Gadgetory

since we did our video covering the different sizes of motherboards I have received one metric but ton of requests to cover the same topic but for computer cases the issue with this is that the way they're classified has actually changed over time once upon a time it was all about how many five and a quarter inch bays the case had then it changed to be based on the overall height of the case but even now those standards are really more like the pirate code than actual rules no one can decide on a standard with an Tek abandoning the categorization on their site entirely course they're throwing their own ideas into the mix and Coolermaster doing random things like putting the half XB in the mid tower category on their North American website when it's more correctly classified as a land box on the global site but we're going to do our best anyway so here goes starting with the main traditional PC case sizes a mini Tower is a great compromise between size and expansion it has one or two external base stands 14 to 16 inches tall and hosts an M ATX motherboard usually but a large ITX case that used a lot of its internal space for liquid cooling or drive mounting could also be classified as a mini tower most mini towers are only suitable for use with a single graphics card with adequate cooling while some are okay for two mid towers are the most common PC cases for custom builders and have three to four external expansion base stand 17 to 21 inches tall and can almost always hold a full sized ATX motherboard but without a ton of extra space for drives and whatnot expect to find six to eight hard drive mounts in a typical mid tower and enough cooling in space to comfortably handle two graphics cards in crossfire sli full towers are the suv's of the computer case world more on that in a moment they can have 5 or more external 5 and 1/4 inch bays and range in height from 22 inches to 27 inches they always support full sized ATX motherboards almost always support a ATX and sometimes support the only sort of a real standard XL ATX form factor as well the funny thing about full towers is that other than accepting more drive expansion providing better cooling for hot running inefficient setups like three-way and four-way graphics configs and having ample space for superfluous EP and stuff like custom liquid cooling loops they don't bring much to the table in terms of performance over a mid Tower but they do tend to be easier to work in particularly if you've got big hand so back to the SUV analogy it's a luxury item not a must-have only two more to go now before we get into some of the non tower stuff and neither of them is really a well-established standard a super or ultra Tower is loosely defined as anything taller than 27 inches and a mod tower is a case system whose height is actually difficult to determine because you can actually adjust it by stacking multiple cases on top of each other to add cooling capacity or drive mounting options desktops are our first non tower size case and while they used to be the dominant style and yes they're slightly different they have feet on what would be the side panel of the other one anyway these days they've been relegated to the HTPC case niche where we'll find them in a variety of sizes from ones that are so small they need an external power brick two huge ones that can hold server class motherboards and large raid arrays of hard drives small form-factor or s FF cases can come in almost any shape from cubes to like equal sided towers to desktops to normal towers but the one thing that they generally have in common is support for a mini ITX motherboard Mac's with minimal drive mounting options and only sometimes support for an add-in graphics card and certainly only one of them our last case type the cube case is typically characterized by is roughly cube like shape rather than look that's what they are if you think my job is so easy you try to do it anyway there is no real standard with respect to size and they're available in a wide variety of configurations look they're shaped like cubes deal with it that's all I can say about them anyway speaking of a wide variety of configurations this is just the beginning there's other stuff out there but these are the main ones but I guess that's a topic for another day so before we wrap up as usual I'd like to take a moment to thank our episode sponsor coolermaster for giving us the precious resource we need to make these videos for y'all if you've been researching PC cases the odds that you've come across Coolermaster at some point is pretty good given their wide range of cases for gamers and enthusiasts and regular folks as well but if you appreciate what we do maybe you'll consider checking out the sponsor link in the video description and browsing their selection of cases to see if there's anything that tickles your fantasy thanks coolermaster for sponsoring this episode of fast as possible guys like this video if you 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