Selecting Case

Hmmm. Let's begin with the case. We can go with conservative solid Mini-ATX case. Or with a little more fun of a case.


Looking at the Hero 25 by ChiefMax. I love ChiefMax cases. They're solid and look great. However, it only allows for 2 case fans. 1 80mm on the side and 1 90mm on the rear panel. But I like the LCD output for the temperature. The price is $39.99 at 3BTech, which is a great store to deal with. Here are the specs for this case:

• Type ATX Mid Tower
• Color Black and Silver
• Power Supply Not Included
• Motherboard Compatibility Micro ATX, Standard ATX
• With Side Panel Window No
• Expansion
• External 5.25" Drive Bays 3
• External 3.5" Drive Bays 1
• Internal 3.5" Drive Bays 4
• Expansion Slots 7
• Front Ports
• Front Ports 2x USB 2.0, audio & speaker ports
• Cooling System
• 80mm Fans None; supports qty 1 on side panel
• 90mm Fans None; supports qty 1 in rear
• Physical Spec
• Dimensions 17" x 7.5 " x 19.5 "(H x W x L)

But I may be leaning towards a barebones system from 3btech:

• Features the AMD Phenom II 965 Black Edition quad core Deneb CPU 3.2 GHz
• NZXT Gamer Case with 550W true wattage Power Supply. Front USB
• Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H Socket AM3/AM2+ MotherBoard with AMD 785G Chipset
• Onboard ATI Radeon HD4200 VGA, HDMI, and DVI video
• This mainboard supports up to 16GB DDR2 1200/1066/800
• 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio sound card integrated2 PCI expansion slots and one PCI Express 2.0 x16Onboard 10/100/1000 gigabit Ethernet Network and Serial ATA (SATA) 300 RAID
• SPDIF audio, Six USB Ports, and IEEE1394 Firewire

After crunching some numbers, we just decided to go with a MB/CPU combo and a case from Portatech. The case is the Raidmax Tornado. It has a blue LED 80mm fan in the front panel to cool the hard drives and standard 120mm fan in the rear panel to circulate the hot air.

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