I hope I’m not in the wrong community but I really wanted to get some opinions on that.

In short, it may be a it of an unpopular opinion, but I really hate the gaming aesthetics with all the RGB lights and glass and in general how modern 3rd party PC cases look like. On the other hand I really enjoy the look of a most of the recent Lenovo ThinkCentres and ThinkStations as well as Fujitsu’s Esprimos. There is just something about this industrial matte black with red accents I can’t resist.

What I would love to do is to take some cheap Lenovo Thinkcentre, slap a GPU in it and have a budget Linux gaming PC, but the problem is most of the parts in these office systems are proprietary. It seems that I can’t easily upgrade the PSU to handle a proper GPU, nor can I swap the motherboard for a new one if I wanted to.

Does anyone have any idea on which models of ThinkCentres/Stations are easily upgradeable or of any cases that have this understated industrial office look to them? The only case I kinda like is the Fractal North, but I get really discouraged when I compare their prices to a fully equipped Lenovo office PC and it just doesn’t look as good.

Also, I’ve looked into Lenovo Legion and HP Omen prebuilts, and while they’re not as bad a 3rd party cases, I just don’t like them as much as say a P520, which unfortunately comes with some awful proprietary motherboard supporting only Xeons from 2017.

Anyway, I’m sorry for the rant. I’d love to hear your opinions and suggestions.

  • Romkslrqusz@lemm.ee
    0·
    3 months ago

    Well, for starters, if you build it you can have whatever aesthetic you want. In the process, you’ll learn how all the pieces fit together and will be in a better position to perform your own repairs. You also get warranty terms of 3 or more years on the individual parts.

    With an OEM Prebuilt, you’re usually limited to a one year warranty (in the US). Not all “office desktops” consist entirely of proprietary parts. Lenovo and Dell publish their service manuals, so you should be able to see if a system you are considering uses a standard ATX Power Supply (for example). Depending on your performance target, some RTX3050 cards will run entirely off of the 75W provided through the PCI slot. They’ll also have “office PCs” with graphics cards in them, meaning they’re technically fit for playing games even though they’re bot marketed as such. Ultimately, “Gamer” aesthetic is really just part of “Gamer” marketing.

    • crunchpaste@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Well, for starters, if you build it you can have whatever aesthetic you want.

      That’s kinda the point, I can’t really have any aesthetic I want. Unless I CNC my own case, I’m limited to what case manufacturers sell, which, in my opinion, is mostly bland boxes. or even worse, some sort of an LED aquarium that the components have to live in.

      Depending on your performance target, some RTX3050 cards will run entirely off of the 75W provided through the PCI slot. They’ll also have “office PCs” with graphics cards in them, meaning they’re technically fit for playing games even though they’re bot marketed as such.

      The thing is I’m not really set on any performance target yet. It might seem like I want to have my cake and eat it too, and I probably do, but I just want to know that I could put whatever I want into the case and not be limited by some proprietary standard.