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I'm building a PC and have everything planned out and picked out except for one thing, the case.
I'm not sure if I should get a mid tower or full tower case...
What are some of the advantages of a mid tower versus a full tower and vise versa?
Also some suggestions for a long-term gaming rig case would be appreciated. Thank you.
Notes: I'm living in Canada so newegg.ca is a bit pricey on shipping.
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Why are you purchasing from Newegg if you are in Canada? That should be the last place you should purchase from. The shipping from Newegg is expensive because most of their items ship from the state warehouses.
A full tower case offers more space which makes it easier to work in, easier to manage cables, more HDDs/SSDs can be added, and may/may not provide better airflow. That's about it.
Case is personal preference and there are many to select from. If you want a quality case, you either go with Silverstone or Lian Li. If you want flashy designs, you go with Coolermaster.
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Mid tower has less dead space, meaning it's easier to direct airflow. Full tower has more space, which can be handy for cable management, although in a well designed mid tower, that's not an issue, and a full tower will typically have more bays, although with how cheap storage is these days, that's rarely an issue.
Most important things to look for are cable management features, tool-free assembly, airflow, noise, and aesthetics. You pretty much have to prioritize those things yourself.
silentpcreview.com has good reviews if you want a quiet rig.
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There are no advantages unless your gonna have like 20 drive bays or 10 hdds bays as well for the full tower. Otherwise there the same in the fact that your gonna get roughly the same air flow depending on how many fans you have and what not. Downside to some midtowers is they don't fit some graphics cards longer that a foot in length. But most mid sized towers do. Plus's to fullsize tower is that you get enough room for all your crap you want to put in. Midsized tower depending on what you put in it will be just fine.
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After working on several PCs with different sizes, I always prefer bigger, since it just means more space to work in.
It gets annoying being in a cramped space if you're always in there tinkering.
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On July 07 2011 08:56 jacosajh wrote: After working on several PCs with different sizes, I always prefer bigger, since it just means more space to work in.
It gets annoying being in a cramped space if you're always in there tinkering.
Quite a valid consideration. Of course, I rate aesthetics first, cooling second, and noise third, with convenience dead last. Kind of artificially inflates the amount of tinkering I get to do with a build.
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I went with the lexa blackline series it had feet that keeps the PC off my hardwood floor and that helps keep the dust from collecting around it. It also has top front back and side fans, modular drive bays etc.
Choose something with good air flow and suited for your situation. I chose that one more for the "feet" than anything else.
My other choice was going to be the antec 900
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On July 07 2011 09:05 manawah wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I went with the lexa blackline series it had feet that keeps the PC off my hardwood floor and that helps keep the dust from collecting around it. It also has top front back and side fans, modular drive bays etc. Choose something with good air flow and suited for your situation. I chose that one more for the "feet" than anything else. My other choice was going to be the antec 900
Ewww, Antec 900. The original? Pain in the ass. No CPU cooler cutout in the mobo tray, terrible cable management, terrible HDD bays.
Sold that thing for $40 bucks to a friend, felt like I was ripping him off.
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Generally speaking, the case (in my experience) has always been an aesthetic thing. I picked out all the parts for my friend's computers and then showed them to ncix's cases page and told them to pick out one that they thought looked good. A full tower is actually pretty big so keep that in mind when deciding on a case. Do you place your case underneath your desk? on your tabletop? Those are also things to keep in mind when selecting a case.
One last thing to point out, your budget actually does play a pretty big factor in this. For example,
Case 1
Case 2
Two same sized towers, very different priced, different quality cases.
As for a straight out recommendation, I would go with this:
Fractal R3
It's a subtle conservative design and I don't think it'll go out of style any time soon. Your tastes may be different than mine though.
One last thing to note. If you are getting a case with a window and you aren't planning on opening it up to clean dust off or cleaning out air filters, the window might actually be a bad idea.
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My baby. Slightly above average on cooling, only semi-quiet, excellent for cooling multi-GPU, and fun as hell to tinker with. Also rather sexy, if you like the retro sci-fi look it has going on.
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A mid-tower should be more than enough unless you are planning on building a massive Super computer. A full tower could also be a bad thing if you are planning on going to any lans or taking your computer around with you, they're super heavy. As for me, my favorite cases are Raidmax cases, here`s the case I have: Looks pretty sexy, not too fancy, not too expensive, pretty noob friendly case ;p.
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skyR is probably gouging his eyes out looking at this thread right now... poor minimalist.
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I don't mind a good minimalist case, or even a straight up oldschool beige box. The lanboy air just happened to catch my eye when I talked my wife into letting me spend some money to ditch the Antec 900.
I read all the reviews I could find on the gimmicky features, decided that at the least it wasn't bad enough to make me hate it, and bought it. I would have been really pissed if I'd bought it uninformed of the quirks though.
It's got a very unique look, and some gimmick features that would be awesome if they were implemented a little better.
But yeah, Lian Li makes some sexy cases too, as does Silverstone.
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Coolermaster enforcer is a pretty sweet case.
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my nice little case:
It's a nice small midtower budget case from fractal. Maybe a little overpriced right now @70$ on NCIX but if you like the aesthetics like me then its a good case. Drawbacks are the cable management and a personal issue I had with mine with the microphone port at the front not functioning.
Little review where you can see noise/cooling levels compared to other cases: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=30808&page=1
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Why didn't you just buy a lanboy air? If you use RTV silicone to attach fans where they didn't expect you to, you can get something like a grand total of 17 120mm fans on it.
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On July 07 2011 12:46 JingleHell wrote:Why didn't you just buy a lanboy air? If you use RTV silicone to attach fans where they didn't expect you to, you can get something like a grand total of 17 120mm fans on it.
it was part of a combo deal, warranty was some how voided like a year after i bought it or something, so i said screw it, and i took out my powersaw! took about 2 hours to mod, but now its sick. I did have a fan controller but the LED screen went out and stopped working.
It only has 8 fans on it not including the cpu/gpu/psu fans.
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