I let my CPU fan do its default color changing rainbow, buuuut only because it's under my desk where I can't see it. If nothing else, I can quickly glance down there and see if the computer is powered on.
AMD ships them standard with their Ryzen processors, I guess the market for enthusiast range parts has decided that we want RGB hardware.
Personally I think case aesthetics peaked around the Antec P180 which looked like brushed metal fridge and was one of the first cases to care about sound isolation. No window panel, so nobody cares how much of a mess my wiring is, and I can buy the RAM that's on sale instead of the one with color coordinated heatspreaders.
But if other people are into that, power to them.
Someday I'd like to do a "desktop literally built into the desk top" build and ditch the suspended computer mount completely, assuming I still even want to have a full desktop computer 10 years from now.
> Someday I'd like to do a "desktop literally built into the desk top"
For 7 years my desktop has been literally just a motherboard sitting on a cut-up yoga mat on my bookshelf. [1] The SSDs are piled next to it. My work PC is zip-tied to a milk crate. Don't let people fool you, you can be pretty creative with your definition of "case".
My old i5-2500K based build was like that for many, many years. It sat on my desk on top of an anti-static bag (that the motherboard came in). The new graphics card I had, which was a gtx 480 maybe, wouldn't fit in the old case I had.
It took me at least 5 years to get a new case, much to my wife's annoyance.
No idea, at the very least it didn't seem to build up a static charge, and it's worked fine for me for a long time. I imagine it probably depends on the specific yoga mat.
I used to just have it directly on the wood, which was fine too, but then I put it on top of an upside-down, powder-coated-metal IKEA drawer thing (so I could put the power supply underneath for more shelf space). My fiancee was worried it might get scratched and conduct at some point, so we added the yoga mat.
You could just bolt a 1U rackmount server to the underside of a desktop. Or get a desk that's 1.75 inches thick, cut a hole of the appropriate size, and recess the server into it. There are lots of under the desk computer mounts, but I haven't seen a recessed one.
Except without the glass top. Or perhaps glass with a very dark tint so that it looks black, but with sufficiently bright internal lighting you can see through it.
The easier and more likely version would be to make the computer fit in a normal desk drawer. Prefer that to a 1U on account of fan size as another commenter mentioned, but being off to one side instead of the whole desk surface has the benefit of not making the whole desk chunkier.
Biggest issue I find with using a 1u case for a client is fan noise - short of some clever modification to the side panels to fit larger fans transverse, it's near impossible to get acceptably quiet 1u fans.
Might be nice to have the fan color change with the cpu temp, but otherwise it always seems gaudy. I like things having function in addition to form.
Then again, I also gave up on desktops roughly 8 years ago. If it isn't my laptop it is a NUC or similar small form factor thing that can be mounted on the back of the monitor or otherwise hidden away.
I was used to always getting an aftermarket cooler for previous Intel builds to replace the stock one with the whiny little fan, but the included Ryzen 7 cooler is comparatively great (unnecessary bling aside).
Be careful aiming for sound isolation, it can be counterproductive.
Generally speaking "sound isolation" means reducing where sound can escape from the case, and putting some noise absorbing foam where you can to dampen the noise.
The counterproductive part is that having a lot of airflow would be the opposite of "sound isolating" -- anywhere air flows freely sound does as well. So by definition a sound isolating case has poor airflow. Poor airflow could require you to run your fans at higher RPMs to compensate, which is then introducing more noise than you would have had with a more open case that could run low RPM fans.
Back when the P180 was new, its silicone grommets for HDD mounting and the thicker multi-layer side panels (instead of flimsy pieces of sheet metal) were highly unusual features.
I'd say they had reasonable airflow, with 2 120mm fans on the front (one in the main compartment, one in the lower compartment with the PSU and HDD). Though the intake fans were behind a door with vertical vent strips up the sides. I'm sure that restricted airflow a bit, but it was dramatically quieter than any case I'd had before.
My personal one was the slightly revised P182, but I'd previously built some computers at my job that we put in P180s.
No idea - I remember spending a lot of time browsing Silent PC Review on previous builds to make sure I got an appropriately quiet power supply and everything else, but it stopped doing any meaningful testing years ago, and the current incarnation basically looks like affiliate link blogspam.
AMD ships them standard with their Ryzen processors, I guess the market for enthusiast range parts has decided that we want RGB hardware.
Personally I think case aesthetics peaked around the Antec P180 which looked like brushed metal fridge and was one of the first cases to care about sound isolation. No window panel, so nobody cares how much of a mess my wiring is, and I can buy the RAM that's on sale instead of the one with color coordinated heatspreaders.
But if other people are into that, power to them.
Someday I'd like to do a "desktop literally built into the desk top" build and ditch the suspended computer mount completely, assuming I still even want to have a full desktop computer 10 years from now.