That moment I realized an old Dell Optiplex case was the perfect sleeper build

I was at a computer recycling center in Tulsa last month and saw a beat up Optiplex 620 from 2005 sitting in a pile. The guy running the place said I could take it for free since nobody wants those old office boxes. I took it home, gutted it, and fit an RTX 3060 and a Ryzen 5 inside after dremeling out the drive bays. Has anyone else found a specific office case that just works for this kind of project without too much modification?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_rowan12d ago

My buddy found an old HP Compaq that fit a full ATX board like it was made for it.

caseyw1212d ago

Oh man, "fit a full ATX board like it was made for it" - yeah, I've been there with those old HP Compaqs. The trick is those machines were built with way more internal space than they ever needed for their own parts. You'll probably want to check the standoff layout first though, because sometimes they don't line up perfectly with a standard ATX board and you gotta get creative with some nylon washers. Also watch out for the I/O shield area, those older cases have a weird cutout that might block your ports unless you file it down a bit. The PSU placement can be a pain too since those HP cases often have the power supply in a different spot than usual, so you might need an extension cable. But overall if you take your time with the motherboard tray and double check the clearance for your CPU cooler, it's a super solid free case that'll work just fine.