Custom Computer Cases

While most people would consider computers to be colorless and boring, with blan HP and Dell logos branded on the front, and commonly featuring black chassis, flat sides, and a slightly arced, glossy black front.

However, these stereotypical cases are just blan OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) cases that ship for millions of PCs. and have customization as high as Death Valley. So if cases from OEMs are very boring in nature, what is this blog post about? That, my friend, is where we wander into the world of custom cases.

Custom computer cases are from manufacturers tha usually sell computer parts on their own for computer building enthusiasts looking to actually assemble their own system. Cases can range from $20 to $1000, as crazy as that may seem. However, cases are usually priced very fairly based on what you get for your money, and cases can range from any shape to any size. Some are a mere popcan-and-a-half tall, while many can be easily waist height (for those shorter people out there, they can get almost as tall as 3 ft!). There are about 4 different sizes of consumer cases (there are also enterprise cases, which are basically U1 and U2, that can be used as server cases to fit lots of hard drives into the thinnest, stackable case possible). In order of smallest to largest respectively, there are Mini-ITX, Mid Tower, Full Tower, and then Ultra. On a technology site such as Newegg.com or consumer site such as Amazon.com, it is very easy to find more than a thousand cases that are Mini-ITX, Mid Tower, or Full Tower. However, finding an Ultra tower on these sites would be near impossible, as Ultra towers are something that is sold only on individual websites from really small companies that build systems that are sometimes as large as 4 feet by 4 feet by 1.5 feet. These massive systems take completely custom shipping approaches and weight in from the great amounts of metal put in, so expectedly, they are VERY expensive, but with them, you could be declared as the ultimate bad-ass!

However, for most of the PC crowd, the first three sizes would work fine, and thus, come the decision between the three. At first, I started with the largest Mid Tower possible, as it was actually almost the same size as a Full Tower, but half the price, at about $65.

It was an amazing case, with room for a large radiator in the top for water cooling, and plenty of red fans to keep everything cool. However, over time, this case was just too large for me to move around to go to my dad’s house, so after 3 years, I changed things up and went Mini-ITX.

I went with a $45 case that was about 5 times smaller in volume than my previous case, and is actually just a cube that is 2 pop cans x 2 pop cans x2 pop cans in size, as wacky as that dimension sounds. Inside, it packed a large front fan (200mm) and options for mini fans (80mm) in the rear. Overall, I’m very satisfied with the small size, as it is very maneuverable and light, however, it does sacrifice the ability to cool my computer as well, but overall, the thermals are very good. If you ever decide to purchase a computer case to spice things up a little bit, be sure to check that the case you order will:

1. Fit and house all of your components properly, especially your motherboard, graphics card, and CPU heatsink
2. Make sure there are an appropriate number of slots in the rear to house all expansions cards coming off of the PCI and PCI-Express slots.
3. Make sure that the number of fans in the case will be adequate to cool, or that there are extra spaces left for you to add fans should cooling be inadequate.

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