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Clear Case Roundup
The Cheat writes "Interested in making your computer the envy of all the other computers on the
block? What visitors to oooh and ahhh when they enter your room? The latest trend
in computer case solutions can do just that. AnandTech took a look at three clear
cases in a recent roundup,
each certain to make you more popular, right? Maybe not, but at least they look
cool."
scare any and all females from ever entering my bedroom again.
There's a reason cases are made of metal. EM SHIELDING!
Geek chic is coming into popularity. The other kids at my high school are very impressed with the various case detailing methods, and especially enjoy such companies as Alienware, who has now replaced Dell as the system "to have".
There is no way I'd buy one of these cases...or one with a window.
:)
There's a reason for all the EMI shielding in a case! And the reason? Search google
I have to wonder what the FCC says about these cases...although for Home use I don't believe there is much in terms of requirements.
Colossians 2:8
Are there any neat things you would like to see in a case?
...that if you think these look cool; you needn't fear being 'popular'. ;)
(damn, did I forget my humor tags?)
What do you mean, "again"?
Sean
WARNING: This product is meant for education purposes only. It is unknown how much protection it provides EMR (electromagnetic radiation), if it provides any protection at all.
This warning trails all of their clear case descriptions... Anyone have any definitive info on this?
Sure, these look really cool. And to be honest, I wouldn't mind having a nice clear case and all. But, is it entirely necessary? My case currently resides on the floor between my desk and my roommates desk in my dorm room. From what I've seen, most cases sit on the floor next to a desk, no? A nice looking case is good and all, but is it practical? I'd rather spend the extra money and buy extra hard drives, etc., something that serves a better function then "looking cool". I mean, it's like buying an old, beat-up car with no engine, and giving it a spoiler, racing stripes, etc. But hey, if someone gave me a check for a few hundred dollars, and I had nothing to spend it on, a clear case would be nice.
take off every sig for great justice
Computer cases haven't changed a whole lot in the last 5 years ever since they discovered the stylish case market. Trends have changed a little, windowed cases and flat black designs are popular. I would like to see more truly innovative designs like the Shuttle PCs and other stylish cases with a purpose.
Almost all of our development machines use a Clear Case--it's definitely popular where I work. I told management that the difference was mostly just eye candy, and that Bitkeeper would do just fine (and be more scalable, at that). But, instead, they oooh'ed and aaah'ed over it, just like the slashdot posting said they would.
The money, the alcohol, the women, the secret enemy fortresses, oh wait, I'm thinking of James Bond...
;)
Any case modder I know doesn't really have a life, other than Lan Parties.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
clear car hood
You know what this means? Now you have to clean whatever dirt a solid case/hood would have hidden... I guess this doesn't matter too much to people who buy new hardware every four months though...
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Yes, I stare at the inside of the computer from time to time.
It'd be so cool if there were transparant laptop case. Now, that's cool Better yet, transparant CD/DVD drive casing so that you can spot the laser. Imagine how cool it is to have that sort of laptop in the dark!!!!!!
Black Light, some lava lamp should be a must have!!!!!!
mod
It's ASDFing to the Ultra!!!!!
To me this is a classic case of flash over substance. Why pay the extra for a window/lights/rounded cables when that money can be put into a faster CPU, a better video card, or a bigger hard drive? It reminds me of the people who buy a cheap ass Honda then trick it out with everything they can bolt on only to have their doors blown off by a stock Camaro SS which costs less.
Whoop-tee-dee you have LCD's on your fan, I can push twice the fps you can and will procede to hand you your ass in tournament play. Just a thought.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -RAH
That's because we have already saved the whales. No reason for Scotty to give away the secret.
Us Alpha Nerds don't use cases. We just lay our motherboards down on cardboard pizza delivery boxes. Clear computer cases are for posers.
You want to pimp out your case? Just take a drill with different size drill bits, and create a funky crop circle on the front, or side, or whatever. Cheap solution.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I hear just a little dust makes these look bad, and it needs regular cleaning. Something to keep in mind.
Not for me but whatever floats your boat.
you could see how much dust the fans actually suck in? Firgure out the amount of time it takes a dust bunny to form? Observe housing structures and construction techniques for the local spider population? Throw perfectly good beer money away buying lights, blinking fans, etc? See what color of smoke actually comes out of the cpu from overclocking? Gain a little EMR? Buying a PERL book would be way more useful and beneficial.....just my 2 cents..
What about static electricity? Acrylic just loves to build up static. Even small amounts of static electricity, too small to be felt by human touch, will still turn expensive, delicate chips into expensive sand.
Yeah, they're pretty, but it looks like they'll probably also shorten the life of your 1337 g4m1n6 r1g.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I don't know about the rest of you, but everytime I open my case, it's full of dust. I'm really not into vacumming my case just to be hip.
Well, let's say I got everything installed and it looked great. Then I would have to open it up every month(at least) to clean it. With all the air going though there, the housing won't look pretty for long.
my sig
Just remember, 10 years from now your cool modded case with its dual Athlon 2600s is going to look like a funny piece of crap.
...unlike at least 97% of the posters in this thread. I bought it for fun when I replaced my motherboard about six months ago.
I like the way it looks, which is important since it's sitting in front of me whenever I do any computer-related work at home.
I probably wouldn't buy one again though, because it's a hassle to keep clean, and I haven't found a way to keep the cabling looking neat since there's nowhere to hide the excess. Also, because the expansion card mounting bracket is Lucite like the rest of the case, it's kind of fragile. I think Soyo makes a case with a metal bracket, but they hadn't released it when I got this one.
I haven't experienced any EMR issues either for the internal components or the external ones.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
For God's sake people, you're NOT going to go sterile from the electromagnetic fields your computer emits... you're also not going to mutate or develop cancer either, it's simply not powerful enough (Fields from enormous power transmission lines are another matter).
The main reason there are regulations is not for health concerns, but to make sure that stuff will work in proximity to other stuff (Except of course hospitals or airplanes, where health concerns and electrical systems are closely related). If your computer were to interfere with your monitor, that wouldn't be too good, would it?
Some other myths I've seen around here is that if you block the electric field, then you block the magnetic field too... this is NOT always the case, since often the coupling mechanism will be much more sensitive to one form (electric or magnetic) than the other. I'm taking a class on electromagnetic compatibility this term, and we actually did an experiment to show the effect of grounded shielding on a coaxial cable. Basically, there were two cables kept very close together, and one was shielded. You'd apply a voltage to the unshielded one, and measure what was induced on the other one. There were clips to ground each side of the shield. The main point was so that we could see that if you grounded the shield at BOTH ends, it provided significantly more protection against noise. In fact, depending on the frequency, grounding it on one end had almost no effect whatsoever (maybe a 5% difference, and it depended on what end you grounded it on). This was because if the cable was only grounded at one end, it couldn't dissipate magnetic fields, since there was no loop for current to flow through.
Effects also depend highly on the frequency. If I remember correctly, at lower frequencies, the electric field was more significant, and grounding the shield at one end had a fairly noticeable effect... whereas at high frequencies, the magnetic coupling was much more important.
It's also worth pointing out that digital circuits are much worse for EM emissions, since the square waves used for clock signals generate enormous amounts of harmonics far exceeding the clock frequency. Even a 1 MHz clock can have frequency components past 15 MHz (This is very dependang on the "rise time" of the signal.. a "more perfect" square wave has more harmonics), so one can only imagine what's coming out of your 2 GHz machine!
You will also NEVER eliminate ALL the noise from a circuit. I don't care if you encase the thing in a meter of iron, there is still some amount of emissions. The point is to get them to such a small level that they're negligible. Even if you have your case all together, there's still the possibility of it causing interference. Thicker shielding usually will lead to more effective protection, but it's still impossible to reduce the fields to absolutely zero.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
I count five --albeit cool looking --fans in this case! This doesn't include the power supply fan(s) nor the CPU fan. What ever happened to the ideal of the nice quiet machine? Where's all the innovation on shutting the damm thing up?
It reminds me of the first beta-Itanuim machine I saw. The machine had eight fans and spun them up in pairs to avoid pulling too much power. The thing sounded like an airplane taking off, and everyone complained that the temperature in the room kept going up; an eight hundred watt power supply. What a joke.