>>14130Not exclusively. Aesthetics are certainly important to many but a more expensive case often has different properties in other ways in terms of materials, function/capability, and in some cases manufacturing and other factors that influence its price.
>>14212I'm from this era. There were a lot of differences back then and aside from some of the more extensive mods (often done for shows, LAN events and more ) the features and support that we used to have to mod in at considerable expense were eventually adopted into new classes of cases for enthusiasts which was generally a good thing. However, the increasing financial and technical accessibility of PC gaming in the 2000s and definitely by the 2010s meant that things evolved but not always for the best. There's a lot more to discuss about the changes since that era, but its not as simple as most make it out to be.
>>21216Most office cases were made with horrid compatibility for components (often using non-standard mobos, PSUs and others at times), bad cooling potential and the like. They were meant for massmarket, price point focused for businesses. I think one could pick enthusiast cases from older eras that had better features and similar aesthetics. For instance, I had the LianLi 6070A in one of my early custom builds which was full aluminum (old LianLi was full aluminum, modern LianLi is sadly often aluminum only on the outside and steel structure or other materials) and had a very clean aesthetic
>Gamer AestheticA lot of this is really just contrarianism because it has become more common. Its just like hating RGB LEDs. Back in the day we would have killed for addressable RGB that was standardized and worked. Sure, people who leave everything looking like rainbow vomit isn't the look I prefer, but the "I'm going to go out of my way to not have any LEDs because I am a mature sophisticated person unlike those GAMERS" contingent strikes me as trying way too hard and looks ridiculous. Just about every set of decent RGB features can be turned off entirely or controlled to whatever color profile you wish. You want a single color or two complimentary ones? Go for it it. Sometimes its actually useful, such as being mapped to temperature or some other feature.
There have always been problems with "gamer" stuff including cases but its more legitimate stuff like build quality or bad design in other ways. Check out the "you want pray game" meme from back in the day when there were a lot of Alienware/chieftek plastic fascia super tower knockoffs, usually with not just ugly designs but bad cooling and worst of all often included a garbage no-name power supply that people would buy thinking "oh great, this is a wonderful deal" only to have tons of problems.
The problems with "gamer" cases these days is they seem to be not just focused on looks, but to the exclusion of wider features especially at higher price points. Some of this isn't exclusively "gamer" stuff necessarily, for instance as lacking 5.25" or certainly 3.5" bays is likely because there's less need for them overall, same with things like 3.5" HDD support in an era of M.2 SSD or perhaps 2.5" SSD "can just mount it on the back of some case structure" setups, but it can be grating to spend $200+ on a case and not have all those kinds of options. On the other side, there's wider support for things like liquid cooling which at least in AIO style has become more commonplace, though hardline custom systems are more for actual enthusiasts (or those willing to pay one to build the loop for them), likewise features like support for a vertical GPU mounting is more commonplace in higher end cases, but that is more of a display feature most of the time though in an era where fewer and fewer users seem to have many PCI-E slot devices (and boards have relatively limited slots) that's understandable. The biggest problems seem to be on lower end gamer cases they have major airflow issues , limited features and more but on higher end cases some of them are focused on the aesthetic to the point that there's only one way to build it "as intended" when in the old days enthusiast/gamer cases were all about modularity.
Pic related is an example of one of my favorite case manufacturers - CaseLabs. For decades they were the hyper-enthusiast wing of a larger company that did fabrication for top tier gov't and business contracts. Their cases were designed AND BUILT in the USA, made entirely of thick high grade aluminum, and near perfectly modular. Cases shipped flat packed and were assembled by the owner; no rivets, no stuff you didn't know about, nothing cheaped out. You could customize everything within a given model. Each panel often had multiple options (ie you could have a standard top, or you could have one that had a window, or one that was vented on one side , vented on both sides, vented on one side + a window on the other side, drop in radiator/fan mounts for whatever size along with the venting, extended deeper top with drop in radiator mounts etc), and the great thing was that when you use changed you could buy JUST that part if you needed it. They even had upgrades so when they offered a new features or even new tech for the I/O panel (ie no longer need USB2.0 and Firewire from the early 2000s, lets get your some USB 3.x etc) you weren't stuck. They were not cheap, not by far - depending on the model and size they could start from $300 to $800 (CaseLabs TX10 series was the largest production computer case in the world at a time!)
Unfortunately, what ended this was the company closing down. Making boutique enthusiast expensive cases wasn't easy and when Trump's aluminum tariff came up that was pretty much the final straw and they closed down. Lots of users lamented that there were very few like them, but there is some hope - a Swedish guy basically bought the rights to the name and all the schematics and is reviving the brand with the intention to keep all of what we loved about them. They're starting off making parts for existing owners, then replicating existing cases, then adding the new stuff, but we'll just have to see how it goes along.
Outside of CL, there are only a handful of boutique case manufacturers, especially those who manufacturer in developed nations and are focused on quality and openness. MountainMods soldiers on, a time capsule from the early/mid 2000s which is great in its own way but fell behind CaseLabs' developments and advancements in some regards. Sliger is noteworthy for their US fabrication and makes business focused rackmount hardware as well as a handful of cases, mostly smaller sized. They built out of steel with aluminum panels, are modular, and if your build will fit in their space constraints are a good option; pricing relatively reasonable too. If you want mITX ultra small form factors there are whole niche boutiques and crowdfunded projects for these often expensive enclosures, but they often commission bigger companies to fabricate and are closer to mech keyboard group buys than stable companies with consistent offerings. System76 I have very high hopes for overall as the company is generally pretty great, Linux/FOSS focused/friendly, and is making their hardware in the US. Up until recently their Thelio PCs came with a very nice case, but you couldn't buy them a la carte, just in a full build. A month or two back they released the Nebula line which are basically their Thelio cases and while on the plus side they're US made ethically, have a unique aesthetic and some other good features and components they're held back in one major way - they're SO purpose built for Thelio that they can't really handle even common cooling configurations for an enthusiast builder. Their largest ATX/EATX full tower is designed mostly for a Noctua air cooler an can't handle a radiator beyond 120mm and it has an option for SATA backplane modules but only for 2.5" drives? Anyone spending $350 on a full tower won't like it not supporting 3.5" HDDs or at least one 360mm radiator! Hopefully they can remedy this in time because the company is worth support, but despite good materials, construction, and documentation its design isn't really made for the needs of those enthusiasts most likely to purchase such a case. There are a few others
For most users the case is the least important part of the PC, just somewhere to keep the parts in the box so to speak, but they can really do so much more. We're seeing overall increased prices and changes in what is desirable, often for aesthetic to exclusion of other features, and big name mass production companies are making models and offering prices before thought unthinkable. A handful of boutique manufacturers try to do something different and I try to encourage and support those who favor a high level of modular construction, premium materials, openness ethos, and enthusiast feature sets.
So yeah. Cases.