I've seen a lot of full towers that would require at least 2 120mm fans to
exhaust all the air in them
I'm looking for a mid-tower.
--Mitchua
I think the main issue there is , its true you probably need more fans
to push the air through the tower possibly the big factor are barriers
to airflow. If you dont have anything - only one HD and one CD drive
maybe you wont have problems but in my cases theres a horrendous nest
of cords especailly the huge huge IDE flat cords everywhere , bundles
of power cords that really are crammed to the hilt in the case. A full
tower is way better . Also you get the problem the other poster
described having drives crammed on top of another. All big problems.
Obviously you can go to round IDE cables etc. The Sata cables too are
amazingly small - another good thing about them. Unfortunately I dont
have SATA drives and dont want to shell out the $60 for adaptors to my
sata controller. It would still be a pretty big mess in there though.
My mid tower ANTEC I bought is wider though , depsite its relatively
short size - smaller than my older style Enlight beige case. So maybe
that does provide better air flow despite the small size I dont know
since width is critical too when you have that many cables crammed in
there.
As for noise - anything heavy duty is going to dampen noise and
damping material may dampen some vibrations/resonances that may occur.
When building speaker boxes you get stuff thats dense - heavy like
concrete or sand filled walls are the best for low frequencies and
they put bracing in there. And damping material may help to.
What I noticed was my older cases are built with heavy duty steel -
the covers and frame. Very heavy. The new ones like the new Antec I
bought feels incredibly lightweight and thats because the cover etc is
made from thin thin metal. In fact I hate it. I like the fact it less
heavy. You get a hernia lifting the KT133a system I made with lots of
drives in it. But the covers on the new cases dent like crazy.
Be warned - those new snazzily painted cases - metallic bronze etc ,
the lightweight steel ones dent like crazy and the paint chips off
easily. And its hard to match the paint. It looks pretty awful in no
time if you arent careful. In fact I got one from the store (bought
two) that was PRE DENTED. THe top looked like a fatman at the circus
sat on it. But actually you dont have to heavy at all to dent these.
Youd be crazy to sit on one. Id think these would far noiser than the
old cases as long as you damped the old ones for possible resonances.
I dropped a pen on the top of my case and now there are two dents on
it and a chip.
The side venting issue. I really dont know about the low IN and high
OUT theory of cooling obviously there is some common sense there. But
whenever I poke new holes for new fans on the side etc or take my
cover off of all my PCs - the temps go way down. I suppose you could
create some hotspots if it isnt designed right or your cables divert
air in some weird way - cool in low and then out the side vents never
reaching the high out.
I even experimented with the second out hole right below the power
supply that many newer cases have. I put a fan IN and OUT.
Most say put it out - a second HIGH OUT fan but my temps are lower
when I put it facing IN.
