Beautiful Case Design - Sony RA Series (2005+)

[dontthroworanges]

Just wanted to shine a light on this wonderful monolithic design from early 2000s Sony. They seem to be quite rare, at least here in North America. I love the out of the box attempt to cool the crazy hot Prescot Pentium 4 and the later Pentium D. I remember seeing these back in the day and wanting one just as bad as I wanted a PowerMac G5. Alas I was a poor high schooler who could barely afford a 6600gt. Anyway, that is all. 

 

PS - If you have one of these, i'll totally buy it from you.

[ragnarok0273]

What is the weird hole-in-the-case for?

[Rocketdog2112]

Interesting. What is the specific model destination?

[Vishera]

11 minutes ago, Rocketdog2112 said:

Interesting. What is the specific model destination?

Sony Vaio VGC-RA304

[Rocketdog2112]

18 minutes ago, Vishera said:

Sony Vaio VGC-RA304

I will keep an eye out.

[dontthroworanges]

51 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

What is the weird hole-in-the-case for?

It's to pull fresh air into the cpu heatsink at the top of the case. Remember this is back in the day when airflow wasn't as front and center in the design of PC cases. 

[ragnarok0273]

interesting.

So the PSU wires went through two holes on either side?

[dontthroworanges]

3 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

interesting.

So the PSU wires went through two holes on either side?

No actually the PSU was in the lower half. If someone were to build this design today then an SFX PSU could definitely live in the top section leaving more room in the lower section for air coolers etc. 

 

[Action_Johnson]

YIKES.

 

Hard pass, sorry. 

[Rocketdog2112]

Did a Craigslist Nationwide search and found zilch. There's a Sony Vaio VGC-RA830G on eBay that looks very similar, but has been parted out and all components for sale by the same seller

[unsorted]

17 hours ago, dontthroworanges said:

Just wanted to shine a light on this wonderful monolithic design from early 2000s Sony.

 

Taste is a very subjective thing, isn't it. To me, that case is far too square and has one of my pet hates: extra doors covering the doors of optical drives.

 

Internally, it doesn't look easy to work on either, though what's worse in today's cases are the painted internals to make everything black (ugh) to better highlight the RGB (ugh x2) and plastic mounts for drive bays which don't transfer heat to the case (ugh x3), so I love seeing unpainted metal inside older cases, which this has.

 

The Pentium 4 machines hold the lowest amount of regard here, among the older stuff. They were just the wrong product at the time in so many ways.

 

This is an interesting design, nonetheless. Different, if nothing else.

[Mark Kaine]

yeah that looks extremely cool and extremely rare, and probably extremely expensive, especially in working order... 

 

Sony designs round that time were just awesome. culminated with their br disc players designs... 

 

 

I used to have one, it was totally awesome, except it came with a "CELL" processor and was somehow twice as loud and hot than my PS3 - at idle... lol. 

 

well the Sony of back then doesn't exist anymore, sadly, I also loved their phones (1st Xperia - Xperia Z3, Z4 and onwards are shit) 

[thrasher_565]

ya i would mod the psu to the top, cut a fan or 2 in the bottom and front

[freeagent]

This case is pretty neat. Bet there isn’t very many. With some work it could be ok for a low tdp system, like this was. I hacked up an old Antec sonata and stuffed a loaded X58 system with sli and an H100 in it, and it worked, but even with 130x38s doing the breathing it still got warm. But that was x58.. you could probably get away with it now.