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Treasures or Trash, 5 PC Cases for Gamers
An anonymous reader writes "Tom's Hardware has a look at 5 different customized PC cases and a few peripheral devices that may be of some interest to gamers. From the article: 'Those who believe it is impossible to make any missteps when buying a gaming case are sadly mistaken. In most cases, you get too much plastic for your hard-earned money. Case components, covers and door panels break off far too easily, and are hard to use besides. That's why we advise savvy buyers to spend a few more dollars on their cases, and make sure they're getting quality components - especially where plastic covers or door panels are present.'"
They have flashy lights and windows! That's all that matters, right, guys?
29 pages? No printer-formatted single page? I'd rather not give my wrist an RSI by all that clicking or waste my allotted amount of bandwidth downloading all those ads.
my god, thats a lot of pages to scroll through... I'm inclined to be a little lazy when buying a case; I only put my feet on it so it doesn't really matter what it looks like. Inside they are all pretty much the same so long as they have enough room, and a construction which will allow you to put your feet on it safely.
I've had a friend who had a case with really bright blue lights on his computer; all that that meant was we had to stick post-it notes over them when we wanted to watch something to avoid blinding us. I wouldn't want lights on my case...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Those little touches are incredibly easy to do, but no one ever adds them. I'd much rather be able to swing out my power supply so I don't have to disassemble my computer to add RAM or whatnot, rather than have my case look like it's got eyes on.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It'd be the one I just picked up, the Antec P180. Actually I opted for the P180B, the black version (the normal 180 is silver) but either way same case, different finish. It's a case that has it all, if you asked me. It's got the setup for extremely effective cooling, yet runs very quiet for all that. Plenty of interior room, good design, etc. The only real gripe I have is it takes a long time to properly install all your components what with the special mounts and such. However, you do that once and you've got a great case.
Of course it also looks stellar. It's extremely sleek and clean the whole way around. It's the kinds of subdued good looks that make you want to leave it alone, rather than put stickers on it and rice it out.
These cases I'd liken to a riced out Civic. You are going for flash to try and distract and wow people. The P180 is more like an Audi sedan, it looks so good it needs no modification.
Either way if you are willing to spend the cash on cases like this (the $100+ market) give these overly flashy jobs a miss and have a look at a P180. It will look good in just about any room and they really put some thought in the engineering of it. It's the first case I've seen that really seemed to think someone might want to have a system that's quiet AND high performance, but not want to screw with water cooling.
Why get a Civic with a spoiler and fart pipe if you could get an S4 without for the same price?
Drum roll please. On May 29, 2003, I entered a new phase of PC ownership. That was the day that my Chenbro SR101 21 bay server case arrived. Perhaps you didn't hear me. I said it was a 21 bay case! It's 14.5" wide and 25" tall! (The 25" includes the caster wheels.) It's a monster and unless you're one of the lucky few who own a case like this, it would most likely eat your case for an after dinner snack!
It's a masterpiece of case design! There are holders for wires in it to reduce clutter. It's like running a network inside the PC.
It has spaces for up to 15 fans.
It has caster wheels.
The motherboard is on a removable platter so I was able to just take the platter out and put the motherboard on it instead of having to put it into the case directly.
It has 12 external 5.25" bays and 8 internal 3.5" bays and 1 external 3.5" bay for the floppy drive.
The floppy drive bay has a removable platter so you can attach the drive to it and then attach the platter to the case.
The case comes with rails for the 5.25" bays. You attach the rails to each 5.25" device (CDROM, removable hard drive, etc.) and you can just slide the device into the bay and it snaps in place. You just squeeze the sides to pull them back out. There's no need to have to screw each one in and out when you want to move them around!
There's room in the back for 3 power supplies (I have 2 installed right now) and it's possible attach power supplies into the 5.25" bays if desired which theoretically means you could have 7 power supplies in it, but you wouldn't have much room left over for anything else.
The back, sides, top, and front panels are all removable, so if I want to I can remove them and have them painted or even paint them myself! (I was thinking of maybe having the entire thing painted shiny dark black with 1 big yellow pacman on each side.) I wonder if they sell spoilers for PC cases... Actually, I think I may have no choice but to add neon lights to it.
Cow Cube
The case absolutely does matter - but not for the reasons mentioned above (lights and looks).
It's all about the cooling - get the right fan placement and air flow in the right place and that's what matters. When you're running an AMD processor faster than a 4200 with an Nvidia 7800 SLI rig, it will matter that you have the right case to get it cool.
According to (a 30 page bonanza of mostly pictures) TFA, I own a something that could qualify as a 'gaming' case. And my vote for the "Treasures or Trash?" conundrum is: trash. Why?
LEDs on the front of the case
Yeah, they look cool. For about 5 minutes. They are dim enough not to illuminate, but bright enough to catch your eye. Hardware equivalent of a flash ad. Also, if you keep your PC in your bedroom, you'd better find something to put in front of the LEDs.
"Cheap plastic USB port covers"
Yup, cheap is right. I snapped mine off literally about half an hour before reading the article. How's that for irony? To be fair, the cover was fine until now, just a bit superfluous. I won't miss it.
Side panels
I have seen about 3 PCs in my lifetime that get sidepanels right: easy to take off, but fit snugly and stay on well in spite of semifrequent access. For my last few boxes, I hav mostly kept my sidepanel off, but laying up against the case. Well, it helps cooling...
Sliding front / moving bits
I said the cheap plastic USB port covers were superfluous? My mistake. Any moving parts such as the case front are entirely superfluous and downright annoying. My last case had a sliding front. Up, it blocked the optical drives. Down, it blocked the USB ports. Argh...
Power supplies
Gaming cases tend to get these right, assuming they include a PSU with the case. No real complaints here in my experience.
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I'd say that unless you are shallow and/or a showoff at LAN parties you'd be better off with a standard case. The money you save on the case can go on a bit of better quality RAM, or at the very worst, a round of beers. So if you have a big budget to blow on a computer you are going to be showing to a lot a people, then sure, get a cool-looking case. But make sure it's cool looking 'features' don't compromise its rather more important 'functions'.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
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Unless your case looks like this, I'm not going to be impressed.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I was going to post the full text of the article, but there's no real point. Most of the "pages" just have three or four photos of parts of the case. The meat of the article is on page 26 for those who are actually interested. Ignore the last 2 pages, they're basically ads for "input devices that light up". Two entire PAGES with no relevance to the article topic at all. Man, what the hell happened to Tom's Hardware? You guys used to be good.
Honestly.
Scenario A: Girl enters room. Standard beige box and chunky CRT are the dominant features.
Girl: In your bedroom? You've gotta be kidding. *goes home*
Gamer:
Scenario B: Girl enters room. Glowing... thingy and shiny LCD are clearly noticeable.
Girl: What are those?
Gamer: That's my flatscreen television and my mood lighting device, baby. It can cycle through very mellow sensual colours. Wanna cuddle for a bit and dream of beautiful memories... together?
Girl: Awwww.... *melts into gamers arms*
So you see, nothing at all to do with games. Beware of cases that don't do warm soft-glow red or pink though..... arctic chill blue does not incite to undress.
29 Pages?!?
An article like this calls for Anti-Pagination!
No, they're the same people who buy old Civics and Neons, put giant spoilers, racing stripes, and "fart can" mufflers on them because they think it makes the car go faster. These are the same people who pay extra for flashing LCD's, clear side panels and lighted fans in their cases - they think it makes it compute faster.
Let's call them "Rice Nerds."
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Oy. I'll leave the car thing alone, but as far as the computers go, most people do it because they a) like how it looks and b) enjoy doing it.
I built my cousin a computer once and he wanted to mod it out. He spent 10 hours custom carving a biohazard logo in the side of it. I think he enjoyed making little tweaks to the appearance over the next few months as much as he liked playing WoW on it once he turned it back on.
So what is wrong with that?
The fans these cases use are absurdly small (so they can be really cheap to make) and using many fans creates added noise due to the beat frequency between them.
The correct way to go about this is to get a cheap steel case, like this for $20.75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811156011
Then get a fan like this for $9.95
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=20060529 19261386&item=16-1331&catname=electric
Now to slow the fan down, to make it quiet, wire a motor run capacitor in series with the fan. Use a cap like this ($1.99) :
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=20060529 19273017&item=22-1186&catname=electric
If you use a smaller value cap, the fan will run slower. If you use a larger value cap, the fan will run faster. The fan speed changes a lot for small changes in the cap value.
Now cut a blowhole in the top of the case, bolt the fan on top blowing into the case, and get rid of all other case fans. Leave the faceplates off on both sides of the video card so lots of air rushes out that way.
Stick a fork in it. It's done.