School Research - cases

[megakid]

Hello,

I'm 15 and am in the process of researching my school project about designing a PC case. I'd really appreciate anybodies input on these following questions/ideas.

What case have you got at the moment? What do you like about it? and what don't you like about it?
What would you like to see in a case design?
If I make a case aimed at a certain age/group (eg children friendly cases, businesses etc) where do you think there is a hole in the market? (eg. I haven't seen many childrens cases)

Thanks,

~major

 

[hans007]

cases that actually look nice, there is a huge hole there. Look at apple, their entire business plan is based on nice looking cases basically (because well for the money their hardware sucks, and their software cant even compete with win2k). All i really expect out of a case is sliding doors, and no sharp edges and at least decent looking. Also important to me is fit and finish, you know a case is a piece of crap if it rattles or something (which is also why i dont like drive rails since they tend to rattle)

 

[XeonTux]

I just built a system with a Fong Kai FK-320 case.

-=- between full-size and mid-size tower, lots of space to work
-=- very sturdy drive bays
-=- has holes for all ATX mobos, including my Xeon which needs extra holes
-=- looks decent, got the white and it looks better than the white in pic
-=- door is cool, opens and slides up inside case above drive bays
-=- overall there's no sharp edges, but I did managed to gouge my finger removing one of those metal punch-outs behind the plastic drive blanks.
-=- decent number of drive bays, a couple more wouldn't have hurt tho
-=- good cooling, but the peeps at FK were on crack to think the duct would fit over a dual xeon processors...this is a xeon-ready case afterall
-=- price: $100, damn good case for the money.

The only gripe I have is the backplane that surrounds the mobo I/O connectors on the back did not match up with my mobo. The USB and PS/2 were closer to each other and closer to the serial/parallel than the plate would allow. I had to remove it and now have a gaping hole. This is prob an issue with my mobo more than the case...haven't matched it up to any other ATX boards yet.

 

[damien6]

I've got a "no name" case for my main system and it's been great compared to most of the cases I've seen out there and I've seen a lot. This very same case was reviewed by one of the hardware site (they nicked "Fat case" or such because they didn't know who made it either) and wound up receiving pretty decent review. A mid ATX w/slid out motherboard tray, 4 x 5 1/4" drive bays, wide, sturdy, cheap, etc...

Now I have somewhat out grown this one and it'll be used as one of the secondary system. If UPS ever stops playing w/it and finally delivers it, I'll be a proud owner of a Chenbro Net "cube". It left MN on Nov. 27 and has been returned from a local UPS warehouse twice without it ever being attempted to delivered to me. (and some wonders why we make fun of UPS!) It was slightly modified and has few Panaflo fans already included in it. It'll house: dual P3, Supermicro 370DE6, gig of PC-133 Registered /Buffered ECC Sdrams, (5 x) X15 in hotswappable racks, Adaptec 3200s, G400Max, Teac scsi floppy, 10/100 Nic, firewire card, Pioneer 304s, SB Platinum, 12x burner, few other toys and all powered by a 400wt dual redundant P/S from Enermax. (no IDE in this box)

 

[damien6]

What I meant to say before I went off on that little "ahem" RANT! is that: these days everyone and their mother could get their hands on some no frill cases w/o missing a heartbeat even if they live in some rickety shack in a bump f_ck middle of nowhere but it's not that easy to get your hands on some specialized or "different" high quality cases, let alone pick them up at decent prices. More and more people are going SCSI on their home systems these days and SMP will be the next craze everyone will be jumping on due to more user friendly OSes. Pretty soon, someone's liable to realize that they can add more peripherals to SCSI buses than IDE buses. Put two and two together, and you're talking some serious toys to play solitaires on. That's a good hole to fill because most of those big Server supply vendors catering to big corporations has no clues as to what to put up on their website and aren't that helpful to those individuals wanting to upgrade to bigger toys. Get some small to mid server parts, cases, redundant P/S, monitor/keyboard/mouse extension cables, SCSI back planes, power sharing boards, hotswappable racks, etc...., get a website to throw some pics (lots of pics) on and magic time. "You build it and they shall come".


People are looking for: expansion space, looks, performance (airflow/case noise) and step away from that mass produced generic looks that those case manufacturers are widely known to deliver. Go to some case modding sites and take a good look at all the pictures, after a while you'll see what I mean. Uniqueness! Hell, w/the way everybody's jumping on the cable/DSL bandwagon, how many of them wouldn't want to host a webserver from their own home? A lot of small businesses are jumping all over the web trying to increase their sales and some of them definitely will want to host from their own machine. These are the one to buy parts and spend money, even when they're not broken. Cases for kids might be a cool idea for those big case manufacturers but on a small scale, I don't think it'll do so well. What do it yourselfer will spend so much for a PC case for kids?

 

[subhuman]

I use this case, it's got lock-down for the PCI slots and a semi-shock-mounted-drive area.

 

[Noriaki]

Right now I've got a no-name Mid Tower 17"

4 5.25" drive bays all external
4 3.5" drive bays 2 external

No sharp edges, nice slight curves on the front, good solid construction for the most part.

My complaints:
The I/O shield is very flimsy shiny metal and doesn't fit in well...
The metal around the PCI brackets is quite weak and bends easily, and there are some rivets blocking slots 2 and 7 of 7 (1 being at the top) so it's hard to push the card straight in and screws can be a pain.

Besides those two minor contructions issues the case is a quite good.
I'm buying myself an InWin Q500 Full Tower with 5 5.25", 5 internal 3.5" and a 6th external 3.5", I'm donating my generic 17" with the 300Watt that comes in the InWin to my brother, and keeping my 450Watt to go with the InWin.

 

[megakid]

Thanks for ya replys guy....been a great help.
Anymore?

~major