randomly thinking about a PC I had up until like 2005 or 2007... it was a cobbled together zombie using a case that originally came as part of a cheap 2000-2001 prebuilt because… well… what is even money?
over time, and through the course of two moves, the case eventually got so mangled that all of the plastic bits on the exterior had broken apart, so it had completely open sides with guts spilling out,
had to be turned on with a screwdriver and had multiple HDDs basically taped into place
@Chel oh my god I've been there. 1GHz Athlon in a box that had all of its plastic and side panels stripped off ages ago, PATA drive freehanging
@elfi I mean... if the money is tight, what do you do? buy a new case, or just... maybe slap some more memory in? maybe a new GPU if you can get a good deal on it 
@Chel Yep! I think I only stopped using it in the end because I had scraped together enough money to build a new setup with an Athlon 64
@elfi amusingly enough it was the same for me - the case stuck around right up to the point I got my first 64 bit processor 
@elfi right?
people I knew who had more money for fancier systems kept warning me that it was gonna be such a massive problem for this reason or that reason, but in the end it outlasted all of their PCs at the time