Case Modding, One Man’s Journey and Thoughts

So we have all seen,  have had or currently own a pre-modded case. In case you do not know what this mean it is simple. A pre-modded case is one that has a side windows, lights, switches, cable running holes, LED lights, or a crazy look to it… yep that pretty much covers every case out on the market. To all those non-modders that has one of those types of cases you can thank us modders. I know some of you might not have even been born yet back in the old days all the computer cases where some color of beige. Even the styling was almost the same from case to case. After a while you just have to break out of that mold and be yourself so cooling fans were added to keep the processors cooler when you hit that “Turbo” button and got that extra .10% of CPU power. Just cutting a hole was great but man it looked like crap with the paint chipped or scratch and the bare metal showing where you cut it. Better paint it but paint it anything but beige and that is how case modding was born. Oh, yeah pre-mods…I am getting there; just day dreaming about the old times.

Side windows, LED fans, cooling fans, modular power supplies, cable sleeving, fan controllers, water cooling, and any other cool thing you can think of you have case modders to thank for. Like any good business you want to make sure that you are keeping up with the trends and stuff people are doing so the manufactures would cruse the forums and would see this wild stuff that people were doing. Wanting to be on the bleeding edge and to sell more products they began to slowly take the ideas that people where doing. One company went way too far one time. Way back somewhere around 2003 or so a case modders from overseas named Alonso Bistro made this awesome looking case with styling cut in to the front and side with a nice looking paint job that was simple but fit the mod perfectly. About a year later as I was surfing the net a new case was coming out and it was an almost replica of his case. They were a few minor differences but as soon as you seen it you knew who made it. I thought “WOW this is awesome a modder actually got with a manufacture and has his creation turned into as real product to sell this is a first!” (to this day I am not sure if this has ever happen yet, so Thermaltake, Cooler Master, NZXT and other I am willing to be the first). I contacted him and you guessed it he have not seen the new case and had nothing to do with it. I don’t know whatever became of that case but it sure seemed to of disappeared rather quickly and was never seen again.

When was the last time you seen a case sold without a window? Very far and in between. Most of the time you have to order a separate side panel if you do not want a window. OK so where am I going with this? I think as a group we should be proud that multimillion dollar companies are looking at we do in our workshop and use those idea. We are actually helping form the path that we travel down. Please don’t think that I am bitching about people using our ideas; it is quite the opposite. We need to continue to inspire the manufacture to make better products and cool looking cases. A few of these companies hold case modding event, like Cooler Master’s Annual Case Modding Competition, and giveaway $1000 upon $1000 of dollars to the winners. Even we, Modders-Inc, host the case modding contest at QuakeCon and without the awesome support of the manufactures we would not be able to do it. But they know who their target audience is and pour many man hours and products into keeping you informed and happy to help you continue on your case modding adventure.