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Got schooled by a 90s Dell case that runs a Ryzen 9
I always thought sleeper builds were just about looking boring on the outside, but then I saw a video from RandomGamingInHD where he stuffed a modern rig into an old Dell Optiplex 390 case. The temps were actually better than some new cases because of the airflow path built for those old office fans. Has anyone else found an unexpected thermal advantage after swapping internals into an old chassis?
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the_ryan1mo ago
My buddy built a sleeper in an old HP Compaq from like 2008 and he swears the sideways hard drive cage acts as a perfect air dam forcing everything through the CPU cooler. He was hitting lower temps on his 5600X than his previous Lian Li case with the same cooler. That weird old design actually worked better for airflow than he ever expected.
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betty_scott181mo ago
Happens all the time with older tech, doesn't it? Sometimes the janky old solutions end up being the best ones just because nobody overthought them. It's like how I still use an old flip phone as a backup because the battery lasts a week and it never crashes on me. There's something to be said for simple, clunky designs that just work without trying to be fancy.
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