[Pc_Support] Tom's Hardware on ATX cases ... many of almost the same 3 designs ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

A selection of feature-varied ATX cases.
Ironically, all of the cases were pretty much the same 3 designs.

The majority of OEM cases I see these days were the same ones I first
saw from Antec in its 1000 series.  Nearly all of the "uber-mod" with
"transformer/face-type" are of those type.  The upper-middle is very
distinctive of this design and provides extremely solid structure (so
much that even I can sit on it).  Of course, it is also why it weights
30lbs. on average.  The 1-3 HD drive bays are x3 and come out, and may
or may not have a fan.

Slightly shorter is another popular design, which either wields the hard
drives from the mid-front to the bottom-front, or uses a single cage
that comes out.  They can be much lighter and even aluminum.  They are
also typically cheaper in cost, although some are really cheap in
design.  Typically little frills, they are solid cases overall, at least
in cooling options (even if little is included).

Lastly is the "new breed" of "flipped ATX" with "wind tunnel" from the
front to back.  I first saw this in the SilverStone TJ-06 (still in the
review), but now there are 3 other companies who are shipping them.
This has brought the price down under $100, and one company really goes
"no frills" by requiring you to provide your own 120mm fans (which is
nice IMHO if you want to use 38mm deep instead of the standard 25mm ones
typically included).  The only issue is HD cooling, and I think the
designer could have put a fan on the back behind the HDs to help a
little bit (instead of relying on the PS to pull hot air out).  Still,
with the AGP/PCI/PCIe cards flipped and "facing upwards," it really
helps all the solid state electronics.

Full story:  
  http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050411/index.html


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                  b.j.smith at ieee.org 
---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Community software is all about choice, choice of technology.
Unfortunately, too many Linux advocates port over the so-called
"choice" from the commercial software world, brand name marketing.
The result is false assumptions, failure to focus on the real
technical similarities, but loyalty to blind vendor alignments.