I hate my computer's case. For a variety of reasons.

The front bezel is cheap, flimsy plastic, the USB plugs were located in 
such a way that they could be easily broken if the computer were on the 
floor. It's a pain to slide the side of the case off for system upgrades 
or maintenance. The drive bays are welded in, and rather inconvenient 
when installing/removing drives, especially the 3.5 inch HD bays, of 
which one side is obscured by the motherboard tray. The motherboard tray 
is welded in. The card screws are covered by a cumbersome "security 
device" The power and resent buttons are located such that gripping the 
case will generally result in the system going to sleep or being reset. 
There's a handle on the top of the case that is completely unnecessary, 
and utterly scary if you do lift it by this handle. The card slots are 
ever so slightly misaligned such that installing an AGP video card is a 
major pain in the ass. They provide a cut-out for a firewire plug, but 
failed to provide the actual plug. The headers for the USB are single 
pins (yeah, try to get that right ... I dare ya.) Oh, yeah and did I 
mention the motherboard tray is welded in place? Ventilation is totally 
inadequate for a modern machine...

I suspect my heat problems started when I upgraded the video adapter. 
The video adapter produces copious amounts of heat when under load. It 
has a very nice heatsink fan, which is good. It carries the heat from 
the card very efficiently. Now, this is not a double-wide card, so it 
vents the heat into the case. No problem, I have 3 friggen fans in this 
case. One in the side (80mm), two in the back (80mm) The side fan is 
intake, the back fans are exhaust, as well as the power supply fan 
(120mm) Now, you'd think with that many fans you'd get adequate cooling. 
No. Just ... no. You see, there's some nice holes in the top of the case 
to provide ventilation beyond just the fans. (Wait, what? the top?) yes, 
the top, which provides great airflow to the empty drive bays, and the 
empty space at the top of the case, but fails to provide flow to 
critical things like, oh, say, the motherboard. I suspect the fan in the 
side is purely for aesthetics, and (here's the kicker!) every other case 
I've seen has copious amounts of vent holes in the bottom front of the 
case, along with a convenient mount for a fan! This case? No! There is 
no ventilation for cool air to come in from the bottom of the case and 
be pulled across the main board.

I fixed the ventilation problem last night. I pulled out the drive bay 
covers and jammed a desk fan against the new orifice. Guess what? My 




I'm still looking forward to my new PC, it should be nice and quick, but 
this is a marked improvement over what I had before.


-- 
~Mike

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