How To Select The Right Case

Case Layout Differences Can Leave You With Issues

The differences in the layout of cases can leave you with potential problems of which you might not even be aware.

Imagine that you are giddy over your newly purchased GeForce 4 4600ti, only to find that the card extends so far beyond the back of the AGP slot that it runs into your hard drive cage. Nothing brings you crashing back to reality like having to buy a new case because your $400 video card doesn’t fit.

The Antec SX1030 case and the GeForce3 in this picture do get along pretty well, but the choice to use these rounded cables does make it a tighter fit than you might first realize. In this configuration, it would be difficult to get a GeForce4 4600ti to fit without removing the hard drives and relocating them to another place in the case.

In the scenario above, it might have been better to just consider using regular ATA-100 IDE cables and folding them to try to get them out of the way. The drive cage in this case in a two hard drive configuration can be a little tricky with a long video card, without some additional planning.

In this situation, it would have been better to select a case that has a drive bay that is located in the bottom front of the case. Of course, if you happen to have a long, full-length PCI card, this can create another issue by relocating the hard drives to that location.

The Antec SX1000 case was a good choice for this Asus P4T-E and GeForce 4 4600ti combination. The SX1000 gave this owner good clearance for the GeForce 4 4600ti and the two hard drives that are going into this system. The owner of the SX1000 was also able to specify the Enermax EG365P-VE power supply because the SX1000 ships without a power supply.

Advanced planning can really save you some headaches, but this only applies to those headaches that you are able to anticipate before they happen. Of course the unknown by definition isn’t something that you can plan for, but it’s always a safe bet that it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared to handle longer video cards in your AGP slot.