Computer Case

[Elgen]

as Dark0ne so good put it, don't waste money on a computer case. Almost only 12 year old WoW/CS players have heavy styled cases, with neon and leds all over it. (No pun intended), but if I were you I'd buy better things inside the case. And I try to say this to every other person wanting to buy a comp.

[tmx]

what i am saying below is for air cooling, as i dont have experience with water cooling.

 

there are things you can do to improve the heat problem. one is to use arctic silver compound for your cpu and buy a better cpu cooler. many people underrate the important of a good thermal compound, if heat cant be transfer to the heatsink you cant cool anything. and you need a thermal compound that doesnt dry out.

 

secondly fan positioning is very important. infact where it is and which direction it blows, its possible for a well design case with two fans to cool better than a case with 4 fans, but bad design. you will have to play around with this.

 

a psu with a 120mm fan help a big deal with cpu cooling as it sits above the cpu and suck a good amount of air out.

 

it is important to have a fan in front of the harddive because it cools the harddrives and provide air for the video card fan, which is an area where often lacks of air flow. a video card that has a big fan that also has a tube leading outside the case, however, can collect the hot air around the harddrive area and put thow outside. beneficial for the card and harddrives.

 

the case positioning is important, if you have the rear fan as output and its next to a corner, it cant throw that hot air out. and air cooling is only as effective as your room ambient temperature.

 

lastly, another very underrate thing, is a clean computer. use a can of compressed air to blow out the collected dirts.

 

yes, you don't have to waste a lot on a case, but i do experience case that have such bad cooling design that it is hopeless. i would recommend this rosewill case as it has a 120mm fan in the back. there is also a 90mm on the side, and a 120mm in the front. but it come with only one 120mm, you got to buy the other two fans which can be a bit expensive. but overall its a very well designed case, easy to install, (except setting up the cdrom bay for the first time). there arent many cases that has 2 or three 120mm fan port that go this cheap.

 

you also do not need to invest too much on a cpu cooler, i see these thing gets so expensive these day. i use the opteron 144, and oc it from 1.8ghz to 2.7ghz, but i bought the stock cpu cooler of the amd 64 4800+ from ebay, which works excellent and cost 3 times less than those overpriced and heavy zalman. but make sure it has good design, fans bigger than 80mm is good, and has heatpipe. design that blow the hot air to the side, instead of blowing air downward, is better.

 

the best case i have use for air cooling is ofcourse the sunbeam acrylic case. because i have to assemble the pieces together, and there are five fan ports. the case has many opening and gaps, it was excellent for cooling. with 5x80mm fan it can get very loud if you dont buy a quiet fans and a fan controller.

 

i had to get rid of it because it made it hard to fall asleep and you can see why.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b233/eksasol/comp/th_side.jpg