What do people use for office PC cases?

[Phillip Manning]

I run a small IT shop in a small town in the UK and we and we build 750-1000 PC’s a year, mostly for OAP’s, farmers and local small to medium business, so we do not need glass panels or RGB lights for 99% of the build we do. Our current case we have been using is going end of Life and I was wondering what cases other people us.


The sort of things we look at are:

Reasonable build quality (we feel that most of our customers will judge the quality of the computer when they go to move it and we dont want the side panels flexing)
No glass panels
No front door hiding the power buttons
USB-C on the front is a plus but not essential
No CD drive Slots is a plus but not essential

Back in the day we would use “Ace Ecco 250/350/450” back when our customers expected DVD drives, when they were becoming end of life, we bought up 3 pallet loads so we had them for quite some time.

We then moved onto the “Gamemax Meshbox”, as it was surprisingly good quality for the price, but we could never find any suppliers with any stock to be able to buy some pallets full and they very quickly went end of life.

Recently we have been using “CIT Silent ES”, we have only been able to build 300 or so PC’s in these before they are now going end of life.

So once again we are on the hunt for a new case, I just wondered what you folks use for your office PC builds, if anyone still builds them instead of going for prebuilds.

 

[Canadian Tech]

I usually use Fractal Design or Thermaltake cases when I can get them. Some of the off brand cases are ok but I find they're not the greatest for cable management.

 

[Sky-Knight]

My last personal builds were with NZXT, Be Quiet!, and Cooler Master cases.

I haven't sold a whitebox to a business in goodness... almost a decade and a half now. I didn't think there was even a market still, in my neck of the woods people are so cheap there's no way to make money on them. And when they are interested, they're interested in TINY, no business I've spoken with in the last five years wants a mid tower anywhere.

I've always wanted to try my hand at a mini-ITX build or smaller, but just never got around to it.

 

[thecomputerguy]

I run a small IT shop in a small town in the UK and we and we build 750-1000 PC’s a year, mostly for OAP’s, farmers and local small to medium business, so we do not need glass panels or RGB lights for 99% of the build we do. Our current case we have been using is going end of Life and I was wondering what cases other people us.


The sort of things we look at are:

Reasonable build quality (we feel that most of our customers will judge the quality of the computer when they go to move it and we dont want the side panels flexing)
No glass panels
No front door hiding the power buttons
USB-C on the front is a plus but not essential
No CD drive Slots is a plus but not essential

Back in the day we would use “Ace Ecco 250/350/450” back when our customers expected DVD drives, when they were becoming end of life, we bought up 3 pallet loads so we had them for quite some time.

We then moved onto the “Gamemax Meshbox”, as it was surprisingly good quality for the price, but we could never find any suppliers with any stock to be able to buy some pallets full and they very quickly went end of life.

Recently we have been using “CIT Silent ES”, we have only been able to build 300 or so PC’s in these before they are now going end of life.

So once again we are on the hunt for a new case, I just wondered what you folks use for your office PC builds, if anyone still builds them instead of going for prebuilds.

Consider getting a reseller account through Lenovo or Dell. You could likely make the same margins without having to do the build.

Of course that takes the heart and soul out of of the business which I can appreciate. Those days were tough, but I miss them.

 

[GTP]

Cougar are an upcoming brand. I've used quite a few Cougar cases now. Good quality/price points, sturdy and a huge range.

 

[frase]

My last personal builds were with NZXT, Be Quiet!, and Cooler Master cases.

I haven't sold a whitebox to a business in goodness... almost a decade and a half now. I didn't think there was even a market still, in my neck of the woods people are so cheap there's no way to make money on them. And when they are interested, they're interested in TINY, no business I've spoken with in the last five years wants a mid tower anywhere.

I've always wanted to try my hand at a mini-ITX build or smaller, but just never got around to it.

I like mini-ITX builds though one has to be aware of the cable management and air flow issues of some.

 

[John Kennedy]

Be Quiet! Makes a case that I use for custom server builds (buy a workstation MB, add a desktop processor + ECC RAM and you've got yourself IPMI on a budget). Comes with their good fans: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E168117...EkZzEkdDE3NDc4MzE3NjUkajAkbDAkaDE0MTA3OTcxMjY.

 

[xrobwx71]

My last personal builds were with NZXT, Be Quiet!, and Cooler Master cases.

I haven't sold a whitebox to a business in goodness... almost a decade and a half now. I didn't think there was even a market still, in my neck of the woods people are so cheap there's no way to make money on them. And when they are interested, they're interested in TINY, no business I've spoken with in the last five years wants a mid tower anywhere.

I've always wanted to try my hand at a mini-ITX build or smaller, but just never got around to it.

At my day job, I switched 2 of my Tint Machines over to one of the Intel NUC's. I chose the model that had two M.2 slots (OS partitioning/backups). I've had them running for about 3 months now. I can see why people want the smalls.

Of course, there is no "build" in these little things, but the performance is impressive.

 

[John Kennedy]

At my day job, I switched 2 of my Tint Machines over to one of the Intel NUC's. I chose the model that had two M.2 slots (OS partitioning/backups). I've had them running for about 3 months now. I can see why people want the smalls.

Of course, there is no "build" in these little things, but the performance is impressive.

I've been selling the Minisforum mini PCs for a couple of years now. Sure, they have a mobile chip in them, but the new Ryzen ones pack a good punch and at less than $500 for a 6-8 core processor, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and dual display output, they really do well in the small business market. Did I mention they come with Windows 11 Pro?

 

[britechguy]

Sure, they have a mobile chip in them, but the new Ryzen ones pack a good punch and at less than $500 for a 6-8 core processor, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and dual display output, they really do well in the small business market.

Yes, it's amazing how much "bang for the buck" modern processors pack! And very few businesses, small or large, are doing anything in the office, anyway, that comes close to needing what has been "the latest and greatest" processor for quite a few years now.

Tool to the task(s).

 

[frase]

At my day job, I switched 2 of my Tint Machines over to one of the Intel NUC's. I chose the model that had two M.2 slots (OS partitioning/backups). I've had them running for about 3 months now. I can see why people want the smalls.

Of course, there is no "build" in these little things, but the performance is impressive.

I use one for my Home Media Network, use it to link to my media server does the job well.

 

[Sky-Knight]

At my day job, I switched 2 of my Tint Machines over to one of the Intel NUC's. I chose the model that had two M.2 slots (OS partitioning/backups). I've had them running for about 3 months now. I can see why people want the smalls.

Of course, there is no "build" in these little things, but the performance is impressive.

I've got a really cheap customer that went in for about 6 of these things to get around the Windows 10 doomsday:

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-Pro-Desktop-Computer-1000Mbps/dp/B0C89TQ1YF

They run... PERFECTLY. I just have a hard time recommending them when they are stupid cheap AND somehow come with Windows 11 pro. Something isn't legal here, but they are perfectly functional office duty platforms.

 

[frase]

I've got a really cheap customer that went in for about 6 of these things to get around the Windows 10 doomsday:

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-Pro-Desktop-Computer-1000Mbps/dp/B0C89TQ1YF

They run... PERFECTLY. I just have a hard time recommending them when they are stupid cheap AND somehow come with Windows 11 pro. Something isn't legal here, but they are perfectly functional office duty platforms.

Come with CPP Embedded Surveilance?

 

[Blues]

For OP I would lean toward a case like the CoolerMaster N200 (I think that is the model) as a decent and cost effective option though I am less a fan of the standard tower designs for most office environments these days preferring the SFF style cases but going that route will easily add 30-100% more to the cost per case so unless the client ops for the cost I wouldn't bother. I would probably stick to the Micro ATX builds but if you want to try Mini ITX then you can look at some other small form cases that are better but some the parts for compatibility get more specific. I do agree with many here that there are plenty of off the shelf systems you could probably resale and save money with.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Come with CPP Embedded Surveilance?

Not that I've observed, but I warned the client about this and the dubious nature of the Windows license, then passed him the Amazon link for him to buy himself.

Then my invoice for service to install had a liability waiver attached that became active when he paid it.

But again, not that I've seen. The site in question has an Arista Edge Threat Management NGFW in place, and while none of the paid features are there, I haven't found any network sessions I cannot account for. At very least I can confirm there is no communication between that site and China directly.

The other client that I pointed these at was a law firm, she opted for a much slower roll out of Optiplex SFFs, which I vastly prefer but are more than 6 times the price.