Gadgetory

the year is 2018 and many PC components are smaller faster and more energy-efficient so the power of a full tower can be crammed into something like the Corsair one so then why the balls are people still buying massive towers like the obsidian 900 d here is this just pure EP machine or are there practical reasons like the practical reason to check out our sponsor Humble Bundle Humble Bundle lets you save money on games and help support charity you can learn more through our partner links in the video description ah so right here is your typical mid-tower with bleeding edge gaming specs now let's imagine for a second that you want a machine with the same specs but at literally one third of the size while a custom small form-factor is an option like the insane orthrus that we built last year we opted to compare to the new corsair one because inside this sleep trashcan chassis is the highest performance per volume that we have tested compared to the mid tower we did note slightly higher CPU temperatures in the one but the GTX 1080 Ti in this thing is liquid cooled allowing higher boosts so yeah this small form-factor technically actually outperformed the air-cooled mid tower in our gaming benches while maintaining a similar level of noise of course CPU overclocking results would typically be slightly lower than a mid tower but for games this will almost never make any kind of noticeable difference and the pricing between a DIY small form factor and the mid tower is similar as well so then what is the downside to this type of a machine a big one is the lack of expandability you want to throw a three and a half inch you know twelve terabyte hard drive in here you will need to use external storage which kind of kills the elegance of a machine like this whereas with a mid tower you can crown like four in here and not only will that not be a problem but you won't even see them because of the way that the internals are laid out it's really sleek this gives you terabytes upon terabytes of storage right inside your computer wait hold on a minute here so if you can get all of the performance and the expansion out of this guy why would you want to go bigger alright let's make our way over here so if you're a serious business gaming aficionado and all about that dual card action you need not just the space to fit the cards because a mid Tower even some small form factors can fit them but you also need space for them to breathe though with that said the truth is these days even a single GTX 10 ATT I can haul in most titles even in 4k and SLI scaling leaves a lot to be desired with that said if you were doing something like a multiple user machine like we did in this very one for our triple headed vr gaming machine a full tower is pretty much your only option though I wouldn't call that a super common use case one other reason though Ram expandability while a handful of ITX boards which is what you're gonna be stuck with if you go with something like this have four memory slots going ATX or up enables you to deck out your rig with up to a hundred and twenty eight gigs around so at that point you're able to load your games onto a ram disk have multiple virtual machines or I don't know analyze particle collisions for CERN to be honest we're having difficulty coming up with a realistic scenario where this much RAM would be a practical investment for a desktop user so that rationale takes a bit of a backseat bringing us to number three cooling a full Tower enables you to not only slide a fat 360 millimeter a IO in there plus another one for your graphics card if you're into that sort of thing it also makes it much easier to run a custom water cooling loop I mean yeah if you've got the skills with a Zed you can make a sick loop in a mid Tower or again even smaller but a full-size one is much easier to work with especially if unlike me you've got big hands you can also fill a full tower up with a redonkulous amount of local storage so it's kind of like what this can do this can do better though sometimes that will come at the expense of radiator space finally a full tower is a bigger canvas to showcase your hardware cabling and your you know mucho RGB so it's a flex piece but what about the downsides well your typical full Tower always costs more than a mid Tower from the same manufacturer because it's just more material and it costs more to ship it around and have you ever tried moving one of these especially by yourself the 900 d empty with no hardware in it weighs more than twice as much as the Corsair one with a full system in it so unless you're into using your computer as weightlifting equipment it's that's not a practical selling point so let's summarize then as compared to a mid tower a 20-18 small form-factor is almost as fast is smaller lighter about as loud costs about the same and only really lacks in overclocking potential and local storage if you're not using an ass on the other hand a full tower while more expensive not to mention heavier enables wider graphics card options more RAM and more local storage on top of and I really think this is the biggest reason being easier to work in as well as being a bigger stage for showcasing your hardware computer hardware that is of course Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in business technology design and more and their premium membership gives you unlimited access to high-quality classes on must know topics so you can improve your skills unlock new opportunities and once you've done those things do the work that you love one of our editors Taryn actually uses Skillshare a bunch and just finished up Duncan rogoff's mastering Adobe After Effects course and Skillshare is affordable with an annual description costing less than $10 a month so the first 500 people to use the promo link in the video description will get their first two months for free so go tryout Skillshare today so thanks for watching guys if you 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