i guess you could consider the wooden frame that the abacus came in as the
first computer case but today we're going to start by talking about the case
from the original 1981 ibm pc
the original personal computer from big blue was obviously a tremendously
important computing platform but the chassis was also notable for influencing
what most pcs would look like for the next couple of decades
it was that standard beige box with a couple of floppy drives accessible on
the front as well as expansion slots and a keyboard port on the back and if
you're wondering why it was beige well the answer is that nobody knows for sure
but computer historians seem to think it had to do with businesses that bought
pcs wanting them to fit in with other office equipment at the time which was
well you guessed it mostly beige how exciting anywho pc cases didn't
change too much outwardly for about 20 years aside from the addition of three
and a half inch floppy and later optical drives but there were some major changes
on the inside when it came to form factor the standardized size for key
components like the motherboard and power supply a form factor called at was
popular back when the 286 and 386 processors ruled the world but unlike
today's cases many connectors had to be built into the case itself kind of like
the front panel i o that you see on cases today not to mention that the
motherboards were larger atx came onto the scene in 1995 and not
only did it make for smaller pcs but it introduced the modern concept of the i o
panel on the back of the motherboard because atx didn't rely so much on
connectors that were already built into the case it gave motherboard
manufacturers much more flexibility as to which interfaces they wanted to
support and made it easier for users to upgrade their computer without changing
out the case atx also introduced the familiar atx power supply which was
really important because it allowed for software control of that front power
button so you could just press it to tell the pc to shut down properly
instead of just killing the power but it wasn't until the late 90s and
early 2000s that there was a big push from the industry to move away from
beige boxes and really rethink both how
people would tinker with their pcs and how computers would look aesthetically
now you're probably familiar with how black pcs started becoming more common
around this time including the next computer that steve jobs was pushing
before he returned to apple also how mass-produced machines from
companies like compaq started adding splashes of colored plastic but one more
interesting early trend was to give computers a more industrial look with a
shiny metal exterior as we saw with the 2003 antec landboy it featured a
lightweight aluminum chassis to allow it to be taken to lan parties more easily
and even had a side panel window so you could show off your totally sick athlon
xp and be the envy of your fellow nerds and it wasn't just custom builds by
gamers that featured this aesthetic apple also jumped on this train with the
power mac g5 with its famous cheese grater front panel that inspired the mac
pros that you can buy today of course not all gamers wanted that look as this
was also around the time you started seeing those all acrylic cases that
people would often fill with neon parts those builds did look extremely messy
but hey they were a heck of a lot more interesting than buying a beige box from
dell not long after in the mid-2000s three and a half inch drive bays started
to disappear and when a case did still have them users would often install a
different device like a card reader or a fan controller to make use of the space
because people simply didn't need floppy drives much once usb drives became a
thing so people were now thinking then about removing unnecessary features from
cases rather than adding more combine this with the continued popularity of
windowed cases and design philosophies shifted towards making builds look more
tidy and elegant hence built-in cable
management features becoming popular in the late 2000s tempered glass in the
mid-2010s and of course more minimalistic aesthetics overall driven
in no small part by fractal design even tackier designs like the infamous
antec lamboy air which could fit over two dozen fans and featured
bungie supports for hard drives used modularity as their ethos so the case
was supposed to be easy to rearrange or strip down as the user saw fit it wasn't
this was also a time where components were becoming more powerful than ever
and real thought needed to be put into ensuring that systems were cooled
properly the antec p180 from 2006 these
guys really weren't afraid to innovate were they featured a separate chamber
for power supply cooling similar to today's power supply basements and in
the early 2010s we started to see cases make excellent use of the space once
taken up by clunky bays for optical drives and full-size hard disks and
instead dedicate it to water cooling radiators and reservoirs and even gamers
not running a fancy liquid cooling setup often could use that space as one
gigantic air intake oh yeah and somewhere in there RGB
happened people really like RGB that did merit a mention just like our sponsor
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