Case In Point: Searching For the Perfect Mid-Tower

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, December 02, 2009, 12:50 PM EDT

Right now, my production PC is humming along under my desk. It’s built into a massive Antec P193 case, which is built like a tank. It’s relatively quiet, especially since I removed the 200mm side fan. As a hardware reviewer, my lab testing seems to revolve around large cases. I’ve got several test systems built into three Coolermaster Cosmos 1000s and a Cosmos 1000S. Moving these systems around takes some care, since it would be easy to throw out a back; dropping one on your foot would be no joy, either.

I also have four other systems that are occasionally used for product testing, but mostly used as game systems. Most Friday nights, four to six people troop into the basement lab and play LAN games. Those systems are not typically bleeding, edge, but they’re still capable PCs. CPUs range from a Core 2 Quad Q9650 to a Core i7 920 and a Core i7 860. Graphics cards include Radeon HD 4890s in two systems and a BFG GeForce 275 GTX OC in one system. So these aren’t low end by any means, even though they’re not quite cutting edge.

As I’ve built these systems in the past year, I’ve moved away from big tower cases to more reasonably sized mid-tower chassis. What follows are my observations and experiences with four mid-tower cases, from three different manufacturers. Note that these are not reviews in the hard sense of the word. Rather, I’m going to discuss my experiences building systems in these cases, and how they fared in our weekly multiplayer gaming sessions...

Case In Point: Searching For the Perfect Mid-Tower

Tags: NZXT, case, tower, Antec, CM, storm scout, panzerbox, sileo

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com