tower case - why vertical?

[forge]

Well i have a Thermaltake Armor (full tower), and i was wondering, why does every place them vertically? Why not lay it down horizonatlly? Heat disipates upwards, the added weiaght of the Video card and CPU cooler woul prevent warping. Is it because of dust?

thanks in advance.

 

[shadowmaster625]

my pc on my bench at work lays on its side most of the time. Never caused any problems, except loading a cd is a bit more difficult!

 

[I]

The overly simplistic idea that "heat rises" doesn't matter, because it doesn't rise to any significant extent in an actively cooled system. This has been time tested and proven, how can this not be obvious by now?

Systems stand upright because it takes up less floor or desk space and because the gravity (weight) and "heat rise" idea doesn't matter until one puts an oversized heatsink on something, one larger than necessary.

If you have put an excessively large/heavy heatsink on, and you plan on moving the system around, yes it might help to keep it horizontal but this is an unusual situation.

 

[forge]

thanks guys. I am using all passive cooling, wanted a quiet system for the moment, once i get my media pc setup, i will probably add fans to my new setup so i can oc it a bit. I am using a thermalright 120 ultra and it seems so heavy. I am a tinkerer and like to crack open the case evey week or so and blow out dust, check all the fans, etc. Its not alot of moving, but the wieght of the cpu stack make me cringe when just pulling it out from under the desk.

sorry if i torx'd ya about the heat rising issue, wasnt intentional, just making sure i have acccurate info.

 

[meadowlands]

Many of the new "Media Center" PC Cases lie flat. They take up a bit more space, but they are meant to look like a piece of stereo equipment instead of a pc.

 

[forge]

Meadow,

Ya i was looking at those, but they seem so small and yes, look like a home stereo. I liked the thermaltake armor for is size - ability to add more parts down the road, easier to work on, and honetly, i got a killer deal on it

 

[jaguarskx]

A tower wouldn't be a tower if it was lying on it's side.

As for an HTPC case, I found a really nice on that can take a full size ATX motherboard, uses a 120mm fan instead of the the smaller fans, and is roomy enough to install 6 internal hard drives for maximum storage capacity of 6TBs. There's a bay for the DVD drive of course.

The downside is the price for the case, $400.

 

[Zorg]

The downside is the price for the case, $400.

That's a down side all right.

 

[jaguarskx]

That's a down side all right.

Yeah, but it is near the top of my list for my next HTPC (I think I need "professional" help).