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w2tq
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Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Wed Sep 16, 2020 2:33 pm

I need a case for a PC for business use - not for gaming or high performance, running a Linux OS with a virtual machine.

The planned configuration:

1. Motherboard: Intel-based ATX (Intel quad core CPU with stock cooler; Z390 chipset; 16 GB RAM; one or two m.2 500 GB SSDs).

2. Graphics: MSI nVidia GeForce GTX 1650 dual monitor card with two DisplayPort outputs; two fans; requires two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots.

3. Optical: CD/DVD drive.

4. Power supply: 500 watts

No additional storage is contemplated at this time; perhaps one SATA SSD or magnetic drive in the future.

Previously, I have used Antec steel cases. My preference for this build is a steel, non-windowed case with front-mounted USB ports & power switch. A few of the cases I am considering are the following:

Antec Atlas 550 Mid-Tower Case

Cooler Master Mid Tower Micro-ATX/ATX

Corsair CC-9011075-WW Carbide Series 100R Mid-Tower (which has an acryllic window)

Super Micro SC732D4-500B Mid-tower

I am interested in comments about the foregoing cases and any suggestions for a suitable case for the planned configuration.
 
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Sep 17, 2020 5:45 am

Atlas 550 is 15 years old at this point, no longer produced (therefore difficult to find), and (obviously) lacks modern features. You can scratch that one off your list.

Given that you've expressed a preference for no window, why are you looking at the Corsair 100R instead of the 200R?
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w2tq
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Sep 17, 2020 6:04 am

Thank you for the reply.

I wasn't aware of the 200R when I posted my query - I had not yet visited the Corsair site and was looking only at vendors where I could obtain a case. Thank you for pointing out the 200R - that's a good option.

I did acknowledge the acrylic window in the 100R in my post - the case otherwise seemed otherwise suitable for the build.

Someone else suggested an Antec P7 Silent, but few vendors offer that model.
 
stfan
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Sun Oct 04, 2020 10:54 pm

Some non-windowed ATX cases I've looked at recently:
Cooler Master N300
Cooler Master Masterbox Lite 3
Cooler Master RC-343

Maybe this can add to your choices. I dislike virtually every case I see today. These are merely my less objectionable ones. Compared to yesteryerar, we have:
* painted black internals instead of unpainted metal
* plastic 'convenient' removable drive bays which don't transfer heat from HDs to the metal of the case
* ugly black as far as the eye can see
* far too many gaming-related windowed cases
* far too many holes punched into cases for airflow, mesh front panels, etc.

Good luck in the hunt.
:)
 
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Mon Oct 05, 2020 5:11 am

I don't mind the black internals; after all, a PROPER case doesn't have a window so you can't see the insides anyway!

I agree the flimsy "tool-free" drive bays/trays are often problematic. Aside from (lack of) heat dissipation, they also are prone to breakage.
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w2tq
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Mon Oct 05, 2020 1:30 pm

stfan -

Thanks. I agree with your comments about the construction and design. My 15-year old Antec cases were sturdier and better configured than much of what I see on the market. Your observation about gaming-oriented products also applies to motherboards.
 
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:57 pm

The DIY market has moved to gaming-focused products largely because gamers are the last group left that builds their own computers. Very few companies have IT teams build their own computers anymore. They buy fleets of either laptops or corporate desktops. Sure, you can save some money building your own vs. buying a prebuilt, but most of that savings will get completely subsumed in wages for the tech who's assembling it. Plus then if there's a problem you're on the hook for fixing it, whereas if you buy a Dell prebuilt that's covered under warranty and support.

So TL;DR, the reason you can't find much in the way of business focused components anymore is that market doesn't do DIY anymore for the most part.
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Mon Oct 05, 2020 3:09 pm

Asus still does some reasonable no-gaming-frills motherboards, and at least you can disable the RGB bling via BIOS settings.
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stfan
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 09, 2020 3:08 am

w2tq wrote:
stfan -

Thanks. I agree with your comments about the construction and design. My 15-year old Antec cases were sturdier and better configured than much of what I see on the market. Your observation about gaming-oriented products also applies to motherboards.

Oh yes. I tried to restrain myself a little earlier, but that is another sore point. Working with black & grey mainboards...hardly any colour-coding distinctions...I can talk for hours how things have gone backwards here for system builders. I really feel like a 'get off my lawn' rant :)
 
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 09, 2020 4:57 am

stfan wrote:
I can talk for hours how things have gone backwards here for system builders. I really feel like a 'get off my lawn' rant :)

I feel like that a lot these days too. On the plus side, the technology continues to improve. Moore's law has slowed down, but it isn't dead yet.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:49 am

Moore's "law" died before Gordon Moore retired.

Intel's CPU progress has been almost totally stalled for a long time. They haven't had a new desktop CPU architecture since Skylake was released in August 2015. They haven't had a new fabrication process node for desktop CPUs since October 2014. Six years would have brought orders of magnitude of amazing performance improvement back in the heady days when Moore's "law" seemed like a rule. Instead, Intel squandered the technology lead that they had and they have been overtaken by the much smaller AMD.

Intel's CPU technology development may finally begin to lurch back into gear in 2021 after having been asleep at the wheel for more than half a decade.
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 09, 2020 12:20 pm

I would argue that it hasn't in fact died; it's just that TSMC and Samsung are carrying the torch now instead of Intel.
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 09, 2020 1:53 pm

We seemed to have plateaued in speed at around 4 Ghz. The focus now seems to be on core count. Have we hit the speed limits for the x86 architecture?
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 09, 2020 2:05 pm

We're hitting limits on how fast you can make silicon transistors switch. This is why the emphasis is shifting to core count and larger caches. Need to find ways to boost performance without requiring higher clock speeds.
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Sat Oct 10, 2020 11:33 am

just brew it! wrote:
We're hitting limits on how fast you can make silicon transistors switch. This is why the emphasis is shifting to core count and larger caches. Need to find ways to boost performance without requiring higher clock speeds.

Qualification: how fast we can make silicon transistors switch with reasonable thermals and power consumption (more specifically leakage). Blaiming the lack of progress on ISAs does not make sense anymore, since most implementation these days will translate into some internal optimized instructions. It has been argued that the x86 decoder now takes up such a small portion of the die anyway. They can decode and dispatch instructions fast enough. Out of order execution, wide superscalar designs, and branch prediction have pretty much made the so-called "RISC high clock advantage" not as relevant. Pretty much all but one RISC contenders failed to have any market success in the desktop/laptop/server world.
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stfan
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 4:12 am

https://antec.com/product/case/vsk4000e-u3.php
This style appeals to me. 3x 5.25-inch drive bays. Plenty of 3.5-inch expansion. Unpainted internals (ground yourself properly). This is among my top contenders for a new 'old-school' case.
 
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 4:47 am

stfan wrote:
3x 5.25-inch drive bays

What for?
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:12 am

Flying Fox wrote:
stfan wrote:
3x 5.25-inch drive bays

What for?

Well, you wouldn't want to run out of automated cup holders :lol:
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:17 am

Flying Fox wrote:
stfan wrote:
3x 5.25-inch drive bays

What for?

FWIW I find it useful to have a couple of hot swap bays. Less cable clutter than using an external dock.

I also debated whether to include an optical drive in my latest build. I ended up installing one since I already had an extra one on hand.
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Flying Fox
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 11:08 am

Still, three of those?

(I just bought a 4-in-3 drive cage myself, but that's for a file server not my own system. Not a normal use case.)
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 11:14 am

1. 3.5" hop swap bay
2. 2.5" hot swap bay
3. optical drive

Could've skipped any/all of the above and used external docks and/or a USB optical instead, but as I noted previously, putting 'em in bays reduces cable clutter.
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Flying Fox
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 12:01 pm

just brew it! wrote:
1. 3.5" hop swap bay
2. 2.5" hot swap bay
3. optical drive

Could've skipped any/all of the above and used external docks and/or a USB optical instead, but as I noted previously, putting 'em in bays reduces cable clutter.

Not everyone needs 2 hot swap bays?
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 12:04 pm

I'd even go so far as to say almost NOBODY actually NEEDS them, since external docks are a thing. But they're nice to have.
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stfan
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Thu Oct 15, 2020 6:53 pm

Flying Fox wrote:
stfan wrote:
3x 5.25-inch drive bays

What for?


Just sticking to optical discs (and ignoring perfectly valid no-clutter hot-swap drive bay usage).

* Play a CD or DVD or Blu-ray while you do something in another drive (like ripping a disc or looking at files..). I know, physical discs :)
* queue 2 or 3 discs in Handbrake (unattended) without extracting to hard drive first
* play a disc while a game installs on the other drive
* try the disc in another drive (or two) in case of read problems
* load several discs at a time to save time when installing or looking for files
* make disc duplication faster
* just makes a lot of things faster and more convenient

Some of these are 'not very often' scenarios, but needless to say I enjoy it when I want to do it and I can do it. With the price of optical drives today (without even thinking of my collection of discarded optical drives), 2 or more drives is just something I always insist on. But I am very much a physical media guy and wouldn't trust any third-party 'cloud' back-up service with my data, nor would I be bothered with the expense and maintenance of a RAID array (cost of drives as well as electricity here in Australia). That's just my personal usage. The key is to have more choice than just these 'gamer' cases, which at least 97% of the market is inundated with.

It also helps that I trust optical discs far more than I do hard drives for long-term storage. But that's another tangent.
 
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 16, 2020 12:47 am

To each their own I suppose.

On certain "disc media" I actually started to capture ISO/MDS and just virtual mount them. So all I need is just gobs of HDD space (and that in theory will go to my NAS/FileServer).

It also helps that I trust optical discs far more than I do hard drives for long-term storage. But that's another tangent.

Only on pressed ones. If you are using cheapo blanks those burned discs may not last. And I'm reading reports of even pressed Blu-rays becoming unreadable. So definitely YMMV. True "gold masters" are in the minority.
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:26 am

I have a DVD RW drive in my main system.

I think it's been over 2 years since I used it last, and can't think of any reason that would change.
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stfan
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Re: Case needed for business (non-gaming) PC

Fri Oct 16, 2020 6:04 pm

Most have neglected optical, which is reflected in the prices of DVD recorders (unbelievably cheap) and to a somewhat lesser extent, Blu-ray. Blu-ray never really took off for desktop PCs and laptops the way DVD did. If you don't want to run a bunch of hard drives for redundancy, archival is still an issue though. I've had issues with all the common formats used today: USB sticks, MicroSD, hard drives, etc. but still have CDs from the 90s read fine.

An updated version of DVD-RAM or MiniDisc/Hi-MD (chemically outstanding and with no need to prep data to write to it in a liner fashion) would make me wet my pants with excitement. Even the crooks at Facebook collaborated with Panasonic to archive data to optical, albeit write-once: https://panasonic.net/cns/archiver/ Panasonic is capable of so much more...but maximum profitability and staggered product release improvements is the name of the game here.

With computer cases, the common adoption of just a single 5.25-inch drive bay in so many housings might be the more pressing issue for now. Near-extinction is upon us :)

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