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Sometime mid-late summer I plan on building a new home custom system. I'm waiting for the 2600+ AMD Thoroughbreds to be released before going full speed ahead.

I've been looking around for the past few months for a really kickass computer case. One that asthetically looked nice but also has good functionality. I've gotta say that for the most part, I've been pretty unimpressed by what I've seen offered by other case manufacturers. There are some decent cases made by Antec.

I did happen to be browsing Dell's site the other day looking to update BIOS on one of my systems and noticed they have some fairly nice cases for the 4300 and above models. Nice gray and black cases that open up easily and what looked to be removable drive rails. They also had some nice front usb ports hidden behind a flip panel as well.

It's unfortunate that Dell is so in bed with Intel and doesn't offer AMD processors. It's also unfortunate how much more they charge you for a system than building it yourself. And they don't just sell the case either. Figures.

I wonder how much a completely stripped down unit would cost...and then rip out everything and replace it with my own stuff? Oh well....

Part of the reason Dell only sells Intel is that they don't want to deal with crap third-party chipset issues. And I can fully sympathise with that line - it makes good business sense.

I don't remember where I saw it, so this isn't much help, but I remember seeing something about a case manufacturer that sold cases almost identical to the dell cases at the time. Of course, this was a good year ago, so I really haven't helped much at all...

Trust me, you don't want those 4300 cases...we've got about 100 of them where I'm working now, and they are crap. They look nice, it's a screwless design, but they're just really cheaply made.

Back in the day (circa '97) the fantabulous Dell Dimension cases were sourced from Palo Alto Systems. PAS cases are hard to find in the retail channel, but they're out there. They're really nice cases and I believe Dell still sources most of their cases from them.

Of course, you can always get a phatty aluminum case and make Dell owners fume with case envy.

Maybe you could hunt down an old SGI workstation case. Even those old ones from 10 years ago are cool. Not sure if that is the style you are looking for. If not I have always liked the Lian Li cases. Those look great modified. Also the Yeong Yang Black Server Cube is nice which is what I have.

Thanks for all the great advice guys, I'll be sure to check them out.