Case for retro hardware

raldo

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Hi guys, I wanted to look for a used case for retro hardware ... from 2005 to 2009
I would need an atx case ... something that looks like the Thermaltake Soprano

Some idea?
 
Why not an actual Soprano? There are 3 on ebay.

Or the Thermaltake Armor (you can't have mine) or Xaser. Antec P180, 900/"Nine Hundred" 300/"Three Hundred" or 1200/"Twelve Hundred"
 
Oh lord. I had the Tsunami, earlier version of that case. It was... interesting. Yeah. We'll go with that.

Find a used P180 or the like.
 
Thanks to all guys, I really like the Soprano but I wanted to know if there were any other "must have" case... I remember there were houses with neon lights in front of them:whistle:... Does anyone know the names?
 
Just about every gaming PC from the mid early 00s has neon lights installed into them.
Yep. From sometime in the early 2000's onward there were the old cathode lights and things like that in them. We had lighting in the cases and windows as well. It just wasn't as sophisticated as it is now.

Cases from that era:
Lian-Li V1000 (I think)
Antec P180
Thermaltake Xaser III (I think that's what it was called.)
 
Classics were any of the Lian-Li ATX cases - those were the high-end models. P180 was the quiet, not lian-li price level solution. The rest escape my mind - most of the super creative ones really had compromises (like miserable acoustics or hinges that failed / etc).

The Thermaltakes aren't bad, they just don't hold up all that well in the long run. And the door lighting gets both old and annoying, and the door likes do open/close randomly on its own.
 
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Cable management wasn't sophisticated back then ether.:whistle:
@raldo
CCFLs were all the rage and so were UV reactive parts, so much so that some motherboards had UV reactive parts.
I have memories of old IDE cables... before buying the DKx790 i was looking for another reactive UV lanparty, but it's not easy and not very cheap
 
Anything DFI lanparty will not be cheap. You could try reaching out to the folks at hwbot, a lot of them have DFI boards someone may be willing to part for cheap, however it would likely be beat to hell and back. DFI boards a re know for being buggy so that may not be the best idea if you want something stable.
EPoX, jetway, ECS, msi and a few others also had UV reactive motherboards.
Thank you! very kind:)
 
Jetway 939gt4 comes to mind with the clown colors, red PCB and yellow/green slots ick.
Foxconn's own motherboards were awful in this regard. Jetway was terrible. ECS, PC-Chips and several others were no prize either. To be fair, GIGABYTE, MSI and ASUS had some ugly stuff too. It just wasn't as egregious as most of the rest.
 
Honestly I'm still very undecided ... I bought two asus 9600gt at a good price ($ 20), while the DFI and the processor $ 30....Now I need a case ...
 
I wanted to make a PC with old memories, and all the games from 2000 to 2009 ... like Unreal tournament 2003....
For now I have a 500gb "WD Black" ... I'll add something later. I chose that video card for the cost it had and also because it will be able to run any game ...
I needed a motherboard that was SATA, so I haven't gotten very far over the years ... also because I just didn't want a pentium 3 or pentium 4:banghead:
 
Speaking of hideous motherboards I found this pic in my Imgur:

gG5mOYrh.jpg

This is the kind of crap I had to look at when I started doing reviews at HardOCP back in the day.
 
We’re we all color blind back then?
Nope. We just didn't have a choice. It was the early days and most had black, green or orange colored PCB's with white or black slots on them. That was the norm and in the early days of "gaming" builds with cathode lights and windows, some companies thought this stuff would appeal to us. The fact is the vast majority of motherboard makers are in Taiwan and I don't think they understood our market and the gamer aesthetic. I think most were just trying to give themselves brand recognition more than anything. In a way it was a time of experimentation and a lot of it was regrettable on their part.
 
Nope. We just didn't have a choice. It was the early days and most had black, green or orange colored PCB's with white or black slots on them. That was the norm and in the early days of "gaming" builds with cathode lights and windows, some companies thought this stuff would appeal to us. The fact is the vast majority of motherboard makers are in Taiwan and I don't think they understood our market and the gamer aesthetic. I think most were just trying to give themselves brand recognition more than anything. In a way it was a time of experimentation and a lot of it was regrettable on their part.
I remember all the green. And ECS had purple. There were some red ones (ASUS), but my mind had somehow blanked most of the insane color schemes. Jesus.

I really do appreciate current designs. Black or white and muted colors, RGB sure but you can turn it off…. And I like motherboard shields too- looks cleaner and no hitting the board with a screwdriver.
 
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I remember all the green. And ECS had purple. There were some red ones (ASUS), but my mind had somehow blanked most of the insane color schemes. Jesus.

I really do appreciate current designs. Black or white and muted colors, RGB sure but you can turn it off…. And I like motherboard shields too- looks cleaner and no hitting the board with a screwdriver.
There were all manner of wild color schemes back in the day. As I said, I think it was for branding or it was for the Chinese market which is very different from ours in terms of aesthetic. That being said, I know that "red and black" gamer boards became all the rage over there long after it had diversified more here.
 
You could go with a chieftec dragon or one of the many clones of it, that is a classic case from that era.
 
You could go with a chieftec dragon or one of the many clones of it, that is a classic case from that era.

<3 my dragon. CM stacker 830 is a good choice but big. Both are kinda expensive used though with shipping. The antec 900 is also a solid choice, I've got one of those on "order." Fuck, do I really have 3 mid-late 2000 cases?
 
I thank everyone for the answers and for the curiosity ... I try to see what's on the market ... I also found a very nice "thermal tsunami dream".
Also the "dragon" and the "lian li PC-V1000"

As for the motherboard I still have problems finding all the drivers and the first PCI express slot has some problems ... I am forced to use the second PCI-Ex...:cry:

I'm almost tempted to open another post to ask you for some suggestions for a new setup...if the category of my post is binding
 
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All USB2s run at "USB1" speed probably because some incompatible or missing driver (bios settings ok) ... this motherboard is making me lose hope ...
surely I buy the case, but for the rest ... eheh ... I don't know
 
Speaking of hideous motherboards I found this pic in my Imgur:

View attachment 383270

This is the kind of crap I had to look at when I started doing reviews at HardOCP back in the day.
I don't really mind that to be honest lol. I like it more than the plastic rgb covered junk we have these days anyway. At the time that was released though I was running a black soyo dragon which was one of the few black boards back then.
 
I don't really mind that to be honest lol. I like it more than the plastic rgb covered junk we have these days anyway.
Well, there is no accounting for taste. You can shut the RGB lighting off or change the color scheme of RGB to suit your tastes. The subdued colors and monochromatic aesthetic of today is a vast improvement over what I can only describe as a color scheme inspired by the thought of throwing a clown into a wood chipper.
 
TBH Ill take a clown in a wood chipper over build with lots a flashing RGB lights any day. But I don't really like either TBH.
I'm not sure why RGB hurts some people's feelings or upsets them or whatever you want to call it. Again, if you turn it off you can have a clean, simple black and steel, black and gray or whatever board. Many of them aren't even clad in much if any plastic. There are also some motherboards that lack RGB lighting. The MSI MEG X570 Unify comes to mind
 
For you guys, said in friendship, is it better to leave the LanParty and try a different motherboard?
 
For you guys, said in friendship, is it better to leave the LanParty and try a different motherboard?

The DFI LanParty series boards are the last thing I'd ever recommend to anyone. I didn't like them then and I don't like them in hindsight.

I built many systems with those DFI LanParty motherboards and I do not remember them fondly. I personally thought of them as trash, which is an opinion that tends to upset people. DFI's quality was lackluster to the point where you could have five of the exact same model and they would all behave differently. Different boards of the same model didn't even perform the same with identical memory kits. Also, you often had to make adjustments in the BIOS to get the system stable and I'm not talking about overclocking either. This was often necessary at stock speeds. People would excuse this bullshit as it being a "tuner's board". It's nonsense. Even back then there were plenty of motherboards that were just as capable that didn't need tweaking to run at stock speeds and were far more consistent in terms of quality.

I also found some of them that wouldn't benchmark as well as another of the same board in an identical configuration. I wrote an article for HardOCP.com years ago titled: "The Top 5 Worst motherboards of All Time." One of the DFI LanParty boards made that list.
 
The DFI LanParty series boards are the last thing I'd ever recommend to anyone. I didn't like them then and I don't like them in hindsight.

I built many systems with those DFI LanParty motherboards and I do not remember them fondly. I personally thought of them as trash, which is an opinion that tends to upset people. DFI's quality was lackluster to the point where you could have five of the exact same model and they would all behave differently. Different boards of the same model didn't even perform the same with identical memory kits. Also, you often had to make adjustments in the BIOS to get the system stable and I'm not talking about overclocking either. This was often necessary at stock speeds. People would excuse this bullshit as it being a "tuner's board". It's nonsense. Even back then there were plenty of motherboards that were just as capable that didn't need tweaking to run at stock speeds and were far more consistent in terms of quality.

I also found some of them that wouldn't benchmark as well as another of the same board in an identical configuration. I wrote an article for HardOCP.com years ago titled: "The Top 5 Worst motherboards of All Time." One of the DFI LanParty boards made that list.
my god ahahha, this is one answer ... sometimes I have the problem you say at stock speeds. I will change motherboard
 
my god ahahha, this is one answer ... sometimes I have the problem you say at stock speeds. I will change motherboard
To be fair, many people have good experiences with these motherboards and swore by them back in the day. However, as a reviewer, system builder and repair technician, I've worked with far more individual samples than most people. That's shaped my opinion on those motherboards but some people haven't had the issues I have. Take those experiences for what you will.
 
To be fair, many people have good experiences with these motherboards and swore by them back in the day. However, as a reviewer, system builder and repair technician, I've worked with far more individual samples than most people. That's shaped my opinion on those motherboards but some people haven't had the issues I have. Take those experiences for what you will.
honest, thanks
 
I have the processor but not the motherboard...but I am in the right hands ahhaha:happy:
 
Thermaltake Soprano ( 2005 )

That what my Ryzen 7 3700x build is in , but I had the case since new and ran a socket 775 with the e5200 over clocked and a Radeon 4890XT both water cooled ..
 
An antec 1000 amg is the first case I built a system in. It was an awesome case at the time. Oh the memories...
 
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