drastically cut down my porn downloading so haven't gotten additional hard drives in a few years. For my existing hard drives, I insert them into two 2-slot USB hard drive bays as needed. I like that they're not powered on constantly like when I had them installed internally.
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A story of one man and his obsession with the female anatomy.
Investigate removing the ports from the case and replacing them with the ones you want. I don't know that they're the same size, but it might work. I also don't know if they're removable from a particular case.
USB3 variants have different internal connectors. 3.0 may just be faster type A, not C. Whatever way you go, make sure that what's on your mobo matches what you add, or keep using the PCIe solution. I'm guessing it needs PCIe x4, so you're using a PCIe x16 for it, with all the PCIe x1 slots sitting there just taking up space. You don't want multiple modern graphics cards anyway, unless you're doing something particularly exotic.
Cases with a lot of external-facing drive bays are available, though rare (I found 1 with 6 5.25" bays on Newegg), and they'll almost certainly not have USB-C on them. New cases are made with the intention of having multiple fans or an AIO liquid cooler on the front, so they largely give up that space. Really wide cases?
OK, I've been at this long enough that I've forgotten what it says. Enough.
Their "Define" series are visually gorgeous and extremely well laid out inside, plus they have an advantage of mostly favoring thumbscrew-type fasteners internally.
The Define R6 standard model is what I've currently got, it has 1 dedicated external 5.25" slot and bracket, includes 6 universal 3.5"/2.5" brackets with mounting points for up to 5 more, and includes 2 dedicated 2.5" brackets with mounting points for up to 2 more.
The most recent model, the Define 7, has an "XL" model which has two external 5.25" mounts, and can house up to 18 universal 3.5"/2.5" brackets, and 5 dedicated 2.5" brackets.
Combine a Define-series case with a good modular PSU from "be quiet!", a beefy Noctua CPU cooler so you can keep the fan RPMs down, and a high-diameter case fan or two, and you'll end up with a machine that's clean inside, and dead silent outside.
I first went with Fractal Design when I built a machine back in 2015, and have stuck with them ever since because of just how trouble-free they've been.
Edit: For reference, my current machine has an AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (16 cores, 32 threads, Zen 2) and a Zotac RTX 3080 GPU. Even running full tilt on benchmarks, I can't even hear the machine running when combined with all the above bits.
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