Anonymous Coward wrote on 2024-08-19, 01:47:
Enlight was also very popular all throughout the 90s. I think they were even fairly popular in the mid-late 80s.
Enlight cases and power supplies were pretty good, but in my opinion the sheet metal used in the Inwins was even better. A lot of the Inwins also tended to rely on proprietary drive rails, which is annoying if you don't have them.
Enlight 7237 was everywhere in the early early 2000s. I used one for a P4 build in late 2001 and... well, by that point, it was behind its prime.
I got the impression that Antec and some others largely replaced Enlight/Inwin/etc within a year or two after that.
My theory: Enlight/Inwin/others were really selling cases (including a PSU that was preinstalled) to clone shops, i.e. the type of places where people (and not necessarily enthusiasts but potentially Joe Schmoe off the street) walked in, handed over their money, and some person would get out their screwdriver and assemble their computer. I think starting in the early 2000s, that market just shrank and shrank and shrank to the point that in 2024, there are nearly no motherboard/cases/etc for that market. Instead, enthusiasts building their own systems came to make up a larger and larger share of the market, and they demanded things that the generic clone shop system didn't need - enhanced cooling options, ease of opening (that Enlight 7237 was stupid... you had to pop off the front bezel before removing the side panel, IIRC), more front-panel I/O options, easier to install drives, no bundled PSU, etc.
