PC Gaming Cases – Essential Upgrading Advice
The Best Gaming PC Cases Protect Your Precious Hardware
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 There are many fans of pc gaming and these include serious gamers who generally demand very high performance from their game systems and gaming pc cases. So it is a given that as a gamer you will have at least looked into the available options and specifications of your hardware, including the upgrade potential of the standard gaming case supplied with the system. This is before having gone out and spent hard earned cash on the best specification pc or mac system.
If you are a serious gamer you may have already looked into overclocking your pc processor and even managed to coax some more valuable performance to help those games run just a little bit faster. At this point it is when most people find out, sometimes through a costly hardware failure, common cause is overheating, where system components can struggle with being pushed beyond the limits of their capability therefore you need to look at beefing up your cooling system in your pc case.
You may have a pc gaming system that is a few years old and the accumulation of games on your hard drive and other applications means that you are n earing full capacity on your drive. Then you think to yourself i wished my case had just a few more 3.5” bays so that you could install a bigger hard drive.
If you have now realised that you need a pc case upgrade for your gamer pc system then there are a few important factors to understand before making the purchase and safeguarding yourself for any future internal hardware upgrade requirements (future proofing). You may find many internet based computer case reviews can be somewhat biased and so we just want to give you the facts.
The six things you should consider … when choosing your best buy from the large array of pc gaming cases available online:
1) Motherboard Compatibility: (Will My Board Fit Inside The Gaming Case)
Thankfully it is easy to find out what motherboard is compatible with a given gaming case by something called the ‘form factor’. Each pc case and motherboard will be one  of the following form factors – AT & Baby AT, ATX & Mini ATX, LPX & Mini LPX, or NLX. Most recent motherboards are usually ATX and the newer pc gaming cases shadow this more common form factor and are more readily available.
The different ‘form factors’ of the motherboard represent the different layouts of physical components, connectors, board size etc. and will only fit within the compatible case. However, these days most companies who manufacture motherboards generally offer the same specification boards in different ‘form factor’ options.
Simply, as long as your pc motherboard is the same ‘form factor’ as the desired gaming case then it will fit correctly and all the internal & external connectors plus power supply units will be compatible for both case & board.
2) Cooling Inside The Gaming Case: (PC Case Fans)
The primary aims of the best pc gaming cases are to protect your expensive hardware inc. motherboard, CPU, graphics cards, hard drives. High specification hardware, such as graphics cards, require a lot of power to operate and this in turn produces heat. The more power that your internal pc components consume the more heat they produce and power users generally know all about this downside which can be discussed as a simple formula (High Specification Powerful Gaming System = .Lots of Heat In PC Case).
Most gaming cases actually mount the motherboard unit towards the top and back to aid the flow of air over the cpu from the fans. In addition the power supply unit is generally located at the bottom of the case to produce good internal and external airflow.
A simple solution to a high temperature enclosure is cold air and this method is still the most commonly used to cool gaming cases – 2 or more fans inside the case and a well vented enclosure. The simplest way to increase cooling in a PC case is to install additional fans and/or increase the diameter of the fans or increase their operating speed.
The best gaming cases usually come supplied with 2 or more high speed fans and internal hardware such as the graphics cards also have mini fans to help them independently cool their own cpu. If you go for the highest end cases they may also come with a liquid cooling system and offer special heat sinks inside the case to dissipate the heat.
3) Expansion Capability: (Drive Bays & I/O)
It is very important when upgrading your pc case to allow for future hardware expansion and this includes the available drive bays or slots, I/O interfaces and connections. Some Higher end cases come with docking slots for 3.5” hard drives which use a tray system to slot into the PC.
If you still use floppy disk then you will have to make sure their is a floppy drive bay and remember the CD/DVD & Blue-Ray drives (usually require 5” bays). All these individual drive requirements means a case with at least 6 drive bays and maybe 2 or more free drive bays ready for future expansion.
4) Power Supplies: (Powering Serious Gaming Hardware)
When it comes to gaming the pc systems power supply is a very important component which supplies all your high end power hungry components with enough juice for them to function correctly.
Efficiency is the key here, a good gaming power supply will make use of your voltages where as less efficient supply, found on normal pc systems, tend to lose power to negative heat loss.
5) Air Flow: (Avoiding Dust Build-ups)
Your gaming system can act just like a mini vacuum machine sucking up all the dust inside the cleanest of rooms. It is therefore important to understand the air flow inside the pc case and this can help avoid your internal components and fan getting clogging up with dust.
Most pc gaming cases use a positive pressure method (higher internal air pressure). You can achieve positive pressure inside a case by using intake fans and air exhausts. By using more powerful air intake fans and less air exhaust fan power the result is that internal air in the case will be positive pressure which helps to limit dust inside the case.
6) Kerb appeal:. (How The Case Looks)
Most pc systems come with some pretty impressive internal hardware but more often than not it is disguised in a boring old black box with little or no WOW factor. However, with power pc cases and gaming cases the boring box is transformed into a thing of beauty and if i can coin a phrase from my estate agent – ‘Kerb Appeal’.
Gaming cases can be ‘modded’ with things like colour changing LED and neon lighting, clear plastic fans and even full colour plastic clear cases. led displays showing thermal properties and even anodised case screws to name but a few.
In conclusion - You can see, from the above information, just how important it is to know about your systems internal hardware before buying one of the many available gaming pc cases. Also, we urge you to forward think about your power user requirements from your gaming system both now and in the future (at least think a few years ahead).
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