What do you do with your old cases?

I typically re-use them, mostly because they were slightly modded already in the past. I don't know what to do with my Lian Li Lancool PC-K62. I really like the case, but don't have an immediate use for it. Plus, it's heavy. I don't mind the look of the new cases, and I love that they're lightweight. But it's become saturated with the same look, and there's hardly any that have something like four 3.5" SATA drive bays.

i have a pile sitting in the corner of my storage room, i have yet to reuse one...

I have several spares on the shelf and try to use them for requested builds. The last year has been slow with the prices of everything going to poo. I’ll probably list them locally for peanuts to get them gone.

PC cases I try to get rid of ASAP, except one I'm saving for a special purpose. Raspberry Pi cases I have a bunch of, but they are not worth shipping anywhere. Free to anyone who asks, I suppose.

They have computers in them. I either give away or sell the computers whole. If I get a new case, and reuse the parts from the old one, I either build a new system in the old case or sell/give it away

I use to have a whole garage full of cases, then I gave away/scrapped/sold them all, and now I have hardware falling out my ass with nowhere to mount it smh .
I would like to thank my wife for that awesome decision of hers.

CAD4466HK said:

I use to have a whole garage full of cases, then I gave away/scrapped/sold them all, and now I have hardware falling out my ass with nowhere to mount it smh .
I would like to thank my wife for that awesome decision of hers.

Click to expand...

Lol, I can relate...

I'll build PCs for family/friends with old cases (and components) or donate them to a local school, church, or charity. In one instance, I built 3 PCs and did some tech support for my little brother's school. Met a smoking hot guidance counselor, too. She wanted babies so it didn't last, but we had fun for about 6-7 months.

Usually family or friends will make use of my old case. However, I had a Lian Li PC-011 which made it into a garage sale.

I've thrown out most of my cases from the past but they were always cheaper $50 ones (save for my last small inWin ITX HTPC case I bought for my last WMC build, which I kept) - the 2 cases I've bought since I'll reuse (current HTPC/Silverstone GD-09) or hold onto in storage when done (Phanteks Enthoo Pro)

No definite idea what my next main rig build case will be yet (won't need to house all my spare Plex backup HDDs, so that's why I won't be reusing the Enthoo Pro), but my next server is going in a Rosewill RSV-R4200U, and I'll also probably just resuse that with future server builds

I used to keep them, and still have a couple late 90's Aopen cases. One still houses a Soyo board with a Presshott attached to it. Been to lazy to see if it fires up. I had to pitch a few cases over the years though.

I still have ISA video cards and old SB sound cards from Win 3.1 days.
Probably time to clean out some tubs and chuck some stuff.

I can't get myself to throw out my old aluminum cases.

Generally give away the whole system (case and hardware) to someone who can use it.

If I don't plan on using them for my very next build, they get thrown away, given away but never sold; wouldn't be worth it as I hardly buy any case over $100.

I've averaged 2-3 uses out of most of my cases, eventually most end up obsolete and end up scrapped. Lack of cooling has been the biggest killer. All my 80 and 92mm fan ATX cases ended up junked for that as did early single 120mm front models. A few older 2x120mm front ones had lifespan extensions after chiseled off riveted drive cases to support GPUs longer than the mobo. I did end up having to get rid of a (Silverstone?) case that had a 12x12" (just enough internal space to fit 25mm fans in front of the mobo) footprint but was extra tall with 3.5/5.25" bays up top. It had theoretical space for an mITX board in the second bottom chamber, but since there wasn't room for a second PSU that part wasn't well thought out. I used the extra space for my pump and reservoir.

I live in the middle of nowhere, so actually selling anything that's nominally too expensive to ship isn't a reasonable option. Maybe the weird tall tower would have sold if I posted on a case collectors site, but not being compatible with newer GPUs had me convinced it was junk so I never tried.

Depends on the context really. Both of my backup file servers are using variants of the old Antec 900, with the top three 5.25 bays converted to an extra drive cage to maximize the number of internal drives, and magnetic dust filters on the front. They are quite effective in that role, and it's actually getting difficult to find good modern cases that can hold that many drives. Other older cases that were in good condition, I've used to build PCs for family and friends. I had kept some older cases from my LAN party days 20+ years ago that I kept mainly for nostalgia reasons, but as the plastic parts were starting to become brittle and disintegrate it was becoming more difficult to justify keeping them so I've finally sent many of those off to e-waste. My backup computer is still using a Corsair 800D (~2009) which is still a great case. My retro-rig, I just moved the components from my old Antec Super Lanboy case (~2003) to a Thermaltake Armor Jr case (~2006) because the plastic on the Super Lanboy was disintegrating and it can't support long GPUs.

Yeah I have a large hoard of cases, and I have never gotten rid of any. I have multiple Lian-Li's, Antecs, Cheiftec dragons, Alienware cheiftecs, tons of other ATX tower and desktop cases, plus a big pile of baby AT cases. Id say about 80% of them have systems in them too, so yes I have a problem. I have had almost all my old plastic go yellow on me, but fortunately nothing has broken or fallen apart on any of my cases yet. Even my old stuff from the 90's is still going strong.

I either shoot them or put them at the curb for pickup. I don't think any of them have made it to trash pickup. People generally come and grab them.

I literally did all of the listed options.

1. My first case roughly from 1998 to 2006, ended up in the trash, couldn't resell it after I rattle can painted it Black and Orange.
   
   
   
   
   Spoiler: I don't have a better photo of it in it's original form and couldn't find any online. It's the same styling as this one:

   

   
   But the controls are at the top, and mine had 5x5.25 and 2x3.5.
2. Chieftec Bravo BA01B-B-SL 2006 - 2010 - Sold
   
   
3. Sharkoon Rebel 12 Value 2010-2013 - Gave it away
   
   
4. Silverstone Raven RV03 2013-2014 - Sold
   
   
   
   (Massive pita case, hated it)
5. Coolermaster HAF Stacker 935 2014-2018 - Sold as a complete system
   
   
6. Silverstone Fortress FT05 2018 - ???? Still using this.
   
   

These are just from my main system, I also had a bunch of side builds, but that's a story for another day.

I checked all of the options.

quite a few were sold with systems in them, and a few I put older systems in and sold them as cheap machines.

My oldest case is a Yeong Yang YY-0221 cube case that I bought in 2003 or 2005, ended up trading it to my brother in 2011, who traded it to friend 1 a few months later, and that friend traded it to friend 2, not sure when though (both friends were friends of my brother and I).
I was at friend 2's house that currently had it and was buying a Dell Dual Xeon in 2016 and he mentioned that he had my YY-0221. I told him I wouldn't mind having it back someday.
The following year he calls me up and says he is coming to give me the case. A few months later I was going to put a system into it and it was missing the PSU adapter bracket, it's a metal plate that bolts to the case and then the PSU bolts to it. Without it you can't mount a PSU.
I call him up and asked him if he had it and called me back a few days later and says he looked around his workshop and he does not have it.
I go on the web and see if I can find one and I can't, so I put the case in a corner and consider trying to have a plate made. Any machinist could make it, it's just a flat plate with a hole in it for the PSU vent and 8 screw holes.

Then one day I am looking through this box of random PC parts that friend 1 dropped by to me before he moved to Missouri and lo and behold, that PSU plate was in the box.
I was like sweet, I can start messing with that case again.

First thing I did was build a retro Windows XP machine. Another friend that I sold my GTX 285 to in 2011 needed a newer card in 2015 for his Dell 34" 3415 monitor.
He is not a gamer so didn't need anything powerful (only reason he bought my GTX 285 was for Adobe Premiere) so we opted for a GTX750Ti, and he gave me back the GTX 285.
This is my setup back in 2007 or so when I had the GTX 285

And this is the retro machine I built in 2018,


In late 2019 I moved the setup into another case,

and in 2021 made the YY-0221 my Plex Server and NAS,

It has an i7-4770, 16GB Ram, Asus Sabertooth Z78, got this from the friend that had my old GTX 285, upgraded him to a 3900X setup and I got his old parts.
Been getting his old parts every time I've built him a new machine since the 90's.

I put a pair of ICYDock 5 in 3 cages, LSI HBA, and 160TB of storage in it. Oh, and a 2.5GbE NIC for faster transfers to my workstation.

I still have a few cases sitting around that I am not sure what to do with,
Antec Titan
Antec 900
HAF-932 (found this on the side of the road on trash day, super clean, just missing one foot and a slight dent upwards were that foot was)
Intel SC5600 Workstation chassis

My Corsair Air 540 was used for my Dual Xeon when I upgraded to the Air 740. Xeon was in this Intel SC5600 chassis.

and the Air 740


Sold both to a friend of mine, the Xeon in 2020 and the 5800X / RTX 3080 in 2023.

My ancient boat anchors typically wind up in the alley or in a scrap metal run to the recycler. I used to donate them but people started being snobs about not wanting old PC stuff.

This one here is a Silverstone that I got a couple of months ago when I sold one of my HP Mini PC's to a friend, and I got his old PC that I built for him whenever the i5 3570 was out.
I built his Ex wife an i7-7700k whenever they came out and she wanted the same case as him. With Windows 11 not working on older hardware (I know it works but the normal installers won't upgrade) and Win 10 support ending,
she wanted to upgrade so in November last year I bought an MSI board and Ryzen 5700G, and 32GB Ram.
I've been waiting ever since to do the swap for her, put the new stuff into her Silverstone and then migrate her data to the new machine. I talk to her every few months and ask her when she wants to drop off her old machine and she'll be like, "we'll talk next week"..

Anyways, since I was bored the other night, I went ahead and put the MSI setup into her ex's old Silverstone.
MSI board is quite deep and the hard drive bays won't fit in, so I'll be keeping that out.

Oh, I also used them as barriers to keep the kittens from wandering around the garage,

I have quite a few in storage that I will probably not get to reusing again. I was thinking of giving them away at some point.

Some of my old cases are Cooler Master Stacker 810.

They are hard at work.