David Russell

Recently, I grabbed a sweet new NZXT Lexa case from NewEgg, using a gift cert from my parents. (Thanks Mom and Dad!) After all the rebates, the total cost is $110 on it including shipping. The first machine I ever owned was purchased in 1999 for college. The old case was the only remaining original part on my machine. Over the years, I’ve upgraded every other component, some multiple times, but I always decided on moving up the chain technologically, never aesthetically.

Not that my machine is at the top tier of tech specs today, but I finally decided to get rid of the 7-year-old case in favor of something more pleasing to the eye. What I found is that cases have changed a lot over the years! My new case, the NZXT Lexa, is beautiful! The case is definitely edgy, but it has subtle elegance. It’s also more quiet, has larger capacity and makes hardware upgrades simple through screwless PCI mounts and drive rails.

I decided to snag a few before-and-after images of the hardware exchange. I’ve had a few other parts from previous upgrades stored away and I found that with my old case, I now have enough parts to build a second box using all the old gear. That machine will now be running Ubuntu Server and used as a project box for me to toy with various systems and applications, like Asterisk, Smoothwall and a plethora of fun web applications.

View all the images in the Flickr set.

Before:

After:

NZXT Lexa
NewEgg

[tags]case, upgrade, nzxt, lexa, newegg[/tags]