There’s a big reason why I’m still housing my PC in an ageing Fractal Define R6 case, and it’s hidden behind its solid front door. Pull it open and you’ll find a link to the PC’s past that goes all the way back to the days of massive floppy disks in the 1980s. It’s a 5.25in drive bay; a feature that’s quickly gone the way of the headphone jack on phones, and I want it back.
I use mine for a DVD drive, mainly because I have a massive collection of movies that I’m still in the process of ripping to my NAS box, but also because sometimes people still buy me a CD for Christmas. Sometimes, just sometimes, a new game comes out on DVD, and I get to relive the past.
My most recent example was the physical release of Baldur’s Gate 3, which admittedly just came with a disc to kickstart the Steam download process, but I enjoyed sticking it in the drive nonetheless. I just love the practical, hands-on process of pushing Eject on the drive, putting a disc in place, and then listening to the drive whirr.
I know I’m an outlier here – barely anyone still uses optical media on PCs, but there are still other good reasons to have a standardised expansion area right on the front of your PC. Historically, you could use it to mount a fan controller or even a reservoir for your water-cooling loop, but you could also use it to easily add ports to your PC that aren’t on its front panel.
Want easy access to an SD card reader or a high-speed USB Type-C port without having to faff around with dongles, or reaching around the back of your PC? That’s exactly where a drive bay on the front comes in handy, enabling you to add new I/O features that came out after your case was made.
You can still buy cases with 5.25in drive bays, of course, but they’re nearly always boring budget cases designed for offices. While I like the 90s off-white retro vibes of the SilverStone FLP02, the last case with a proper bay that tempted me was the full-size Fractal Design Define 7 (you even get two bays on the XL model), but that came out over three years ago. I’m starting to think the Define 8 is either never going to arrive, or if it does, it will only be available in compact models with no 5.25in drive bay.
But I want to upgrade my case. I want one the new designs with a lovely aquarium-style view of my PC’s interior, like the Hyte Y60, just with a drive bay in the metal above the glass at the top. We can make room for screens spanning the gap between glass panels, huge lighting arrays, several unused PCIe slots, and multiple fan mounts all over the place. Is it too much to ask for a decent case with a front-facing drive bay as well?
One of the things I love about the PC is its unbroken legacy. I can still plug a USB floppy drive into my Raptor Lake rig and boot it from the MS-DOS 3.3 disk that came with my first PC (and yes, I just tried this and it did indeed work). For me, the drive bay is a part of that legacy; a slot that enables you to expand the front of your PC with new features, and I’m not ready to say goodbye to it.
I’m not expecting one as standard on every case, but maybe we could have just one or two new and attractive cases with 5.25in drive bays, just for old farts like me?
