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Selecting a Computer Case
Computer cases come in all shapes, sizes, configurations, and colors. When you're building your own computer, the choices are endless. There are several things to consider when choosing your case. What is your ultimate goal?. Are you building just a basic computer, a mid range, a high end, or a LAN party style portable? Are you limited on space? Do you want a desktop or a tower? Whatever your ultimate goal is will play a large part in the choice of your computer case.
One thing I always try to consider when choosing a case is future expansion. If you think you might want to upgrade things in the future, why not take that into consideration right now? Unless you have very specific reasons for choosing a smaller case, consider choosing a case that has lot's of room for expansion. You never know what the future holds.
Styles and Types of Cases
There are basically five different case styles: Cube, Desktop, Mini Tower, Mid Tower, and Full Tower. Within the various styles, there are also different types, called form factors. Form factors refer to the type of motherboard that fit in the case. The different form factors are: Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX, and BTX. The most popular form factors are the Micro-ATX and the ATX.
The mini-ITX is the smallest standard form factor available on the open market today. They are used almost exclusively in cube style cases. For the most part, this type case is very small and ultra portable. If you purchase a mini-ITX style computer case, you must use a mini-ITX type motherboard.
The Micro-ATX is another small form factor style case. Usually mini tower and small desktop cases fall into this category, although some cube style cases fall under this type as well.
The ATX form factor case is usually available in mid tower, full tower, and desktop configurations. Most ATX style cases can also use micro-ATX boards as well, and some even support the new BTX form factor described below.
BTX is the newest form factor available for Intel based motherboards. At this time, AMD has no plans to adopt this standard. BTX makes some radical changes to the case layout to provide extra cooling for the processor, the chipset, and the video card. BTX only cases must use a BTX style motherboard.
Internal Drive Bays
The drive bays in a case refer to the places where you can mount hard drives, floppy drives (are you still using floppy's?), or optical drives. Drive bays are referred to either internal or external, and either 3.5" or 5.25" types. Internal bays are usually 3.5" and are used almost exclusively for mounting hard drives. External bays refer to bays that extend through to the outside of the case. They come in both 3.5" and 5.25" sizes. These bays would be used for removable media drives like floppy, CD, or DVD drives. If you're building a higher end computer, external bays can even be used for hot swap drives.
Choosing the quantity and type of bays in the case depends on what type and how many drives you plan on using. For basic configurations, at least one internal 3.5" and one external 5.25" is the minimum. Regardless of the type of case you get, try to get one with a minimum of two internal 3.5" drives and two external 5.25" drives. The two internal bays will allow you to set up two drives in a RAID configuration for data security. The two external bays allow you to install either two optical drives (i.e. CD or DVD drives) or one optical drive and an add-in accessory like a media reader.
If you're building a higher end computer (or even a not so high end), I'd advise you to get the computer case of your choice with as many internal and external bays as you can. As far as I'm concerned, the more the better. Like I said earlier, you never know what the future holds. The computer case I selected when I built my "gaming" computer has nine external 5.25" bays and four internal 3.5" bays. It also allows me to use three of the external bays for a drive cage that would allow me to add up to four more internal 3.5" drives. It's all about versatility!
Cooling
Cooling can be a major problem with some of the components that are used in today's computers. Most computer cases provide for cooling with case-mounted fans. Most new computer cases will come with at least one 80mm cooling fan. Some may even come with a 120mm cooling fan. Even if a case only comes with one fan, there are almost always provisions that allow you to add more cooling fans. The more fans, the cooler the computer will be, however, the caveat is, the more fans, the louder the computer will be. If you're building just a basic computer, the fan(s) that came with the case will probably provide sufficient cooling. If you're building a higher end computer, you'll probably need to add more cooling fans. Some cases, like the one that I mentioned earlier, have provisions for a cross-flow fan. Cross-flow fans produce superior cooling as opposed to standard 80mm or 120mm fans.
Power Supply
Some cases will come with a power supply, some will not. Depending on the type of computer you're building, the power supply that comes with the case, may, or may not be sufficient. If you're building just a basic computer, chances are good that if your case comes with a power supply, it will be good enough. If you're building a higher end computer, there's a pretty good chance that if the your case comes with a power supply, it won't be good enough.
Click here for a more in depth discussion about power supply's.
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