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 
case temp went down to 30°C and my CPU idles at around 40°C, it reaches 
about 68°C when under constant heavy load, 65°C if the room's air temp 
is around 75°F. Best of all THE CPU NO LONGER THROTTLES ITSELF DOWN!

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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Hehe, i can feel with you:

I have an older Chieftec Dragon DG-01 midi tower, where the HD cage is
removable, but only if your AGP-Card is not too long. It slides bakwards 2-3
inches before it disengages.
Cooling is no problem though. I have 2 front fans, two back fans and one side
fan running.

My other case is a Chieftech Mesh CH-01. The HDs are very easily accessable and
the side doors are easily removed or mounted. And it runs very cool with 5 case
fans in total.

My next case will probably be a Sharkoon Rebel or Seraphim.

Have fun with your new system
Aydan

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Aydan wrote:
> Hehe, i can feel with you:

A good case these days is hard to find.

(NO! DAMN! Now I have that SONG in my head...! >_< )

My first PC case had one of those stupid doors on the front that's 
supposed to open when the CD tray ejects. Except it doesn't retract 
properly, the button on the outside doesn't press the button on the 
drive properly, etc. Lame thing. It was ASUS as well...

I think a case is one of those things you have to actually pick up and 
look at in the shop. From a website you can't tell what the hell you're 
getting. *sigh*

Post a reply to this message

> I think a case is one of those things you have to actually pick up and 
> look at in the shop. From a website you can't tell what the hell you're 
> getting. *sigh*

The best case I had was at university, it was a sheet of stainless steel 
with some holes I drilled in it for various mounting points and ventilation. 
Sat under my desk at the back and ran very cool, was very cheap, and never 
had any access issues :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> I think a case is one of those things you have to actually pick up and 
>> look at in the shop. From a website you can't tell what the hell 
>> you're getting. *sigh*
> 
> The best case I had was at university, it was a sheet of stainless steel 
> with some holes I drilled in it for various mounting points and 
> ventilation. Sat under my desk at the back and ran very cool, was very 
> cheap, and never had any access issues :-)

...except issues with the local forna having access to it? o_O

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> ...except issues with the local forna having access to it? o_O

In most cases the local fauna had enough brain-power to not crawl underneath 
the desk and stick a finger into a fan :-)

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>> ...except issues with the local forna having access to it? o_O
> 
> In most cases the local fauna had enough brain-power to not crawl 
> underneath the desk and stick a finger into a fan :-)

http://www.insectimage.com/Gallery%2017/snakecomp2.html

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Invisible wrote:

> http://www.insectimage.com/Gallery%2017/snakecomp2.html

Good one :)

"Uh, yeah ... my computer made some really odd hissing sound when I 
turned it on .."

-- 
~Mike

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Invisible wrote:
> I think a case is one of those things you have to actually pick up and 
> look at in the shop. From a website you can't tell what the hell you're 
> getting. *sigh*

Yes. I always get funny looks from the people at the local electronics 
warehouse stores when I go to buy a prebuilt system and I ask them to open 
several up so I can look inside.

Unfortunately, in same local stores, it's too loud to easily hear how loud 
the individual machine is, but I seem to have done pretty well there by 
buying machines targetted for home stereo use.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

> Yes. I always get funny looks from the people at the local electronics
> warehouse stores when I go to buy a prebuilt system and I ask them to open
> several up so I can look inside.

I only ever had one prebuilt system and that was in '94.
After that I always bought individual parts or had the system built to spec, so
I know what exactly is in there.
Also it's sorta fun to built your own PC.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Yes. I always get funny looks from the people at the local electronics 
> warehouse stores when I go to buy a prebuilt system and I ask them to open 
> several up so I can look inside.

  I have linked this before, but I can't resist:

http://megatokyo.com/strip/650

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Aydan wrote:
> 
> I only ever had one prebuilt system and that was in '94.
> After that I always bought individual parts or had the system built to spec, so
> I know what exactly is in there.
> Also it's sorta fun to built your own PC.
> 

My only pre-built PC-system is this laptop I'm currently using. There's
a certain reason why it's pre-built ;).

Also all the weird stuff is naturally pre-built - Compaq Alphaserver,
Sun computers, SGI...

-Aero

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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> My only pre-built PC-system is this laptop I'm currently using. There's
> a certain reason why it's pre-built ;).

  Btw, does it count as "pre-built" if the shop builds the PC according
to the customer's specification? In other words, rather than buying an
existing PC from the shelf, the customer buys a set of components and the
shop builds the PC from them afterwards.

  If that doesn't count as pre-built, then I suppose I have never bought
a pre-built system.

  I have never actually just bought the parts and built the system myself,
though. However, I have transferred all the stuff from inside one PC case
to another, and I have built a PC from parts of two existing ones.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Aydan wrote:
> I only ever had one prebuilt system and that was in '94.
> After that I always bought individual parts or had the system built to spec, so
> I know what exactly is in there.
> Also it's sorta fun to built your own PC.

I did that until I had to start trying to figure out which of the dozens of 
types of RAM went with which of the dozens of types of CPUs and motherboards 
and etc. :-)  Right around when they started coming up with AGP and such, I 
think.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Warp wrote:
>   If that doesn't count as pre-built, then I suppose I have never bought
> a pre-built system.

*I* wouldn't count it as pre-built unless it's mass produced and comes with 
an OEM warranty. :-)  Most of my custom-built machines I had a friend build 
for me who does (or at least did) that sort of thing for a living.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Darren New wrote:

> 
> I did that until I had to start trying to figure out which of the dozens 
> of types of RAM went with which of the dozens of types of CPUs and 
> motherboards and etc. :-)  Right around when they started coming up with 
> AGP and such, I think.
> 

Yeah, and get the wrong combo and watch your performance go into the 
toilet....


-- 
~Mike

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