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Choosing a Good Case
Sir Joltalot writes "There's a great
guide at Tom's Hardware about choosing a good
case. They also look at a few very interesting and
slick cases you can get and discuss recent trends
in modding. A good read if you're new to building
computers or thinking about modding a case for
the first time." I've been planning to build a new machine
for a few months now, so this is timely for me.
Would have to be the Chieftec Dragon. It Looks amazing and comes in all sorts of silly colours (Mine Is bright green). Although it's not beyond the capability of anyone here to spray a case. They have Loadsa places to stick fans with little and even throw in a side panel fan (although it sounds like a lawnmower).
I'm a big fan of the Addtronics case line. If I can sit on my tower and it doesn't even slightly buckle, I'll trust my hundreds of dollars hardware in there. Plus they have the most convenient drive rail system I've ever seen. Plus they're decently priced. *shrug* Just my opinion...
Australian Overclockers have great ideas for cases. Some of them innovative.
60623
siliconghetto
What I really need is a case big enough to fit Tom inside it so that he can continually keep my machine up-to-date without my needing to waste so much time reading all these hardware websites.
At the very least, he'd probably be quieter than my fan.
Scroll down to the "PC Cases" section of this Silent PC resources page for some good ideas about choosing a case when its noise qualities are a factor.
None are QUIET! All are noisy! That is a biased site.
:"Chimney column effect"
That site promotes multiple noisy fans in every case!
Hilarious! While apple products strive to make a noiseless machine lacking any fans (except if temperatures spike too high) Apple 2, Mac plus, Mac Cube, iMac, apple laptops, etc, the pc world not only likes noise they design their cases to lack the
They also have sites like the one in this article link written by people who like noisy load boxes!
hilarious!
Try to find any hardware tweakers site that even thought of a quiet box or REDCUCING the fan noise. You won't.
Thats because "They dont' get it".
Even Steve Jobs loudest computer, the 12 thousand dollar NeXT cube had a 10 foot set of cables so that you could place it in a closet and never need to go near it or listen to its fans. We had ours decked out to 42 thousnad dollars of components and addons but were too proud to hid it so we put it on the other side of the room. It was silent compared to the persitent drone promoted by sites such as this article.
They think a few firewire ports up front or aluminum boxes are "cool". Sheesh...
One case the combines a lot of his "required features" is the PC-60 by Lian Li. ( http://www.lian-li.com )
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This is by far the best case I have purchased and one of the lightest as well (http://www.lian-li.com/product.php?action=viewPD
Tom's site is okay, but some of their reviews / guides seem as if they were hurried as they don't have many example items, this case review is one of them.
Anand has a handy index of all of his case reviews, ( http://www.anandtech.com/searchresults.html?topic
Finally Dan's Data did a good write up on these cases http://www.dansdata.com/llmisc.htm
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A couple of links:
Codegen ATX-9001 server case (rather inexpensive for what you get)
Lian Li PC-6 and PC-5 (fairly cheap Lian Lis - whoever woulda thunk it? This review links to various other Lian Li reviews of mine)
Look at all the computers sitting in a pile (at the linked site). What a waste! Those should be in a beowulf cluster!
I know, I know, it just had to be said...
Like pi? Try 10,000 digits.
I placed an order for this Doggie Case from Nikao a few days ago. $45 and $10 to ship via Pricewatch.
Now, a bunch of you are probably going to ask me why or call me a fag or say that I don't understand the meaning of case modding. What I'd really like to know is why there aren't more humorous/non-manly styled cases. There are plenty of girls out there as well as guys who just appreciate asian culture and random cute things. I think after I get this case I'll get a review up. -Steve PS: And no, I'm not talking about the damn Barbie computers. Remember those?
Here ya go... From Directron's website:
Why Weight Matters?
The more appropriate question is why size matters.
The weight of a power supply is directly related to the quantity, quality, and size of the material (thus cost) used to build the power supply. We opened a light and a heavy 300W-labeled power supplies. The heavy one has larger capacitors, thicker wires, larger transformer, larger heat sinks, more connectors, and more capacitors than the light one, all of which are important factors for the overall cost and quality of a power supply. The difference is illustrated below:
Lots of pics and interesting info. Go look if you're interested.
The only scientific basis I can think of to support that idea is that the main transformer is larger and has more headroom, ie. it doesn't have to deliver as close to its capacity as the lighter one. That could translate into longer life and higher reliability in general.
More likely, in my opinion, the rule of thumb might work because the heavier power supply is just more likely to have been built better; better transformer, better chassis, larger capacitors, etc.
What does it take for a website to be "the best" to you? You've heard about them rigging benchmarks in the favor of their highest paying sponsor (which switches from Intel to AMD all the time), taking credit for articles written by other people (Van Smith has had his name deleted from countless numbers of his articles), and just generally being assholes, right?
Dr. Tom Pabst is one of the least respected people in the hardware community.
Anybody have good reviews/recommends on Flex/micro ATX cases and P3 motherboards? I want to make a small router/gateway PC and so far I've found el-cheapo cases and Soldam. The Soldams are nice but too nice. I want something like this:
Small and flat, no vents on top if possible.. think of a shrunken-down 2U rack server. No cubes.
space for a floppy, CDROM, one PCI card, one HD.
built in VGA graphics of any quality
built-in 10/100 ethernet and one serial port
quiet would be nice..would like to run it with just the PS fan.. probably I'd underclock it.. it's replacing a 486 so there's no problem with speed
Anybody built something like this?
Point being, if there is a problem, then the owner has a place they can drive to, which is important. This qualifies as the equivalent of a ford or chevy solution (vs a yugo solution)
PC Power and Cooling has attracted advocates with a religious level dedication, especially the quality of their power supplies.
They also have this chart on what various components draw is very useful for figuring out how much power you need. Worth a bookmark in itself.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
One thing this article seems not to mention (unless I missed it) is that you want a power supply with an intake fan on the bottom, not the front. This does a lot to draw heat away from the processor. I actually had an Athlon-based system that was locking up regularly until I switched to a new case and power supply.
The Antek KS388 is cheap, easy to work with, and comes with the "right kind" of power supply. It's the best case I've ever worked with (though to be fair, I've never bought a top-of-the-line case.)
Why is this these computer cases are all looking more-or-less the same ?
are these "case designers" that narrow-minded as to think i actually want a case like what they offer ?
It seems that attention to asthetics has not been ignored by some rack server manufacturers, making some cool looking 19" rack stuff (usually hidden from view) but they seem to think the regular consumer wants an ugly oblong box in a _____ colour that makes a lot of noise under my desk !
I would love a case that looks like a piece of hi-fi, something i could place in my component stack (as a media/coms device) and it wouldnt look out of place,my dvd,amp,cd,video,console etc are not in big ugly boxes so why should my computer be any different ?
At least Apple are trying to think "outside the box" and redefine how we see computers visually
now why cant the pc-case manufacturers take a leaf out of their book and try and innovate case design instaed of churning out the same visual styles for 15 years
This is somewhat OffTopic, but I'll risk the karma hit.
I'm interested in having a custom computer built for me. If I were to pick out all of the components I wanted, where would be the best place I could go and have them build it? I am not a hardware person at all, and building a computer for scratch seems to me to be about as fun as being kicked in the balls. Are their and companies out there that allow you to pick all of the components (read: don't force you to use items they nessecarily carry) and build the box for you. Preferably I would like someplace that has a fair price, but really anywhere would be ok.
I've had an Antec case similar to the one reviewed in Tom's Hardware Guide for about a year. Yes, it is pretty well-engineered, rugged, quiet and ergonomic.
There is a serious problem, however. The fans seem to pull dust in through the 5" drive bays. Whenever I open my white CD burner tray, it's coated with dust. If you put your hand right in front of the drive bays, you can feel the air getting sucked right through the drives. Air flow past a hard drive is one thing, but a CD burner is un-sealed, motorized, and requires a clean laser to work properly... I would never think of mounting an internal tape drive in this case for fear of dust issues.
It strikes me as a major flaw in this case, and one I have not experienced with any other case.
try www.mwave.com ive had my two machines and my laptop built from them, they give you a lot of options on what you want. If you go the "barebones system" page, it lets you assemble a case, MoBo, CPU, and memory...they put al of that together for you, then you just need to add the HDD and pci cards (if any...i always picked the MSI K7N420 mobo...coz it has built in LAN/audio/video...and im not looking for anything fancy..then you can pick what other parts you want...and the prices are the best ive seen on the net..
arstechnica has lots of reviews on cases. I've killed 5 power supplies in the last 5 years, so if anything get a good power supply. The other stuff you can skimp on. After all, isn't the power supply the most important part of a case?
I have yet to find another case as easy to open, get at all the components and make whatever mods are required and flip closed than the Apple tower cases.
Man I hate opening up my PC case to get at stuff. The Mac case just flips open and everything's exposed. There's no reason for it either. I'm sure PC makers could offer the same convenience. Why do we secure our drives on BOTH sides of the unit? An L shaped snap-in plate that hangs on to ONE side would be just as effective.
And the handles molded into the unit make moving it around securely, specially when lifting it up on a higher shelf, a real breeze. Ever dropped a PC? Ever come close and only scraped a couple of knuckles?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...sell the fucking kid.
Many cases do. I've had plenty of cases to work with that were a breeze to open. Single thumbscrew, single panel, everything exposed, drive bay on a qwik-release arm so you can replace drives easily, etcetera.
I've had my eye on this case for a while, for a set-top box. Dunno if it's what you had in mind, but take a look.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
...because it will be from www.calmpc.com (beware of the funny Korean English. Yikes!)
It doesn't get any more quiet than that.
Slashdot had a story about them a while ago, but now they have released the second version that can cool even the newest CPUs.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
I have tried several times going to the posted URL at the top of the article, but all I get are 404 errors.
d ex.html
Here is a better link that will bring up the article directly:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/02q2/020521/in
One type of case I'd have liked to see reviewed is cubes like the Chenbro's or Yeong Yang's. I think Enermax does some also. Basically, instead of having a full tower, you have have something twice as wide, but half as high, with the same (actually, probably more) room inside for 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 devices.
Personally, I bought a YY-0221. Although it's quite heavy, it's easier to move around (comes with casters) and to carry than a full tower of the same weight. And it fits easily under my desk (which was a reason to go with it). The only drawback is from a cooling POV. There's no exhaust fan around the CPUs, and since the PSU is in the drives compartment, it can get quite hot. Solution: put a fan through the top (not done yet, probably today).
It's not a crack pipe. He's deliberately trolling. Anyone who is smart enough to know that capacitors have electrolytic is smart enough to know that the quantity is not an issue.
The people who say that heavier power supplies are better are trolling, also. To get a sure impression of quality, it is necessary to examine the components inside, and know what you are seeing.
If people begin judging power supplies by weight, manufacturers will just use thicker metal in the power supply cases.
Quote from the article at Tom's Hardware: "As with almost everything else in the world today, it is obvious that quality costs money, but over the long haul, if you can continue to recycle your case every time that you build a new system you will not only help the environment, but have a case that is more like an old familiar friend that you have come to count on."
Not only is this poor writing (because of the pontificating about quality), but it's wrong. You should keep your old computer. It probably represents many hours of tweaking. You may need it if you have problems with your new computer. Quite possibly you will need a new power supply because of new power requirements, as with the Pentium IV. Probably you are upgrading almost all your components, so you will only pay a little extra to keep your old computer.
Here is another quote from the article: "If cost were the overriding factor, we would most likely purchase the Antec 1080, but would have rather purchased the Direction 201S, which is what we ultimately would have rather purchased to begin with."
A lot of writing on Tom's Hardware is just filler. It is an attempt to take up as many pages as possible, so you will see as many ads as possible. Someone should write a Perl script to process Tom's pages into something sensible.
We need comparisons of features. It is enormously laborious to do the comparisons ourselves. So, we accept the poor quality of Tom's Hardware.
I've considered cases from 40 manufacturers, and I've never seen a good case. All cases I've seen have a problem with fit. Antec cases don't have fan filters, so in a few months your components are covered with heat insulating dust. The Antec drive mounting system is poor. Their replacement power supplies are expensive, and some of them don't have switches on the power supply to turn off the power in case nothing else is responding. (This is a hassle when you are putting a new computer together, and you have a component installation problem.)
Another manufacturer I considered has a good fan filter, but their power supplies go bad after about two years.
One brand that is a little on the expensive side, but makes great cases is Coolermaster. I purchased an ATC 101 about a year ago and have been really satisfied. If you not willing to fork down that much money for a case, Lain LI makes some great alluminum cases that are relativly inexpensive.
Thanks for your considerate language.
Your suggestion does not work in a commercial environment. Customers must be able to remove and clean the filter from outside the case.
Also, good filtering requires consideration of all the airflow, not just one fan.
About a year ago I started looking for a new computer case to replace my old computer case. My old computer case was an AOpen HX08, which is a huge full tower beige case. It was too big for what I needed -- IDE cables were too short to reach from the top most 5.25 inch drive bay to the IDE ports. The case had poor cooling, was terribly heavy, was an ugly yellow-beige color, and had poor noise isolation. In general, the HX08 was not a good case for me.
I looked at cases from AOpen, Enlight, generic mystery websites and eBay auctions, Elan Vital, In-Win, ATop, and others.
My two PCs that use this case employ Windows 2000 and Debian Linux as their operating systems, named Aspiration (Windows) and Anxiety (Debian). Both systems now use the AOpen H600A.
Anxiety has a single IDE DVD drive, a 1.4MB floppy disk drive, an Asus K7V motherboard, an AMD Athlon 650 Slot A processor, some RAM, NIC, sound card, AGP video card, and a single IDE hard disk drive. Anxiety is a Linux desktop and provides your typical Linux desktop functions. I have two separate unixy servers.
Aspiration has an IDE DVD drive, an IDE CDRW drive, a 1.4MB floppy drive, a 3.5 inch smart card reader and USB port bay, uses the Soyo K7V Dragon Plus motherboard, Athlon processor, RAM, sound card, video card, network card, TV card, and a single IDE hard disk drive.
I chose the AOpen H600A mini tower case for a number of reasons. I am happy with this purchase. Here are my reasons for buying this case, and what I think of it now that I own two of them.
The AOpen H600A is a modern case. It was first released sometime in the late summer of 2001.
The AOpen website provided satisfactory pictures and information about the case to help me make an informed purchase -- something that the majority of case manufactures do not do.
The case supports full sized ATX motherboards. In addition, it also supports AT motherboards, and Pentium 4 motherboards.
The case supports four 5.25 inch drive bays -- more than many other mini tower cases of similar size.
The case supports two 3.5 inch drive bays.
The case supports three internal 3.5 inch hard disk drive mount points, plus the other two 3.5 inch disk drive bays which can be used.
All hard disk drive mount points are near the bottom of the case, where cooler air comes in.
Seven expansion slot bays in th rear of the case.
Comes default with a very good power supply, though I exchanged one of mine with an Enermax, which required some hacking to get in.
Requires only two screws to be removed in order to access each side panel. Some other's have screwless entry, but this is okay.
A nice beige color face with minimal "stupid look". Looks plain and nice. Not like some kind of freak box.
Good front panel LED lights, which are unfortunately biased for left of monitor placement of computer case.
Good cooling design, though not the best. Two large vertical vents near the front sides of the case. Air inlet from the front bottom of case. Two optional fans can be mounted in the rear of the case, and two in the front.
Some bad things about this case;
Cost is a little high. I think that myopen.com had the lowest price, along with newegg.com, last time I checked.
The front panel accessible USB and sound ports is an option and does not come default with the case.
The feet as shown with most case pictures do not come default with the case. Instead they supply short round feet, which work just as well. This case has few tipping problems.
Enermax power supplies will not normally fit into the case due to their dust filter found on the external bottom of the power supplies. In order to make these power supplies fit into the case, you must remove this dust filter and put it on the inside of the power supply, requiring some hacking, or just removing it entirely, which also requires hacking and some washers. See here; http://opendreams.net/jesse/images/20011221.comput er.upgrade/28.empty.chassis.4.jpg
Overall, I am happy with this case. It is not something that I think about a lot, but that is the idea. It is not too noisy, it does not get too hot. I keep doing my work and it does it's own. Here is the AOpen product page for this case;
http://www.aopen.com/products/housing/h600a.htm
You can see pictures of this case in use during my last computer upgrade. Find images here;t er.upgrade/
http://opendreams.net/jesse/images/20011221.compu
Another problem that i have had with my case was not excactly noise, but the vibration caused by various parts of the machine (the fans, the motors in the harddrive, the transformer). This bugs me because the computer is placed on the floor and the vibration actually tansmitts through the floor to my feet. So what i did was I folded up a bubble wrap sheet (the fat beefy kind, not the wussy nipples kind) to the right dimension and put the computer right on top of it. And the problem was solved, no more annoying vibration. Notice this shouldn't affect the heat dissipation too much since without the bubble wrap it would have been the carpet anyway.
I also suspect that the bubble wrap reduces the noise somewhat. The noise from the computer can be caused not just directly from the fans and whatnot. The thin metalic walls of the case may act as a vibratory membrane.
The motherboard itself vibrates a lot if you dont screw it tight completely. Hence I conjecture that several strategically placed cushioning substance may reduce the noise further.
i say strategic because there seems to be a large overlap between material that isolate sound and material that isolate heat. Otherwise wise one can just wrap the whole box in bubble wrap. Thinking of bubble, i think silicone would be an ideal vibration absorber. I think i'd better stop talking now.
This comes after struggling with my fiancees case
for half an hour this morning just to get enough
space to install more RAM, and then just getting
off the phone a few minutes ago trying to help her
troubleshoot a boot problem that the case had to
come off twice for us to fix.
I'd disconnect the reset button from the motherboard, if possible. A pair of scissors can also help render the reset button useless. I do this to protect against myself. :-)
k b; EN-US;q168180
As far as the CD-ROM drive goes, you might be able to write a little program that locks the drive. If you're doing this under Windows, this documentation looks helpful (beware, the lameness filter added spaces to the URL):
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=
/ \
\ / ASCII ribbon campaign for peace
x
/ \
Oh no! It's the infamous "stuff-to-read" department! It's the most populous department on all of /.!
I was thinking of taking College level metal shop and building my own computer case. I would make it out of aluminum and make grids in the entire case like a HUGE heatseak. Then I would attach more aluminum, or a more condenser metal, to the power supply, CPU, HDD, and maybe the ram and have them all fead to the outside of the case, distrubting the heat. Does anyone see anything wrong with this idea? Should I use another metal?
I'm looking at an aluminum case, probably the Lian-Li that everyone is so fond of. Anyway, I read Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor Column up at Byte religously, and noted that he had a bad experience with a flimsy motherboard tray at one point (see this article). Anyone have any opinions? Did he just suffer because he bought some "el cheapo" knockoff?
Michael C. Hollinger
Electrolytic capacitors have electrolyte: Electrolytic Capacitors, Chapter I. Some electrolyte is made available inside the capacitor so that, if there is a short between the plates, the insulating film can be re-formed.
Here is VERY valuable advice: If you have something with electrolytic capacitors inside, and it has not had power for a year or more, find some way to raise the voltage very slowly so that the insulating film can be re-formed. Otherwise, a capacitor may be shorted, and the application of full power will cause overload and destruction of other components.
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Just use that spray on vinyl dye that car detailers use to change the colour of car interiors.
.
Afterall the vast majority of computers have plastic bevels, while the metal sides are painted with acrylic paint.
You can buy a PC Chips S370 'bare bones' book PC (its even avaliable in black as the 'Delux' model with IR keyboard & mouse/remote
Or you can buy Book PC cases in LPX, NLX, MicroATX or FlexATX format, & build the bugger yourself. Many companies make them, including Enlight ( 7180-mATX , EN-7396 ) & Asus/ElanVital