Contrary to popular belief, not all computer enclosures are created equal! That doesn’t mean to say you have to load up your credit card and spend five hundred dollars on a descent computer case. But as with most things it pays to shop around.
Whether you are thinking of building yourself a new system or if you are just in the market for a new computer and am not sure what to look out for, here’s an essential checklist to ensure that your next system comes with a quality case.
Rule of thumb is that the best computer cases are made by the most prominent computer hardware manufacturers and these manufacturers more often than not build products with innovative features while manufacturing a quality product.
Ventilation fan: good quality fans, the larger the better as large fans spin slower while transfer the same volume of air and produce a lot less noise. Nothing is more annoying than wondering if your computer is about to take off like an F-18 off of a super carrier.
- Dust grilles: good computer enclosures have removable dust grilles at the front of the case which keeps the inside of your computer dust free and reduces heat build up in your system.
- Hard drive orientation: the latest good quality computer cases have the hard drives mounted perpendicular to the case making it easy to add and remove hard drives without taking your whole computer apart. Many cases also have shock absorbing grommets to reduce hard drive noise transferring to the case and reducing vibration shock to the hard drive which potentially increases the hard drives life.
- Power supply: a good quality power supply is essential, and one that will cater for the power demands of your system today and years from now when you may end up having four hard drives, video capture card, wireless network card, scanner, webcam and anything else that you care to attach to your computer and force your computer’s power supply to cope with.
Popular quality computer enclosures include Antec, Lian Li and Antec.
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