Case

Depending on the motherboard you have chosen, you will need to find a case which supports it (or vice-versa). Cases come in 3 distinct types, tower, desktop and 'other'. Other consists of the smaller more unusual designs which do not support the most common parts. An example would be the 'cube' type cases, which often have proprietary motherboard designs.

Tower cases come in 3 sizes, full, midi and mini. Full towers are very large and are usually only used for server type machines with many hard drives. Midi towers are the most common type of case, they support the most common types of hardware and provide enough space for upgrade flexibility. Mini towers are also common among home and office PCs as they are slightly smaller than Midi towers. They also only support micro-ATX (mATX) motherboards.

Desktop cases are to tower cases only designed to lie on their side. They usually don't have as many bays for hard drives and optical drives and also tend not to have as good air flow. They are most commonly used for low powered office PCs or media centre PCs for which slick Hi-fi styled cases are available.

For the more unusual style of case, m-ITX or proprietary barebones kits are an option. m-ITX motherboards provides decent performance and features and are small enough to allow creative case design. Barebones kits usually consist of the case, motherboard with integrated graphics and cooling system, allowing you to choose the processor, memory, drives and any discrete graphics card. These types of kits are usually aimed at the style conscious who do not have large amounts of space to put a tower or desktop. However they are much less flexible than traditional form factors and are not designed for long term upgrade paths.

It is also worth mentioning a less common type of tower design called BTX. This was intended as a competitor to ATX and claims to have better thermal design (i.e. it keeps things cooler). However as yet it has not taken off and very few BTX motherboards and cases are available.

5.25" drive bays are primarily for optical drives.

The number of drive bays in a case will dictate how many drives you can install, as well as any other accessories which use these bays such as fan controllers and front panel displays. Drive bays come in external and internal form, external being the ones that open out onto the front of the case and internal being for drives which are hidden away inside the case.

5 1/4" bays are the largest and are usually only come in external form. They are for optical drives and larger accessories.

3 1/2" bays are found in both external and internal form on almost every case. Where once the external bays were for floppy disks, they now serve as perfect bays for card readers and small fan controllers. Internal bays are for Hard Drives, so it‘s always worth finding a case that will leave you with a couple spare so that you can add more storage in the future.

A case plays a fundamental role in the cooling of the components inside. This is covered in detail in the cooling section, but when choosing your case its worth making sure it supports 120mm fans both front and back. As well as having the potential to pump more air, 120mm fans can produce the same amount of air as smaller fans but at slower speeds meaning they produce less noise. Some cases may also support fans on the sides and top, however most will not come with these fans included so you'll need to purchase them separately.

Also worthy of note is the fact that aluminium cases will radiate heat better than steel ones. Aluminium will act like a giant heat sink and though the difference won‘t be profound it may be noticeable.

If you intend to have water cooling you may want to check that the case you are buying has room to mount the radiator. Some cases also come with special holes to pass water pipes through so that you can mount the radiator outside the case.

The primary source of noise in a case is the fans, so making sure you have quiet fans is key, but if you wish to go further you can consider a case which has some kind of noise insulation. Although these cases can be expensive, they can also reduce noise significantly. Alternatively you could retro fit noise insulating foam into another case.