New gaming PC U.S. ugly cases

justinroth

Active member
Hello all, I am looking at getting a new p.c. I'm not too worried about budget and I plan on getting a gtx 3070, 32G of Ram and an m.2 SSD. Aside from these I'm unsure but here's my thing....I don't want something that looks like a frigging transformer or something. Most of the places I've seen all have crazy ugly cases with led lights and all that business. The exception being this case from cyber power pc
CS-211-222_400.png
I like it aside from the clear side panel. Anyway, I've heard some bad things about cyber power pc and am wondering if anyone else may know of a better place to look?
 
You can always just buy a case from Amazon or something, and try and find the parts from there. You might have a hard time trying to find an RTX 3070, but everything else should be fine.

I personally hate "GaMiNg" PCs, and would rather just get a nice work PC (even a Mac - of which I use a base model 2017 MBP 15 for everything, and it works quite well). I am personally a console gamer, but still enjoy my time with Trainz when I can.

Personally, in "gAmInG" PCs, I hate RGB lighting (it honestly looks dumb), the design of these things (like you said, they look like something out of like Transformers) and the cost (it makes a 2019 Mac Pro - the cheese grater - look cheap ​in some cases). Just don't waste money on what you don't need - what I would advise is:

AMD Ryzen 7 Gen 5 Zen 3
32GB DDR4 3000MHz Corsair RAM (not RGB - thankfully)
GeForce RTX 3070 (if you can find one - if not, RTX 2080 Ti Founders, I think it supports RTX)
250GB Sabrent Rocket M.2 (OS drive) + 4TB Seagate Barracuda HDD (storage)
1000W Corsair PSU (whichever one you want)
Don't care about motherboard, case, cooler, or RGB

Even though I use a Mac (which I do so because I don't even play Trainz that much), I would recommend this.

Hope this helps.
 
As someone who just recently built a computer for the first time, a lot of Youtubers I watched recommended NZXT for people looking for pre-build or custom build PCs.
 
I have always been an Intel guy, is there a reason to switch to AMD? Also, why a "lesser" model GPU? I haven't done a whole lot of research on GPU's, the 3070 seemed right "price wise". I was also a little surprised to see mechanical HDD's around, I would've figured SSD's and price would eliminate the need to them. Does Trainz run fine on newer mechanical drives? It's been a bit since I've built a new computer...heck, I minored in I.T.. I've always been a gearhead when it comes to musical instrument stuff but never
when it comes to computers.
 
AMD vs Intel comes down to personal preference. AMD does perform better in certain areas compared to Intel and are usually cheaper. Personally I'd say go with who ever has the better deal.

GPUs have been in short supply as of late and many places have been price gouging on both the new and used market. I've been trying to get a 1650 super (~$170) and most places that have it in stock want $300 -$400. The 30 series GPUs were just recently released and are hard hard to come by.
 
I just had to re-build my computer, motherboard died, and all top end cpu and gpu are hard to find. I got a Ryzen 5 1500x as it was all I could find and pay for as I need new motherboard, cpu, and ram. My old board was 8 years old.
 
I pretty much use NewEgg exclusively for PC parts .. Resonable costs, and a large selection. As for CPU, I have found that the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 with a Nvidia 1050Ti runs TANE at Ultra settings just fine ...Your mileage may vary.
 
I actually thought the Edsel ws a great looking car, but anyway...ugly cases are the least of Alienware's problems nowadays.
 
Actually, over the years I have quite gotten used to them. Depends a bit on year and model, but I think there have been worse looking than the Edsel. Would be interesting to think how the look may have evolved over time. The new BMW 4 series grills don't do much for me.
 
Hello all, I am looking at getting a new p.c. I'm not too worried about budget and I plan on getting a gtx 3070, 32G of Ram and an m.2 SSD. Aside from these I'm unsure but here's my thing....I don't want something that looks like a frigging transformer or something. Most of the places I've seen all have crazy ugly cases with led lights and all that business. The exception being this case from cyber power pc
CS-211-222_400.png
I like it aside from the clear side panel. Anyway, I've heard some bad things about cyber power pc and am wondering if anyone else may know of a better place to look?

I got the NZXT version of that case, upon a few friend recommendations. Seems to be quite a good case.

peter
 
Here's a decent PC from DELL.

Dell XPS Desktop with up to 11th Gen Intel Processor | Dell USA

You can customize these too which is good. The case is pretty decent without weird latches, glowing crap, and break, snap, and snap and break clips. My brother got their i9 version last year from the kick and scratch department and there was nothing wrong with it for a lot less than the brand new ones.

Dell's customer service has become hellish by a lot of accounts. Linus's Tech Tips did a secret shopper recently and the experience with Dell was frightening.
 
Dell's customer service has become hellish by a lot of accounts. Linus's Tech Tips did a secret shopper recently and the experience with Dell was frightening.

Thanks. That's good to know, but sad to hear though because I used to purchase exclusively from Dell on the corporate side. While at my last job, I fired Lenovo due to poor tech support and canceled a 360K order and moved it to Dell. I have multiple Dell computers at home and they all work pretty well including one machine going on 10 years old now.
 
Thanks. That's good to know, but sad to hear though because I used to purchase exclusively from Dell on the corporate side. While at my last job, I fired Lenovo due to poor tech support and canceled a 360K order and moved it to Dell. I have multiple Dell computers at home and they all work pretty well including one machine going on 10 years old now.

My favourite was the IBM dealer who upgraded an IBM machine with genuine IBM gold plated memory, unfortunately the motherboard memory slots weren't gold plated. Two months later the motherboard had to be replaced.

I used to run three different companies to give managers a choice, being government we couldn't standardise on one vendor. I think 70% of our machines were Dell. I didn't have the power to cancel orders but I could remove you from our approved supplier list. Guess who got removed after I spoke to the relevant IBM salesperson with a list of problems and they didn't seem interested. Well I'd never brought even one of their machines had I? The managers of our five thousand users brought machines and they followed my recommendations if they had any sense.

Cheerio John
 
Hello all, I am looking at getting a new p.c. I'm not too worried about budget and I plan on getting a gtx 3070, 32G of Ram and an m.2 SSD. Aside from these I'm unsure but here's my thing....I don't want something that looks like a frigging transformer or something. Most of the places I've seen all have crazy ugly cases with led lights and all that business. The exception being this case from cyber power pc I like it aside from the clear side panel. Anyway, I've heard some bad things about cyber power pc and am wondering if anyone else may know of a better place to look?


With the situation right now getting some computer parts is difficult, especially GPU's, going through an SI (System Integrator) is not a bad idea. they have access to parts aside from the retail market , and while they have delays, their turnarounds can be substantially less than waiting to buy the part yourself. Some people are buying machines from SI's t o get the GPU they want , then removing it to place in their current build and just selling off the remainder of the new machine.

There are a lot of SI's you can look into besides Cyberpower, who's reputation is hit or miss. Origin, NZXT, Digital Storm, Redux and Maingear are some of the more reputable ones. I personally have used Maingear for 2 machines, soon to be a 3rd, and dealing with them has been a great experience. They all have pre configured machines at affordable prices or you can choose all your parts for a custom build.

It's cheaper to do it yourself, yes, but to me, the tradeoff is worth it.
 
My favourite was the IBM dealer who upgraded an IBM machine with genuine IBM gold plated memory, unfortunately the motherboard memory slots weren't gold plated. Two months later the motherboard had to be replaced.

I used to run three different companies to give managers a choice, being government we couldn't standardise on one vendor. I think 70% of our machines were Dell. I didn't have the power to cancel orders but I could remove you from our approved supplier list. Guess who got removed after I spoke to the relevant IBM salesperson with a list of problems and they didn't seem interested. Well I'd never brought even one of their machines had I? The managers of our five thousand users brought machines and they followed my recommendations if they had any sense.

Cheerio John

I've ran into a similar issue with some Lenovo desktops I supported. I found the same thing with their support. Back then I didn't have the power to cancel vendors, but in this company I called the shots. If a vendor treated me well they got my business. I wasn't out for any special deal, but what I did was expect the vendor I dealt with to treat us fairly. At this company, we had three approved vendors. Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba. We once used HP, but because the late Mark Hurd was fired from there and was the CEO of the company I worked for, HP was dropped as a vendor. This messed us up with printers because we could no longer get supplies and had to switch to another printer provider.

As a corporate customer, we got direct support from Lenovo's US repair center located in Atlanta. If there was a glitch with anything, they were there to help, well sort of. In this particular case, it was the usual dead hard disk. These disks died if you looked at them the wrong way, and in many cases, the error code was Error 00, which meant the drive wouldn't start. I called up support one day and read off the code. The cocky SOB on the other end called me a liar then accused me of requesting an "extra" hard disk. I told him to bugger off and to speak to his manager and he hung up. I did speak to his manager then called the company sales representative and canceled an order for 360 laptops. The laptops went for $1100 apiece with matching docking stations and laptop bags so in all total the order was more than the $360,000. We didn't do this as a one-time order and normally ordered 2 to 3 times a year. That's a big hunk of change to throw away, and it wasn't just my division that I supported and ordered inventory for. After I canceled the order, the sales rep begged me to reconsider, and I told her to take a hike and I ordered exclusively from Dell afterwards.
 
I've ran into a similar issue with some Lenovo desktops I supported. I found the same thing with their support. Back then I didn't have the power to cancel vendors, but in this company I called the shots. If a vendor treated me well they got my business. I wasn't out for any special deal, but what I did was expect the vendor I dealt with to treat us fairly. At this company, we had three approved vendors. Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba. We once used HP, but because the late Mark Hurd was fired from there and was the CEO of the company I worked for, HP was dropped as a vendor. This messed us up with printers because we could no longer get supplies and had to switch to another printer provider.

As a corporate customer, we got direct support from Lenovo's US repair center located in Atlanta. If there was a glitch with anything, they were there to help, well sort of. In this particular case, it was the usual dead hard disk. These disks died if you looked at them the wrong way, and in many cases, the error code was Error 00, which meant the drive wouldn't start. I called up support one day and read off the code. The cocky SOB on the other end called me a liar then accused me of requesting an "extra" hard disk. I told him to bugger off and to speak to his manager and he hung up. I did speak to his manager then called the company sales representative and canceled an order for 360 laptops. The laptops went for $1100 apiece with matching docking stations and laptop bags so in all total the order was more than the $360,000. We didn't do this as a one-time order and normally ordered 2 to 3 times a year. That's a big hunk of change to throw away, and it wasn't just my division that I supported and ordered inventory for. After I canceled the order, the sales rep begged me to reconsider, and I told her to take a hike and I ordered exclusively from Dell afterwards.


the first time i ever had to use apple help other than in the apple shop was when i had a dodgy dvd burner in my 2006 G5 tower, it made grating sounds from the off , but as i had an external burner it didn't bother me , i figured i would wait a while as i was busy and had a three year warranty anyway.
so eventually rang up apple, told the guy i was experienced in using computers, had tried many different media ,had done loads of tests , tried different types of discs, had my IT department techs check it out and we knew it was dodgy. He said he had to get me to run a few different tests and i told him I'd already done so, he responded that i might have dropped a paper clip into the drive and that was what was making the noise, i told him that the only way that could have happened was if i stood the tower on end and dropped it in from above as the g5 tower has an open drive that extends outward , not one of those standard mac drives where you push in the disc , where you could indeed push items into the slot ( although a paper clip would have had to be pushed inside forcibly ) . He then got a supervisor and they proceeded to tell me that as i wasn't cooperating they would not take this further and I should bring the unit into the nearest mac dealer to get it checked, I blew up at them and told them I was entitled to home service as stated on the apple care plan, I demanded home service and told them if I was wrong I would pay , when i rang off after about 40 minutes of arguing I was under the impression that I would be contacted by them to arrange a visit to get the drive inspected.

Many weeks went by,no call, the warranty was running out, but after that experience which left me severely frazzled, I was reluctant to ring up again, but psyched myself up to do so, got a charming irishman who agreed that yes, this was the most likely scenario, he looked up what was the delay, the goons had noted that I was going to contact apple and to arrange a date for the tech guy to come. that was NOT what we had arranged, they were supposed to call me.

Anyway the apple tech guy called a few days later,fitted a new drive , confirmed the old one was stuffed and that was that, but I've never bought a new Mac since, I buy used Mac Pro workstations for a fraction of the price and apple can go jump in the lake as far as me putting any more money in their coffers , that experience soured me on their backup for good. I still have that g5 tower and the last time i fired it up it worked perfectly , I keep it in case I ever need to use the legacy apps I have on there, but somehow i doubt I ever will....
 
I got the NZXT version of that case, upon a few friend recommendations. Seems to be quite a good case.

peter
It's hard to see in the picture, but that is a picture of the NZXT case. I purchased the flat black version and I like it.
Still thinking of getting a black 6U Rackmount case though. I would like a couple of places on the front to insert removable backup drives.
 
Back
Top