I hope I’m not in the wrong community but I really wanted to get some opinions on that.
In short, it may be a it of an unpopular opinion, but I really hate the gaming aesthetics with all the RGB lights and glass and in general how modern 3rd party PC cases look like. On the other hand I really enjoy the look of a most of the recent Lenovo ThinkCentres and ThinkStations as well as Fujitsu’s Esprimos. There is just something about this industrial matte black with red accents I can’t resist.
What I would love to do is to take some cheap Lenovo Thinkcentre, slap a GPU in it and have a budget Linux gaming PC, but the problem is most of the parts in these office systems are proprietary. It seems that I can’t easily upgrade the PSU to handle a proper GPU, nor can I swap the motherboard for a new one if I wanted to.
Does anyone have any idea on which models of ThinkCentres/Stations are easily upgradeable or of any cases that have this understated industrial office look to them? The only case I kinda like is the Fractal North, but I get really discouraged when I compare their prices to a fully equipped Lenovo office PC and it just doesn’t look as good.
Also, I’ve looked into Lenovo Legion and HP Omen prebuilts, and while they’re not as bad a 3rd party cases, I just don’t like them as much as say a P520, which unfortunately comes with some awful proprietary motherboard supporting only Xeons from 2017.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the rant. I’d love to hear your opinions and suggestions.
My experience with Fractal mirrors yours. My Define R5, about eight years old, has housed Intel Core 2nd, 8th, and 12th gen builds. It is by far the oldest part of my primary gaming PC. It has no RGB, it’s well constructed, and it’s laid out with sound design principals that other good case manufacturers have now adopted. It’s been a joy and I don’t foresee replacing it any time soon.
I’ve considered upgrading it during each board swap. It’s currently housing a 12900k build and it does choke the cooler a little, but only a few degrees. Not nearly enough to validate a new case.
For someone who wants an aesthetically utilitarian case, and particularly like OP who is comfortable with it looking a bit dated, I would consider trying to find a used Fractal case locally. I get not wanting to spend that much on a case.