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Uses for 5.25" drive bays?

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bluebeaus

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Apr 20, 2026
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Hello! Asking if there's any mods or something I'm overlooking in my search for a use for 2-3 of these 5/25" drive bays on my pc case.
I know some people have DVD drives or HDDs, but was wondering if there's any useful alternatives since I don't really have a use for either...
 
Aside from opticals you can get hot swap HDD bays that fit in one or more 5.25" bays. That's probably the biggest use of them these days. People building storage servers. Aside from that you can get I/O panels that fit in 5.25" bays. Not real useful if your case does everything you need, but you can use them to add newer front USB to older cases or add memory card readers.
 
You can use a storage box in them. Sometimes I'll put in fan controllers because they look cool, and you can control your fan speeds manually. They also come in super handy if you're custom watercooling (to put in reservoirs).
 
4/6 x 1 SATA bays. I that's "no good" and you want "modern", then pluggable U2/U3 (but I probably just flew a thousand feet over ones head at that point).

Computing was more enjoyable when we had lanes to play with. Now it's CPU + GPU + a couple of NVMe, why would anyone need more (than 640K)? But if you dabble with workstation class hw, then.. as I suggested, some good options.
 
zandor said:
Aside from opticals you can get hot swap HDD bays that fit in one or more 5.25" bays. That's probably the biggest use of them these days. People building storage servers. Aside from that you can get I/O panels that fit in 5.25" bays. Not real useful if your case does everything you need, but you can use them to add newer front USB to older cases or add memory card readers.
Click to expand...
Storage servers look pretty interesting, tbf. TY for giving me a new rabbit hole to go down :)
 
El_Capitan said:
You can use a storage box in them. Sometimes I'll put in fan controllers because they look cool, and you can control your fan speeds manually. They also come in super handy if you're custom watercooling (to put in reservoirs).
Click to expand...
Some of these fan controllers look so cool! Wish some of these were still around today lol, i'll see if I can find an ebay listing for one of these maybe?
 
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My new computer I build using a Pop AIr just so I could have room from my bluray all-in-one. We have a Plex media server and I don't pirate.

I mentioned the other day on reddit the loss of the full size bay and of course, apart from being laughed at, there was one disagreeing with me. But when pressed he had found a couple of very very very large rack mount cases that had bays. Which sort of made me want to laugh. I wasn't talking about spending $400, nor about having a choice of two, etc. It's like we're living is a different universe now.
 
You can mod a monitor into them:
installed_front.jpg
 
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