Adam Favre wrote:
>I have been shopping New Egg for my system and notice some cases come with.
>I know these can be questionable, so which ones (in your experiences) is
>the most passable.

At this point I'm not sure I would be thinking "most passable". You indicate
that you will be running an Athlon 3200+ with non factory heat sink. My
question is, are you going to be running with an AMD approved heat sink? Are
you going to be purchasing a case that is made to AMD specifications for
cooling? You indicated that you were going to over clock in the future but
not now. I would be thinking about the future now and buy accordingly. If
you purchase "passable" today will you have to purchase it again when you
decided to become an over clocker. Purchasing a case that will fit your
needs tomorrow will also fit your needs today and be less expensive in the
long run.

As an example, I am building a new system that will be based on an Intel 875
board and a Intel P4 3.4 Extreme CPU with a Zalman CNPS7000A-CU CPU fan
http://www.zalmanusa.com  Extreme? Possibly but I like to experiment. I know
that industry standards are pushing cooling and trying to shove it off
someplace else. Hence forth, the CPU manufacturers are touting "free air" as
a means of keeping the new generation of chips cool. Why jack up the price
when you can spur the market and create competition for "Thermally
Advantaged Cases". I chose a Apex TU150 and now that I have the case I'm
disappointed. It has a 400W power supply, it is Intel and AMD approved and
what I really liked about it was the hard drives are mounted on the deck in
front of the two 80mm fans where the air is drawn in. http://www.apex.com
Solves one problem straight away. It also has an 80mm fan on the back
drawing air out of the case. The only thing I don't like about it is the
motherboard platform does not come out. One of the disadvantages of the
older days of assembling systems. This is the first time in about ten years
I ventured away from Enlight. Never again.

Dorothy provided a very simple approach to the problem.
> tell the supplier what you want, and you get it. If you don't tell him
>what you want you don't get.

This works well if you have a really good rapport with a local vendor. The
locals will bend over to help you especially if you are a novice. I know I
would.

Sven came up with an idea for a box that may be a little extreme. If you
were building a server, you might need all of those bays. For the life of me
I can't think of an instance where I would want a case taller than me.

In closing, David Nasser came up with what I though was the best advice.
>The object is to plan/acquire/build a system to use for a certain # of
>years?

The key word is "plan". Research what is out there. Don't lock yourself into
one on-line dealer. As some of the folks recommended, Price Watch,
http://www.pricewatch.com is a good place to start. Do a Google search of
approved AMD cases. Go to AMd's site and research the criteria for your
board. This will help you discover any compatibility issues before you begin
to build your system. If you do the research, study the material, and
compare the results, you will be in a better place to build your system. Oh
yes, a minimum of a 400w power supply will do nicely.

Sincerely,

Frank Suszka
netTek Computers
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