Hello,
I'm looking for a case that would sacrifice slowly getting useless 5.25 bays for a better form factor and there seems to be none out there. The idea would be that a case could have PSU and 2-3 3.5 inch bays in place of the larger drives trimming the size to that reserved for mATX board cases. Ideally, a Lian-Li A-05NB that cuts couple of inches of length while still being able to work with full ATX boards and a decent cooling and GFX card.
Since I use SSD for speed critical stuff, I could even use a case with 2-3 2.5 inch bays, with 500 gig notebook drive as a mass storage and SSD for the rest - this could save a bit of space.
I know the question is more like 'where can I order a custom case' but maybe there are some products like this.
There are some great builds with mATX boards with one PCIe and the PSU mounted horizontally parallel to the mobo but it drastically limits the cooling solutions and even basic tinkering inside the box. Not to mention a bit crippled board without many options of expansion. The cases are almost cube like, about half of the size of your average midi-tower but still, without the 5.25 bays this probably could be done with full ATX.
A little off-topic - there seems to be not many truly interesting cases out there. Only higher, lower, shorter, blacker, heavier, lighter. And Antec skeleton. Not many designs that try to come up with some neat layouts. For me, the mentioned Lian-Li with forward facing PSU seems revolutionary in comparison to other tower cases. only those truly SFF try new stuff to make it more compact.
Correct me if I'm wrong
Cheers, Halik