Testing : Why 8 New Miditower Cases Do Not Always Deliver

Tom's Hardware > Articles & reviews > Why 8 New Miditower Cases Do Not Always Deliver

Testing

07:00 - Monday 13 September 2004 by Siggy Moersch
Source: Tom's Hardware – Keywords: why, 8, new, miditower, cases, do, not, always, deliver

Table of content:

Testing

The overall rating is made up of the following evaluation criteria:

Workmanship of the case, side panels, front panel and connectors Edges and corners, accident risk on opening and during installation of hardware Installation of the motherboard and expansion cards, along with various power supplies and drives Cabling of the front connectors, drives, motherboards Expansion of hard drives and 5.25" drives Functions of the display, reading the values, handling

Hardware Used For Testing

To make the rating realistic, various hardware components were installed in the miditowers in question. The IC7-MAX3 from Abit served as a motherboard for the PC. An AGP-graphics card from MSI was fastened to it and - if the case allowed it - a 4-channel controller from Advansys. Although this card is not the latest model, the issue was whether or not a long PCI card could be installed. The hard drives used were a selection from diverse manufacturers. For a 5.25" drive, we had a 16x DVD drive from MSI on hand. For power supplies, we picked a Superflower model (integrated 140 mm fan) and a fanless power supply from Yesico. It was necessary for both power supplies to be installed separately without problem.