PC Buyer's Guide: Cases and Power Supplies

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When putting a PC together, the case and power supply unit (PSU) are usually at the end of a lot of people's shopping lists.

To be fair, there are only two hard and fast requirements for each of these parts. For the case - is it big enough to fit all your stuff, and do you like the look of it? For the PSU - is it powerful enough, and does it have the right connectors?

The story could end right there, but the truth is that if you want to build a machine that you can be proud of, and one that will give you a good few years of service, then there is much more to consider when picking these two components.

Cases

Like most PC components, it's wise to stick to the quality brands of cases. A lot of cheap cases on the market have shoddy build quality - e.g. thin steel structure with sharp edges, scratch-prone flaky paint jobs, and noisy inefficient inlet/exhaust fans.

Personally I recommend sticking to the likes of Antec, Cooler Master, Corsair, Enermax, Lian Li, Silverstone, and Thermaltake (their latest range, at least). From these brands you can find a case to fit any budget, functional requirement and personal preference. Also consider the fact that even though a decent case might cost you a little bit more upfront, it's more likely to see you through an upgrade or two down the track.

Aside from brand, the easiest way to break down the entire range of available cases is into what is called "form factor", the main two categories being Desktop/SFF/HTPC (Small Form Factor/Home Theatre PC), and Tower.

Desktop/SFF/HTPC

Even though there's a lot of different sizes and shapes of cases in this category, I tend to group them together as there's a lot of crossover between them. A 'Desktop' case, for instance, is simply a case which is designed to be positioned horizontally, like a big DVD player, rather than vertically like Tower cases.

A Desktop case can be the same size as a Tower case, or you can get SFF Desktop cases which have a smaller footprint, or a HTPC Desktop - some of which even come with remote controls and volume dials for easy media playback. Most Desktop cases are also sturdy enough to hold your monitor on top of them which is great for space saving.

HTPC cases these days are generally styled to look like other Home Theatre components, with silver or black aluminium facias, LCD displays and quick-access media buttons so they that look right at home in your stereo rack or cabinet. Make sure you either get one with a PSU in it already, or ensure that the PSU you intend on buying will fit, as some HTPC cases can have specific size and shape requirements here.

Lastly, SFF cases - as the name might suggest - are the smallest of this group, and are generally designed to take mini-ITX motherboards for maximum space efficiency. Most mini-ITX boards use low power Intel Atom CPUs so remember that if you have any demanding applications or gaming in mind.

Prices in this category mostly range from $100 to $500.

My picks:
Lian-Li Mini-Q PC-Q07 mini-ITX Tower Chassis
Antec NSK2480 380W mATX HTPC Case
Silverstone Grandia GD02B-MT Aluminum/Steel uATX Desktop Case with 4.3" touchscreen

Tower

Tower cases have come a long way design-wise in the last decade. Ten years ago, basically your only choice was between a dull-grey or a dull-beige box. While a few companies have gotten a bit enthusiastic with their designs, with some tricked-out cases looking like they were designed by Japanese school girls high on Ritalin, a lot of Tower cases these days are sleek, refined, and functional.

Most cases in this category are designed to take common ATX-size motherboards (Mid Tower), although a few go up a size to EATX (Full Tower) and some down a size to mATX (Mini Tower).

Make sure whatever you get is big enough for the motherboard you intend to put in it. Also ensure that it will fit your video card too - modern cards measure up to a foot long and are simply too big for a lot of cases.

Tower cases generally have good airflow, which is vital for long and stable component life, most coming with single or dual front intake fans, large side-panel intake fans, plus one or more rear and/or top-panel exhaust fans.

Some cases also have pre-drilled holes for routing watercooling tubes to an external radiator, if you plan on building a watercooled machine.

The main advantage of Tower cases is that they have the smallest footprint, meaning they take up the least amount of floor or desk space, at the cost of being tall and long. A lot of them also come with side-windows, which are mainly just for show (they also tend to encourage people to tidy up their cabling, which is good for airflow).

Pricing varies mainly from $100 to $600, with a lot of good stuff available for less than $300.

Worth checking out:
Antec Mini P180 Black mATX Mini Tower
Antec Three Hundred Mid Tower
Lian-Li Lancool Dragonlord PC-K62B Mid Tower
Cooler Master CM Storm Scout Mid Tower
Silverstone SST-TJ09B Black Aluminum Full Tower
Corsair Obsidian 800D Full Tower

So that's cases in a nutshell, on to power supplies...

Power Supply Units

As far as personal preferences go, PSUs are slightly easier to choose from seeing as you don't have to look at them all day, however that doesn't mean you can't put a little bit of thought into your purchase.

When looking at brands, you should pretty much stick with the same names I recommended for your case, e.g. Antec, Cooler Master, Corsair, Enermax, Silverstone, and Thermaltake (avoid their cheaper range though), plus add to the list OCZ, PC Power & Cooling, Seasonic, Vantec, XFX and Zalman. Cheap and nasty brands give you cheap and nasty power, which you really don't want to feed to your precious components.

Aside from some PSUs being designed for specific cases or form factors, most units will fit into any standard Tower, Desktop or HTPC case, so there's no categories as such to break them down into (other than price). Rather, it's a case of determining your power requirements and finding something that suits.

Wattage

Working out how many watts you're PC will be needing from your PSU is a fairly simple task. Just add up all the individual ratings for your components and get a PSU with at about 20% more power than that (so it can run efficiently and leaves a little bit of room for upgrading).

If you can't find the power requirements for your individual parts, here's a guide:

CPU: 45W (low power dual core) to 140W (high power quad core)
Video card: 70W (budget single GPU card) to 200W (high performance single GPU card)
Everything else: less than 100W (i.e. Motherboard, RAM, HDD, Optical drives, case fans etc).

So you can see that a low power system needs about 200W to run, while a high power system can easily need 400W - 500W. Unfortunately you really can't buy quality 250W PSUs anymore - the minimum you're likely to find for a low power system is about 380W.

Adding the 20% rule to the higher power system means you should be looking at 500W to 600W PSUs. Note that if you're running a Crossfire or SLI graphics solution, then your video cards alone can require up to 600W! This is where you'll be wanting to check out PSUs in the 850W - 1000W range.

Also, if you plan on overclocking, it's worth adding another 10% on top of your total requirements for the extra power that this will require for stability.

Lastly, consider your cabling requirements. Most PSUs come with more than enough SATA and molex power connectors, but has it got enough PCI-E plugs for you? A lot of dual card Crossfire and SLI setups will need two 6 pin and two 8 pin PCI-E plugs, so don't get caught short if you're in this boat. Getting a PSU with modular cabling can also be convenient as you can simply remove the cables you don't need, making for less clutter in your case.

Pricing starts at under $100, with lots of good options around $200, while top-shelf units push close to the $500 mark. These are the ones I would go for:

Entry level
Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 460W
Corsair VX-450 450W
Corsair VX-550 550W
Corsair HX-620 620W Modular
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W

Enthusiast
XFX P1-850B-NLG9 850W Modular
Corsair HX-1000 1000W Modular

Those "80 Plus" symbols you see mean that the power supplies are certified to be more than 80% efficient, for example if your components are drawing 400W from your PSU, then your PSU would be drawing 500W or less from the wall socket - the rest is wasted as heat (hence the fan to keep them cool). The higher this efficiency rating, the less wasted energy.

So that's about all you really need to know about power supplies, or enough to get you started at least - if you're interested in finding out things like what kind of capacitors a particular model uses or what OEM manufacturer they bought the components from then I'd suggest spending some time with google (put the kettle on though, there's a lot of info out there when it comes to the intricacies of PSUs).