I'm hoping someone can help me out. I will be building an Athlon 64 within the next month, and I have been looking for a plain, beige case with a 500 watt power supply for a good price. But all I see now on the Net is "gamer" cases with the alienware look, or aluminuum, and other radical looking cases.

Anyone know where I can find a plain looking case with 500 watt power supply?

Thanks,
Nick
nk54@uwrf.edu

You can find just about any kind of case on eBay. Have to be somewhat careful when buying ATX cases nowadays because the standards for I/O shields changed. Might end up with a big hole in the back of your case, which'll ruin its airflow characteristics -- you want to draw air from the front over the components, not from the back straight out the PSU. Anyway, the PSUs that come bundled with most cases are pretty crappy IMHO. If you're going to use the machine as a server (or even if you're not,) I highly recommend http://www.pcpowercooling.com/

The only problem I've ever had with the power supplys that come with my cases is the fan inside the power supply goes out. I remedied that problem though by buying a good quality fan for the p/s from Digikey.

Nick

I've always been happy with http://www.newegg.com you can search by color and if you want a window or not. You probably aren't going to find a case with a 500W power supply so I would plan on buying the power supply if you want one that big...

if you have any atx-compatible cases your fine, or any regular sized cases from pentium two up just add 500 whatt power supply, through the guts of the old comp in a box

Here's a picture of the two types of I/O shields. Most cheap ATX cases are older models and come with the first kind (on top.) Most new ATX mobos come with the second kind (on the bottom.)

And a decent vendor will supply both types with the case.(AOpen does , at least...)

Check out this list from TigerDirect... Click Me! The second one from the top is called "Just4PC 779 Pearl White Mid Tower - Game Server Case with 485W Power Supply". It's a plain-looking case (white, not beige), but it might just fit the bill for what you're wanting to do. (I'm actually thinking about starting with this one when I build my next server...)

HTH

I'm in the process of looking for a nice case for a computer I am looking to build that isn't bright green and completely covered in neon. I've found that antec have a few nice ones available. The pearl white one is nice aswell, I might go for that one in black.

Case

They also have some other Beige cases there...you can just browse though all of them you might have a hard time finding one with a 500watt you may need to by that seprate, hope that helps

The case LoungeLizard linked to is a good example of what I'm talking about. The reverse picture clearly shows the old style ATX I/O shield. You might get lucky and the mobo fits anyway, but if you get one with the integrated audio ports aligned vertically, as seems to be the norm these days, you're going to run into trouble.

Oh, and unless you really know what you're doing, I strongly advise against opening a power supply unit to replace the fan. There are capacitors in them that could shock you to death even when unplugged, no kidding.

TigerDirect has some cool bundles for cheap too. That might be fun to try.