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At an impasse on whether to get a full tower or a mid tower case.
My friend is looking at different cases, and the one he has found that he really wants is this one - http://www.amazon.com/Guardian-Black-Steel-Chassis-921RB-BL/dp/B004351H9G/ref=sr_1_2?m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1369655648&sr=1-2
I am a little concerned about his hardware fitting inside of the case. He is getting a new motherboard, but he already has an ATI Radeon 6950 and a Coolermaster 750w power supply. Do you guys think that space will be a problem and he should get a full tower, or do you think I am needlessly worrying?
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Comments
The Amazon page says it can fit ATX motherboard. So it can and will fit all the standard pieces as well. He shouldn't have a problem with GPU's or Powers. Power sizes are pretty all the same size and the GPU's have standard sizes as well.
The thing that you might have to do is to remove some of the HDD slots from the front part of the case if the GPU is really long one, but will he have 5-6 HDD drives in it? If not, then this should not be a problem.
And as it is a ATX case, this might not even be a problem. I have a Medium tower case on my CPU and it can only carry the micro-ATX motherboards and it didn't have any problems taking in two of the GPU's. One thing that was lacking that I couldn't replace the coolers on the GPU's to make the PC almost completely silent.
I don't foresee any problems here...
He wont have any problems with putting an ATX system in that case. I use mid tower cases for both my computers and have ATX systems. One with a 7870 and the other with a 5850.
The entire case is about 20" deep, and from eyeballing it, it probably supports the 12 and a fraction inch video card depth that the PCI Express specification says video cards ought to stick to, so it should fit.
The power supply should fit just fine, too. Whether you'd want to actually use that power supply is a different question, as some of Cooler Master's power supplies are junk.
New Egg says that that case is discontinued, so you might want something a little more modern, though.
Thanks all for the help. Ill be sure to tell him that the current one is fine.
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I agree.
A mid or full tower case only describes the height of the case. If it fits a full ATX motherboard, the only thing to worry about is the video card fitting.
I had a case with a similar interior design, but I had to remove the lower hard drive bays to fit a full-size video card. This case looks like they flipped the location of the power supply and motherboard, which could lead to two issues.
First, if the case is not deep enough for a full video card, you will have to cut the middle bays if they are not removable. If you are unlucky and have to cut the metal, it may look ugly and it will likely leave sharp edges.
Second, you might have a hard time finding a power supply with long enough motherboard and CPU power cables. Traditional cases put the power supply fairly close to the motherboard and CPU power connectors, so power supply manufacturers often make those cables somewhat short.
Good luck!
Mid-towers work fine. They are what I usually recommend for a person who just wants to buy their computer and have it work. They don't take up a lot of space, they aren't terribly heavy, and just about anything you would want in your computer can fit in the case without too much cooling trouble.
That being said, if you want to tinker with anything, they can be a pain. My current computer used to live in a mid-tower. Everything fit, and there was enough cooling, but in order to change out a hard drive, I'd have to pull out the video card as well. And I couldn't put a hard drive in a couple of the bays (there were 6 bays total, so it's not like it was a huge restriction, although at one time I did have 5 drives in there) - the hard drive and video card would fit, but with the additional bulk of the SATA cable coming out the back it wouldn't fit (this was a 6970, just shy of 11").
Just a for-example. There are lots of other ones that can illustrate the point. It feels a bit like trying to build a ship inside of a bottle (a mATX case especially so, there you are really restricted to what hardware you can use though, a mid-tower can generally use just about anything).
I ended up swapping it out to a full tower after about a year. I love that mid-tower, and I still have it somewhere (Lian Li, that case is probably 10+ years old now, and still looks and works fine). Now there is so much room inside the case I could almost fit a second computer in there, and my big banana hands don't have any issues getting to any particular part when I feel like tinkering around with something. My next build I may go back to that mid-tower and reclaim part of my desk back.
As far as air flow and cooling I have no trouble with a mid tower. Proper use of fans and cable managing go a long ways.
That being said if you plan on stuffing as many components as possible into it then a full size may be better. I have 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs in my mid tower, along with everything else of course. And dont plan on adding anything else or even going back into the case unless I just have to.
I had full sized cases for years. Plenty of room to work inside thats for sure. But I switched to mid tower just for the reduction in weight and size. Plus I am not going to be running a 7970 Xfire system with custom liquid cooling and 5 HDDs inside so I didnt need it personally.
IMO if you plan on building and basically leaving it alone unless something goes wrong get a mid tower. If you want to add stuff, go SLI setup, many HDDs, ect then a full tower would be better IMO