#pc cases

I'm a Mac guy, and I prefer MacOS for most of the subtle power user aspects that make it much more pleasant to use.

That said, most of the apps I use are cross-platform now, and I like the idea of expandability and modularity. I like having a speedy CPU, but I don't need a hyper-powerful graphics card. I like being able to add more USB-C and Ethernet ports if I need them, internal storage instead of a rats' nest of boxes on my desktop, etc.

One of the reasons I haven't made the switch is partly the allure of the Apple ecosystem (device integration, Apple ID and iCloud sync, security, etc.), but also the fact that there are maybe two cases on the market that don't look like they were designed to appeal to teenage boys or are bland cubes aimed at cost-cutting IT departments.

One is the Jonsplus i400, which came out last year, and was such an instant hit, it's sold out everywhere and you can't buy it.

I wish the top edges of the side panels were silver for an unbroken line, but other than that, it's a pretty well-thought-out case designed for vertical ventilation. It's minimal, not distracting, and flexible.

The other one is the IQUNIX ZX-1, which won a Red Dot design award.

It's similar to the Jonsplus in that it's a vertical-ventilation case, but designed for the smaller Mini ITX form factor. And it comes in non-eye-searing color combinations!.

There's coral/white, navy blue, forest green, space grey, and black. Just a subtle power button on the front, some connectivity near the top front edge, that's it. The side panel has an interesting pattern of holes in a subtle gradient of sizes, so it's not boring.

Design by subtraction

What's fascinating about these kinds of cases is what they don't have. No RGB lighting. No Xtreme Mountain Dew® Transformers© GamerBro™ angular-pointy-spiky aesthetic.

yes, this is a real case you can buy at newegg

No dumb branding stickers or logos. No tempered-glass side doors to show off the plumbing of your system, like it's some sort of fluid dynamics experiment in your graduate level engineering lab.

oh, Fractal, you are so close to getting it right...

There's such a pent-up demand for simple, clean case design, that when a project launched on Indiegogo for a clone of the 2019 Apple Mac Pro tower case - that had really nice, well-thought-out internal design - it received massive amounts of support and hype from tech vloggers.

The project fizzled for various reasons, the project was frozen, lots of people seem to have lost their money. This has made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered to have been a bad move.

Brands: Lost in the (consulting) sauce

Brand-name PC makers like Lenovo, Acer, HP and others occasionally do a model with a nice, minimal design, like this HP Envy from 2022:

But the issue with most mass-market PC brands is that they have absolutely no design coherence.

Here's a sampling of HP desktop computers.

Top row, left to right: HP Victus and HP Omen high-end gaming PCs; HP Pro desktop from their business line.

Second row: HP Z8 pro workstation; another HP Envy gaming model; HP Pavilion home computer.

Other than some surface similarities in port layout and case sizing / rounded corners, would you say, at first glance, that these are all products of the same company?

A company that can't even decide what logo it wants to use?

I could get into a whole side discussion about PC market segmentation, because in theory this is all about trying to appeal to different market categories and hit specific price points... but anyway.

Design maturity

When we talk about design maturity, it means that not only is design represented at the highest levels of an organization, it's that design is seen as fundamental to the success of the organization, design is part of every function, every product, every cross-team collaboration; it's how it differentiates itself from competitors.

Google and Microsoft both have common design languages for software and web applications, Material Design and Fluent UI, respectively. They're quite good!

That said, I can't really point to any physical products that are consistently, identifiably "Google-y" or "HP-y" or "Microsoft-y".

Many of them contract their industrial design out to specialized agencies like Lunar Design, but don't actually cultivate their own internal physical design functions aside from engineering; they see the outside as decoration, not a statement of values.

IBM: Good design is good business

Mid-century, IBM hired architect Eliot Noyes to lead their design program; his motto was "Good design is good business." Iconic IBM products like the Selectric typewriter, with its solid metal case, friendly curves, and great typing feel were products of his era. He hired the legendary graphic designer Paul Rand to refine the branding.

When they launched the ThinkPad, industrial designer Richard Sapper made it a sleek black slab, but with a soft-touch rubberized surface, a premium keyboard, and the innovative TrackPoint pointer.

John Karidis extended that design on the ThinkPad 701, with the clever "butterfly" unfolding keyboard that allowed the laptop itself to be more compact, but still give the user a full-size typing experience.

There's still a strong culture of design at IBM, but it's migrated mostly over to the software side, now that they don't really make hardware anymore.

Tech Guide: Some of the Best PC Cases for Your Gaming PC

Building your gaming PC is a confusing process for newbies, but if you know what you are doing, then it’s quite fun. Because of this global pandemic, a lot of us can’t go outside our houses. Most of the people’s job requires working from their home, and that’s why they need a decent PC, especially if your job is graphic designing, 3D rendering, game streamer and other tasks that require high-end…