Methodology looks very sound and I hope that Anandtech will be able to continue adding new cases to see how they stack up against each other (ha) while keeping the internal components constant.
I'd love to see some Fractal Designs cases reviewed. Especially some of the new ones coming. I am chomping at the bit to get a better look at the Arc Midi Tower and the Arc Mini!
I have a define R3. and holy shit i love it. replaced my cooler master HAF 922 with this. it's quiet as hell and also keeps my innards all nice and cool. i have a noctua noctua nh-d14 on my i7-960 and it idles around 38C and my 6870 twin frozr with fans at 40% idles around 34C. considering the noise it DOESN'T make, the price, the quality of the materials used, and the overall workmanship. i would reccomend it to EVERYONE. another good case to check out is the fractal design core 3000, it's like 90$ tax and shipping in (ncix) and it looks pretty top notch.
Clearly you've never used hot-swap bays then or thought about the fact that you can mount 4+ 3.5" drives in the space of 3x 5.25" bays with a 120mm cooling fan to boot (Lian Li do such a product and are not the only ones). Personally I would rather have seen FOUR 5.25" bays for this very purpose. Otherwise you can always get single hot-swap bays to go 5.25" --> 3.5".
It's about different horses for different courses really - perhaps you should be looking at an eATX full tower instead?
Other food for thought, as I have been down this road before: if you have drives which are <2TB (hell, even if they are 2TB - you can now get 3TB drives), then secure erase and sell off your old drives and buy fewer larger drives. :)
Just curious ... how much content do you have to steal to fill six harddrives?
I personally have never filled more than 30 gb or so of a disk; I could see filling maybe 100 GB tops if I kept all of my home movies and photos on my local disk instead of in the cloud. I guess if you're a real 'power user' and buy lots of software and games maybe you'd fill another 200 GB? I just can't imagine filling more than 300 GB unless you're stealing content. Of course I know that there are the exceptional case where someone has, e.g. a photography business or something and they need to store terabytes of data legitimately but ... somehow I doubt that every person I see complaining about, e.g. the small size of SSDs, or the inability to put more than 6 hard drives in a case, has a legal use for all of that space.
On the upside for me, I am perfectly happy with a single 80 GB Intel SSD in my desktop and will be for years to come. SSDs are now in the price range where for my usage, they are cheap enough and are only getting better as they get faster.
Oh yes, they must be stealing content. No one ever backups their DVD or BR collection, no one ever edits HD video. No one ever has thousands of high resolution photographs or large photo editing project files to deal with. No one ever has hard drives to put in a RAID setup for performance or redundancy reasons. Yep, must be stealing content, because _you_ can't think of any legitimate use.
Shall we just make it illegal to own multiple hard drives?
For the record, just my AnandTech folder for the past four years checks in at a respectable 70GB. Add in my personal pictures and that's another 30GB. I just upgraded cameras and can now shoot 1080p24 video, which only chews up around 1.3GB for a 10 minute clip. Since the start of 2011, I've only sucked down 13GB with home videos of my family, and I don't even shoot video more than a few times per month!
My desktop has a 1TB hard drive that is around 70% full, because I happen to play games on it. My Steam folder currently sits at nearly 200GB, and I haven't even installed most of my Steam games on this system (e.g. I don't have the original Half-Life, or the various HL2 episodes, installed). Honestly, I can't even get by with less than 256GB of storage on a system that I plan to use for "everything", which is why SSDs are tough to use on a single drive laptop.
"Oh yes, they must be stealing content. No one ever backups their DVD or BR collection, no one ever edits HD video"
I fully agree. A single blu-ray disk takes up to 30GB to take a 1:1 copy. My DVDs run up to the 8GB range. Taking my entire DVD/BR collection easily fills a couple 2TB drives. It all used to be scattered on 1TB/1.5TB drives until I upgraded to a couple 2TBs. Where are the other drives? I left them in the machine for scratch disk and future storage. Yes, I do have home videos and the like that I keep too. Not quite to the space requirements of BR disks, but I don't like to store my videos in DiVX or such bad-quality formats (as opposed to lightly-compressed 1080p MPEG4).
Oh, and the comment regarding photos, I'm a bit of a shutter-bug, and even my modest 8.1MP camera takes 3.4MB pictures. Pass them through Photoshop, saving the original of course, and saving in a 90% quality can bloat those to 6MB after touchups. I'd say there's a good 3GB per event I save. It all adds up.
Is it legal to 'back up' DVDs and BR discs in this way? I doubt it since it requires circumventing encryption mechanisms. I agree that it doesn't seem ethically wrong to back up something you own even if it is technically illegal.
That being said, what's the point? Are these discs really so important that they need to be backed up? I've never backed up a DVD or Blu-Ray disc in my life and I've never lost or broken one either. I can't imagine wasting my time (and money) spending it backing up DVDs and Blu-Ray discs.
But I guess that's beside the point; I asked for legitimate ways to fill up large amounts of hard disk space and I got at least one answer of something that is technically probably not legal but not so immoral in any case.
So am I to believe that the vast majority of people who claim to need 8 or 10 hard drives in their computer do so because of backing up DVDs and Blu-Ray discs? It's not hoarders of pirated movies and software?
JarredWalton kind of made my point for me I think; four years of his work on a technology site only uses 70 GB of his disk and all of his personal photos take 30 GB more. That's only 100 GB. Even with the addition of a 1024p24 video camera, it sounds like a 500 GB drive would buy years of video storage at a reasonable rate of accumulation thereof.
Add another 500 GB drive for his Steam games and with a grand total of 1 TB it looks like JarredWalton, certainly a 'power user' if there ever was one, is completely covered in storage needs.
My Steam folder (which is on a 320GB drive) is almost 100GB, and that is just for 18 game and a couple of mods (Stalker: CS, Stalker: COP, Street Fighter 4 and UT3). If I was to install the 57 other games that I have purchased on Steam (publisher packs ftw!), I would more than likely take up more than 2/3 of the drive.
Some of the space is occupied by legally backed up GBA/DS/GC games that I had, but were stolen.
It is entirely possible to fill up even a 2TB with legally obtained material.
If I had the space, I would back up all of the movies I own and stream them from a server, that way, I can keep the discs safely stored.
Well I admit that my comment was somewhat inflammatory because it presumed that most people could not legitimately fill up a drive without stealing content. I just could not imagine needing that much space for legitimate reasons but clearly I missed:
1. People who 'back up' huge collections of legitimately owned DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. I can't personally imagine why you'd go through the trouble but I admit that for people who place high value on these items, having a back up is not an unreasonable way to use hard drive space.
2. People who buy and play tens of games per year and have to keep them all on their hard drive all the time.
3. People who collect huge digital home videos
I think that most people don't fall into any of these camps but on an enthusiast site, certainly you'd find more people in one or more of these categories.
"clearly I missed:" People who don't do things as you do.
"most people don't fall into any of these camps"
More assuming that YOU are the norm others should be measured against. Could it be that you are the outlier?
People who play Warcraft alone likely have 15+ gb of space tied up at least before they add to it, and there seems to be quite a few current or former players who probably still have the thing installed. Add in any of several other games at 5-10gb and the numbers just climb.
The less technical the user, the more likely it is that installed games or old programs will never be uninstalled.
I started using a media server long ago and found it to be incredibly convenient with children and relatives' children as no media gets damaged or misplaced moving from room to room. When you purchase a television series on 35 DVD's or more, do you really want to keep those sorted instead of ripping them all and selecting from menus?
As for the geekier side, website backups and developer database, ebooks (some of which cost as much as a bound book), scanned records (paperless office to the extent possible), and then email backups of receipts and registrations, and somewhere in there there's a photo or two and a partially complete thesis with copies of supporting documents. Between utilities and MSDN downloads is at least another 100gb.
I also have shelves of DVD's and CD's, though I prefer not to have to access those. The books I'm not about to scan myself so if there's no digital alternative, they're also on a shelf.
Shall I also explain my 60x40 shop contents and why it's full to the rafters or is that acceptable in your view?
I had always had this apparently ill founded belief that most people who had huge hard drive collections did so so that they could hoard downloaded movies, but I can see that there are many other legitimate uses that require huge amounts of space. I still don't know what the result would be if you polled all users instead of just computer enthusiast readers of Anandtech, but certainly for a not insignificant segment of the computer user space, large amounts of space are clearly useful.
Sorry to have stirred up such a ruckus, I kinda knew I shouldn't have started in with an inflammatory comment like that.
"Just curious ... how much content do you have to steal to fill six harddrives?"
That's a naive and needlessly antagonistic comment.
I have over 217GB in my Steam folder alone and am currently using almost 500GB of a 750GB SATA HD. I have no movies on my pc and the only music I have is purchased online or burnt to MP3 from my own music CD collection.
My new build has a 120GB Corsair SSD and 2 1TB WD Caviar Black drives in RAID 0, with an external 2TB WD backup. I won't need more space than that in the forseeable future, but I will be converting my entire CD collection to MP3 - so the additional space will be useful. Also, I'm sure Steam will have sales on new PC games that I want in the future and they just keep getting bigger!
I'm 46yrs old and don't steal content, thank you very much.
So it sounds like your total need is ~500 GB, plus you anticipate some future need for backing up your CD collection and buying more games. Sounds like a 1 TB drive is all you'll need for some time.
You are clearly a person who would be fine with a case that only takes 6 hard drives. My comment was directed at the O.P. who was lamenting not being able to put more than 6 hard drives in a case. Even with cheap 500 GB hard drives, 6 slots gives you ~3 TB. Who exactly is filling up 3 TB of data with legitimate content except people shooting a hell of alot of high definition home video? And how many people actually do that versus people needing the space for warez?
That was kinda his point, though: you barely fill 500 MB of HD right now, and have big plans to raise that to 2 GBs. That's, as you say, two drives, which most any case will fit. I personnally just bought a Thermaltake Element Q, which is slightly smaller than a shoe box, and will take up to 3 3.5" HDDs. Right now, my single 3TB drive sits barely a third full, though.
0/10 troll. Your comment is beyond moronic. This is a tech enthusiast site. Keyword: enthusiast. As in, not your average Joe with a few pictures, movies and music files. You have no idea how fast you could fill up 300GBs with HD camcorder video files, or uncompressed recorded footage from games used to edit later. Try widening your perspective and thinking a bit more critically before opening that brain-mouth link.
Well put. I was sure when he/SHE got his/HER @$$ handed to him/HER after the 1st comment he/SHE would just drift off into obscurity, tail soundly tucked.
But nooooo. This "Genius" (and I fully mean the implication), has got an opinion we just missed the 1st go round.
I don't even think he/SHE knows what clearly means.
Heh heh you're funny. I fully admitted that my comments were somewhat inflammatory; but if you think that anyone is going to run away from a discussion on an internet forum just because of some flaming (well deserved, probably), then I think you haven't been using the internet long enough.
quick question: are you, parent and grand parent, saying that it's actually your case, or that you can imagine this being someone else's case ? Because I indeed, do not know of anyone one who uses more than 1 GB for legitimate stuff on a personnal PC. And usually, far less.
Because anyone who needs a lot of space MUST be stealing content. That's the ONLY possible explanation. Lets see how much space I actually NEED:
Windows Folder = 11.8gb
Steam Folder = 17.3gb
Music Folder = 31.3gb (all ripped from CDs that I own)
Disc Images = 20.9gb (several flavors of Linux, Backtrack, and a few versions of Windows downloaded from my TechNet subscription to use in the VMs I develop on.)
Video Folder = 50gb (all projects I've worked on or DVD's that I've backed up from my collection).
Documents Folder = 20.4gb (Pictures, application files, training materials, savegames, misc drivers, voiceover projects, VHDs for the VMs I mentioned earlier)
Thats 151.7gb, and I don't use my computer for nearly as much as most other people do. I keep most of my space free because I dabble in video editing. But this just means my 320gb (297gb once all is said and done) is just barely enough for what I do. But of course I MUST be stealing content if I feel like I need more space than the 80gb you limit yourself to...
<i>There's a lot you can do to mitigate it by using quiet fans and employing fan controls, but it just doesn't have a whole lot to really keep all that noise in and with a video card like the GeForce GTX 580 it might get a little louder than you'd like.</i>
Fortunately, a PC case at this price point is unlikely to see a GTX580. A GTX 560 or 6870 is much more likely. This really sounds like the best option for a wide window of PC budgets and it sounds like you'd need to double the price you pay to get a case that is a definitive improvement.
One foot distance for noise measurement is actually too close. Towers are mostly standing on the floor so the distance to ears is rather 3 feet.
This results noise from front fan contributing to overall system noise way more than it would contribute from 3 feet distance.
One foot distance to front fan means two feet distance to video card. With doubling the distance noise pressure decreases 4 times. Let's imagine video card and front fan generate the same amount of noise. This method will result 6 decibel added to front fan noise comparing to video card noise. Whereas registering sound from 3 feet would make difference in distance negligible and amount of noise would be almost the same from both.
Same thing happened in December in review of Silverstone GD04 case. Sound meter was too close to case fan and the case fan noise was artificially inflated in dBA measurement. And CPU fan noise was suppressed by difference in distance. This resulted incorrect conclusion that the case was loud. If you read Silentpcreview.com review of the same case they regarded GD04 case as quiet. But they measured it from 1 meter and they used very quiet components so their methodology should be more accurate.
And I highly doubt that noise floor in silent apartment at night is 32dB. It's probably sound meter limit. Better sound meter is needed in order to get accurate readings.
Actually my tower is about two feet at most from my left ear. Some peoples' mileage may vary; I have a friend whose tower is on his desk. The fans in the BUC aren't the issue, and the system runs very quietly at idle from a subjective point of view. The BUC doesn't have much in the way of soundproofing, and that's why noise levels go through the roof when the GTX 580 gets stressed.
32dB is actually pretty quiet. I'm sorry I don't live in a quieter area, but you'll also find the rated noise floors for most sound meters $300 and below is between 30 and 40dB.
At the risk of being unprofessional, I'm getting tired of SPCR being brought in here as the bible by which all other reviews must be judged. The GD04, without proper fan control, is audible. SilverStone's engineers will even admit to that, and I think SilverStone tends to engineer their designs towards performance first. Then, when you employ fan control, you find that their cases are so well-engineered that they're able to handle considerable thermal stress without requiring substantial active cooling.
As I told Tony at SilverStone when I met him at CES, I bought the GD04 with my own money, of my own volition, after having explicitly researched the case including your vaunted SPCR review. It was audible even across the room, where I had it stationed next to my television. It NEEDS fan control.
Sure, fan control is needed, I don't argue with that. If a single case is going to be utilized for two scenarios - high performance system and quiet system, it's better to use fan control for quiet scenario.
I'm not questioning this review of BUC case. I'm just pointing that measuring noise so close may offset results in the future, for other reviews.
You just need $2000 sound meter, then you will be all set.
Agreed. I'd like to see both 1ft and 3ft measurements. And 32dB noise floor in a nighttime apartment does seem high. I'd expect a level of 20-25dB, unless the meter is under the air conditioning vent, or the neighbors are having a party.
In-Win has been a rather small company for a very long time. I've built systems with their cases 10 years ago. In general, they do come (and in the past) some very cool designs. But for the most part - in the past 4-6 years, their design have gone towards plain or ugly (IMHO).
But I've seen the BUC at a store, and it is a very very nice looking case.
The only thing I don't like about routing the power supply wiring behind the motherboard is that its a pain if you want to swap it out. I spent a long time routing all my power supply wiring in my case, and then my son's computer had trouble. I suspected the power supply, but needed to put mine into his computer to properly troublshoot. So I had to undo my hard work...
The noise and thermal testing graphs are very helpful for making decisions on cases. Not that many case reviews give this data, so it's nice to see more sites adopting this testing.
Anand, perhaps while you're on full ATX cases with backplanes for the hard drives, could you look over the AzzA Hurrican 2000? (yes, no 'e' in 'Hurrican'). I used it recently for my home rig and I think others might like to see your take on it. :)
I don't mean to sound like a snob, but Mr Sklavos needs to clean up his article a bit.
Anand's style is much more coherent, uses fewer cliches, and adheres to more conventional and conservative journalistic style.
I'm not implying that reviewers shouldn't be creative with their language, but using the word "popped" about 15 times seems excessive to me.
Also, if there are any questions for readers in an article, they should come at the start or in the conclusion.
I highly recommend some of the Engadget editors and reviewers for examples of good writing. Pogue and Mossberg, of NYT and WSJ respectively, also do a good job, although I think their target demographic is slightly different.
Nonetheless, adherence to standard grammar and to Strunk and White would be wonderful! Otherwise, this seemed to me to be a pretty good review.
"I highly recommend some of the Engadget editors and reviewers for examples of good writing. "
You're kidding right??? Those guys write article full of cliches and more importantly they lack the technical depth found here at Anandtech. After being consistently appalled with the reviews at Engadget, I'm glad that Anandtech ramped up their coverage of Mobile devices too.
Please include case dimensions in metric as well as inches. Motherboards, fans, radiators are all in metric measurements and it makes it a lot easier for those, like me, who stuff cases with lots of kit to work out will fit.
I am also as frustrated as reviewer with cable routing. It really is not that difficult to allow a bit more space behind the motherboard tray. It is worse for me because I like silence from my pc and therefore want to put noise reducing stuff on the side panels.
Finally, I am not particularly bothered by the number of HD the case can hold (I am building a 6TB file server which will be enough for decades of films), all I need is space for 2 drives, an SSD + one HD. However, I do like to have an optical drive in the system. I have yet to see any case deal with providing real noise reduction/anti-vibration for an optical drive.
The Antec 900 has become sort of the mainstream case standard. I think getting the data for that case will make it easier to judge what these numbers mean in the real world when testing other cases against it. That way, people can pick a case based on whether it cools better than the 900, or is quieter than the 900.
Of course, once you have a bunch of cases reviewed, you won't need a reference case anymore, but while you build up a review archive it would be nice to get the info for such a popular case.
We've been using INWIN cases for a long time to build a few hundred computers per year and I have only good things to say about them! Very nice build quality for the price - I'm glad they're getting some love here on AT!
I kinda miss the stop motion video of you fighting with a screwdriver and actually installing a build into a case in this review. I wholeheartedly recommend buying a cheap electric screwdriver and having every case review feature you doing assemblies with the time lapse footage.
I mean, reading about how all the pieces and such fit together is good - but seeing one wrangle with the cables and such really brings out a more practical view of a case. For instance in this review one thing that might stand out is the decided lack of need for a screwdriver. Also it would help show off the "backplane wiring" as you hooked up all the power connectors and then slide (I guess somehow?) the motherboard into the case.
I've been using in-win cases for years. A strong sturdy case with ease of access, no sharp edges, quality power supplies and good heavy gauge steel make for an excellent case. Even their ,ore consumer oriented cases are a joy to work with, simple to access and maintain.
It would be nice if as regular rule of computer case testing / reviewing, some part was dedicated to dust filters and the way they compare to other brands and models.
IMO there are two kind of filters that cover the majority of options out there: Sponge and plastic.
I find that the presence of sponge or foam dust filters in a computer case shows some sort of lack of respect and a desperate corner cut attitude on the case manufacturer's part. A foam filter is in all aspects, the cheapest way to deal with it. It needs no special gap, no channel or punch holes to seat on, and obviously, minimum head scratching for the case's designer.
A plastic / nylon dust filter is different. It requires thinking. It needs a specific place to be. Just as the front cover or the side panels.. it relies on a designed mechanical solution to be attached to the case and held in place. It simply shows the attention to detail on the manufacturer's part.
The dust filters location, functionality, ease of use / remove / "washability" truly plays a big deal on my buying decision when it comes to chassis.
I don't own a BUC case and currently, I'm shopping around. It surprises me how difficult it is to find out what are computer case filters made of in pretty much every single review out there. Needless to mention, their location, ease of use, etc. This review unfortunately, is not an exception to that.
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57 Comments
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Gigantopithecus - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Methodology looks very sound and I hope that Anandtech will be able to continue adding new cases to see how they stack up against each other (ha) while keeping the internal components constant.Silenus - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Nice to see case reviews from time to time.I'd love to see some Fractal Designs cases reviewed. Especially some of the new ones coming. I am chomping at the bit to get a better look at the Arc Midi Tower and the Arc Mini!
XiZeL - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
mee too :) really want to know how the silent ones performe. might be changing my antec p183 for an FD define r3 or xlymrtech - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
I have a define R3. and holy shit i love it. replaced my cooler master HAF 922 with this. it's quiet as hell and also keeps my innards all nice and cool. i have a noctua noctua nh-d14 on my i7-960 and it idles around 38C and my 6870 twin frozr with fans at 40% idles around 34C. considering the noise it DOESN'T make, the price, the quality of the materials used, and the overall workmanship. i would reccomend it to EVERYONE.another good case to check out is the fractal design core 3000, it's like 90$ tax and shipping in (ncix) and it looks pretty top notch.
Mumrik - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
I'd rather have had one and eight or nine internal 3½" bays...I have one optical drive that I never use and six harddrives and only more to come.
SquattingDog - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Clearly you've never used hot-swap bays then or thought about the fact that you can mount 4+ 3.5" drives in the space of 3x 5.25" bays with a 120mm cooling fan to boot (Lian Li do such a product and are not the only ones). Personally I would rather have seen FOUR 5.25" bays for this very purpose. Otherwise you can always get single hot-swap bays to go 5.25" --> 3.5".It's about different horses for different courses really - perhaps you should be looking at an eATX full tower instead?
Other food for thought, as I have been down this road before: if you have drives which are <2TB (hell, even if they are 2TB - you can now get 3TB drives), then secure erase and sell off your old drives and buy fewer larger drives. :)
Taft12 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
You can't have enough 5.25" bays. SATA can be hot-swapped, take advantage of this great feature!http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
(shameless plug, not associated with iStar, just a very satisfied customer!)
bji - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Just curious ... how much content do you have to steal to fill six harddrives?I personally have never filled more than 30 gb or so of a disk; I could see filling maybe 100 GB tops if I kept all of my home movies and photos on my local disk instead of in the cloud. I guess if you're a real 'power user' and buy lots of software and games maybe you'd fill another 200 GB? I just can't imagine filling more than 300 GB unless you're stealing content. Of course I know that there are the exceptional case where someone has, e.g. a photography business or something and they need to store terabytes of data legitimately but ... somehow I doubt that every person I see complaining about, e.g. the small size of SSDs, or the inability to put more than 6 hard drives in a case, has a legal use for all of that space.
On the upside for me, I am perfectly happy with a single 80 GB Intel SSD in my desktop and will be for years to come. SSDs are now in the price range where for my usage, they are cheap enough and are only getting better as they get faster.
Klinky1984 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Oh yes, they must be stealing content. No one ever backups their DVD or BR collection, no one ever edits HD video. No one ever has thousands of high resolution photographs or large photo editing project files to deal with. No one ever has hard drives to put in a RAID setup for performance or redundancy reasons. Yep, must be stealing content, because _you_ can't think of any legitimate use.Shall we just make it illegal to own multiple hard drives?
JarredWalton - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
For the record, just my AnandTech folder for the past four years checks in at a respectable 70GB. Add in my personal pictures and that's another 30GB. I just upgraded cameras and can now shoot 1080p24 video, which only chews up around 1.3GB for a 10 minute clip. Since the start of 2011, I've only sucked down 13GB with home videos of my family, and I don't even shoot video more than a few times per month!My desktop has a 1TB hard drive that is around 70% full, because I happen to play games on it. My Steam folder currently sits at nearly 200GB, and I haven't even installed most of my Steam games on this system (e.g. I don't have the original Half-Life, or the various HL2 episodes, installed). Honestly, I can't even get by with less than 256GB of storage on a system that I plan to use for "everything", which is why SSDs are tough to use on a single drive laptop.
Ammaross - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
"Oh yes, they must be stealing content. No one ever backups their DVD or BR collection, no one ever edits HD video"I fully agree. A single blu-ray disk takes up to 30GB to take a 1:1 copy. My DVDs run up to the 8GB range. Taking my entire DVD/BR collection easily fills a couple 2TB drives. It all used to be scattered on 1TB/1.5TB drives until I upgraded to a couple 2TBs. Where are the other drives? I left them in the machine for scratch disk and future storage. Yes, I do have home videos and the like that I keep too. Not quite to the space requirements of BR disks, but I don't like to store my videos in DiVX or such bad-quality formats (as opposed to lightly-compressed 1080p MPEG4).
Oh, and the comment regarding photos, I'm a bit of a shutter-bug, and even my modest 8.1MP camera takes 3.4MB pictures. Pass them through Photoshop, saving the original of course, and saving in a 90% quality can bloat those to 6MB after touchups. I'd say there's a good 3GB per event I save. It all adds up.
bji - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Is it legal to 'back up' DVDs and BR discs in this way? I doubt it since it requires circumventing encryption mechanisms. I agree that it doesn't seem ethically wrong to back up something you own even if it is technically illegal.That being said, what's the point? Are these discs really so important that they need to be backed up? I've never backed up a DVD or Blu-Ray disc in my life and I've never lost or broken one either. I can't imagine wasting my time (and money) spending it backing up DVDs and Blu-Ray discs.
But I guess that's beside the point; I asked for legitimate ways to fill up large amounts of hard disk space and I got at least one answer of something that is technically probably not legal but not so immoral in any case.
So am I to believe that the vast majority of people who claim to need 8 or 10 hard drives in their computer do so because of backing up DVDs and Blu-Ray discs? It's not hoarders of pirated movies and software?
JarredWalton kind of made my point for me I think; four years of his work on a technology site only uses 70 GB of his disk and all of his personal photos take 30 GB more. That's only 100 GB. Even with the addition of a 1024p24 video camera, it sounds like a 500 GB drive would buy years of video storage at a reasonable rate of accumulation thereof.
Add another 500 GB drive for his Steam games and with a grand total of 1 TB it looks like JarredWalton, certainly a 'power user' if there ever was one, is completely covered in storage needs.
mXan - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
A WTV movie recorded from TV is about 8GB.A Linux distribution is about 4GB.
Every ISO of Windows, Office, Visual Studio, etc. is about that, and I can legally own them, since I'm an MSDN subscriber.
GoG games downloads often range in the GB region, sometimes ~4GB (while other times they are 1MB! depends on the game).
Every Virtual Machine you install requires a virtual hard drive, go figure 30-50GB each.
I currently have 4TB storage at home, perfectly legal.
JMC2000 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
My Steam folder (which is on a 320GB drive) is almost 100GB, and that is just for 18 game and a couple of mods (Stalker: CS, Stalker: COP, Street Fighter 4 and UT3). If I was to install the 57 other games that I have purchased on Steam (publisher packs ftw!), I would more than likely take up more than 2/3 of the drive.Some of the space is occupied by legally backed up GBA/DS/GC games that I had, but were stolen.
It is entirely possible to fill up even a 2TB with legally obtained material.
If I had the space, I would back up all of the movies I own and stream them from a server, that way, I can keep the discs safely stored.
kkwst2 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Please don't feed the trolls! :)bji - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Well I admit that my comment was somewhat inflammatory because it presumed that most people could not legitimately fill up a drive without stealing content. I just could not imagine needing that much space for legitimate reasons but clearly I missed:1. People who 'back up' huge collections of legitimately owned DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. I can't personally imagine why you'd go through the trouble but I admit that for people who place high value on these items, having a back up is not an unreasonable way to use hard drive space.
2. People who buy and play tens of games per year and have to keep them all on their hard drive all the time.
3. People who collect huge digital home videos
I think that most people don't fall into any of these camps but on an enthusiast site, certainly you'd find more people in one or more of these categories.
DJMiggy - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
640K ought to be enough for anybody.dagamer34 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
They back them up for quick access and so their kids don't ruin the disc. Heck, what ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty?"Jalek99 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
"clearly I missed:"People who don't do things as you do.
"most people don't fall into any of these camps"
More assuming that YOU are the norm others should be measured against. Could it be that you are the outlier?
People who play Warcraft alone likely have 15+ gb of space tied up at least before they add to it, and there seems to be quite a few current or former players who probably still have the thing installed. Add in any of several other games at 5-10gb and the numbers just climb.
The less technical the user, the more likely it is that installed games or old programs will never be uninstalled.
I started using a media server long ago and found it to be incredibly convenient with children and relatives' children as no media gets damaged or misplaced moving from room to room. When you purchase a television series on 35 DVD's or more, do you really want to keep those sorted instead of ripping them all and selecting from menus?
As for the geekier side, website backups and developer database, ebooks (some of which cost as much as a bound book), scanned records (paperless office to the extent possible), and then email backups of receipts and registrations, and somewhere in there there's a photo or two and a partially complete thesis with copies of supporting documents. Between utilities and MSDN downloads is at least another 100gb.
I also have shelves of DVD's and CD's, though I prefer not to have to access those. The books I'm not about to scan myself so if there's no digital alternative, they're also on a shelf.
Shall I also explain my 60x40 shop contents and why it's full to the rafters or is that acceptable in your view?
bji - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
OK well I officially stand corrected.I had always had this apparently ill founded belief that most people who had huge hard drive collections did so so that they could hoard downloaded movies, but I can see that there are many other legitimate uses that require huge amounts of space. I still don't know what the result would be if you polled all users instead of just computer enthusiast readers of Anandtech, but certainly for a not insignificant segment of the computer user space, large amounts of space are clearly useful.
Sorry to have stirred up such a ruckus, I kinda knew I shouldn't have started in with an inflammatory comment like that.
stratosrally - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
"Just curious ... how much content do you have to steal to fill six harddrives?"That's a naive and needlessly antagonistic comment.
I have over 217GB in my Steam folder alone and am currently using almost 500GB of a 750GB SATA HD. I have no movies on my pc and the only music I have is purchased online or burnt to MP3 from my own music CD collection.
My new build has a 120GB Corsair SSD and 2 1TB WD Caviar Black drives in RAID 0, with an external 2TB WD backup. I won't need more space than that in the forseeable future, but I will be converting my entire CD collection to MP3 - so the additional space will be useful. Also, I'm sure Steam will have sales on new PC games that I want in the future and they just keep getting bigger!
I'm 46yrs old and don't steal content, thank you very much.
robd420 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
I'm 25yrs old and i do, thank you very much.bji - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
So it sounds like your total need is ~500 GB, plus you anticipate some future need for backing up your CD collection and buying more games. Sounds like a 1 TB drive is all you'll need for some time.You are clearly a person who would be fine with a case that only takes 6 hard drives. My comment was directed at the O.P. who was lamenting not being able to put more than 6 hard drives in a case. Even with cheap 500 GB hard drives, 6 slots gives you ~3 TB. Who exactly is filling up 3 TB of data with legitimate content except people shooting a hell of alot of high definition home video? And how many people actually do that versus people needing the space for warez?
Chalabala - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link
Go read up on raid 60 =DStormyParis - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
That was kinda his point, though: you barely fill 500 MB of HD right now, and have big plans to raise that to 2 GBs. That's, as you say, two drives, which most any case will fit. I personnally just bought a Thermaltake Element Q, which is slightly smaller than a shoe box, and will take up to 3 3.5" HDDs. Right now, my single 3TB drive sits barely a third full, though.doubletake - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
0/10 troll. Your comment is beyond moronic. This is a tech enthusiast site. Keyword: enthusiast. As in, not your average Joe with a few pictures, movies and music files. You have no idea how fast you could fill up 300GBs with HD camcorder video files, or uncompressed recorded footage from games used to edit later. Try widening your perspective and thinking a bit more critically before opening that brain-mouth link.$tinkmitt - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Well put. I was sure when he/SHE got his/HER @$$ handed to him/HER after the 1st comment he/SHE would just drift off into obscurity, tail soundly tucked.But nooooo. This "Genius" (and I fully mean the implication), has got an opinion we just missed the 1st go round.
I don't even think he/SHE knows what clearly means.
bji - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Heh heh you're funny. I fully admitted that my comments were somewhat inflammatory; but if you think that anyone is going to run away from a discussion on an internet forum just because of some flaming (well deserved, probably), then I think you haven't been using the internet long enough.StormyParis - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
quick question: are you, parent and grand parent, saying that it's actually your case, or that you can imagine this being someone else's case ? Because I indeed, do not know of anyone one who uses more than 1 GB for legitimate stuff on a personnal PC. And usually, far less.StormyParis - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
that's TB, not GB. SOrry.Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
My gaming drive alone is 585GB, and that's all legitimately purchased content.My scratch drive, where I put video I'm editing, has nearly a terabyte of video on it.
My desktop has, on the whole, four hard drives (two in a RAID 1 and two in a RAID 0) and two SSDs (two in a RAID 0).
So no, you don't have to steal content to fill that much space. You can get by just fine by making your own.
dagamer34 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
You can never have enough hard drives for backups.FSWKU - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Because anyone who needs a lot of space MUST be stealing content. That's the ONLY possible explanation. Lets see how much space I actually NEED:Windows Folder = 11.8gb
Steam Folder = 17.3gb
Music Folder = 31.3gb (all ripped from CDs that I own)
Disc Images = 20.9gb (several flavors of Linux, Backtrack, and a few versions of Windows downloaded from my TechNet subscription to use in the VMs I develop on.)
Video Folder = 50gb (all projects I've worked on or DVD's that I've backed up from my collection).
Documents Folder = 20.4gb (Pictures, application files, training materials, savegames, misc drivers, voiceover projects, VHDs for the VMs I mentioned earlier)
Thats 151.7gb, and I don't use my computer for nearly as much as most other people do. I keep most of my space free because I dabble in video editing. But this just means my 320gb (297gb once all is said and done) is just barely enough for what I do. But of course I MUST be stealing content if I feel like I need more space than the 80gb you limit yourself to...
Taft12 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
<i>There's a lot you can do to mitigate it by using quiet fans and employing fan controls, but it just doesn't have a whole lot to really keep all that noise in and with a video card like the GeForce GTX 580 it might get a little louder than you'd like.</i>Fortunately, a PC case at this price point is unlikely to see a GTX580. A GTX 560 or 6870 is much more likely. This really sounds like the best option for a wide window of PC budgets and it sounds like you'd need to double the price you pay to get a case that is a definitive improvement.
Great review Dustin!
fraginader - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Would be nice to have a labelled diagram detailing various terms like 5.25" bay, SATA backplane etc. Newbies like me would appreciate it.micksh - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
One foot distance for noise measurement is actually too close. Towers are mostly standing on the floor so the distance to ears is rather 3 feet.This results noise from front fan contributing to overall system noise way more than it would contribute from 3 feet distance.
One foot distance to front fan means two feet distance to video card. With doubling the distance noise pressure decreases 4 times.
Let's imagine video card and front fan generate the same amount of noise. This method will result 6 decibel added to front fan noise comparing to video card noise.
Whereas registering sound from 3 feet would make difference in distance negligible and amount of noise would be almost the same from both.
Same thing happened in December in review of Silverstone GD04 case. Sound meter was too close to case fan and the case fan noise was artificially inflated in dBA measurement. And CPU fan noise was suppressed by difference in distance. This resulted incorrect conclusion that the case was loud. If you read Silentpcreview.com review of the same case they regarded GD04 case as quiet. But they measured it from 1 meter and they used very quiet components so their methodology should be more accurate.
And I highly doubt that noise floor in silent apartment at night is 32dB. It's probably sound meter limit.
Better sound meter is needed in order to get accurate readings.
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Actually my tower is about two feet at most from my left ear. Some peoples' mileage may vary; I have a friend whose tower is on his desk. The fans in the BUC aren't the issue, and the system runs very quietly at idle from a subjective point of view. The BUC doesn't have much in the way of soundproofing, and that's why noise levels go through the roof when the GTX 580 gets stressed.32dB is actually pretty quiet. I'm sorry I don't live in a quieter area, but you'll also find the rated noise floors for most sound meters $300 and below is between 30 and 40dB.
At the risk of being unprofessional, I'm getting tired of SPCR being brought in here as the bible by which all other reviews must be judged. The GD04, without proper fan control, is audible. SilverStone's engineers will even admit to that, and I think SilverStone tends to engineer their designs towards performance first. Then, when you employ fan control, you find that their cases are so well-engineered that they're able to handle considerable thermal stress without requiring substantial active cooling.
As I told Tony at SilverStone when I met him at CES, I bought the GD04 with my own money, of my own volition, after having explicitly researched the case including your vaunted SPCR review. It was audible even across the room, where I had it stationed next to my television. It NEEDS fan control.
micksh - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Sure, fan control is needed, I don't argue with that.If a single case is going to be utilized for two scenarios - high performance system and quiet system, it's better to use fan control for quiet scenario.
I'm not questioning this review of BUC case. I'm just pointing that measuring noise so close may offset results in the future, for other reviews.
You just need $2000 sound meter, then you will be all set.
Spivonious - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Agreed. I'd like to see both 1ft and 3ft measurements. And 32dB noise floor in a nighttime apartment does seem high. I'd expect a level of 20-25dB, unless the meter is under the air conditioning vent, or the neighbors are having a party.JFish222 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
I'm not familiar with specific of using sata backplanes but assume they use some form of voltage control and/or bridge chip.Can you go into further details about how this works (ie: if a bridge chip is used, supplier/model) and specify if it supports SATA rev3 (6Gb)?
Thanks for another great article.
- J
ggathagan - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
If you look at the pictures, you'll note that it's not really a SATA backplane.It's hot-swap connectors mounted on 4 of the 5 drive bays.
Belard - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
In-Win has been a rather small company for a very long time. I've built systems with their cases 10 years ago. In general, they do come (and in the past) some very cool designs. But for the most part - in the past 4-6 years, their design have gone towards plain or ugly (IMHO).But I've seen the BUC at a store, and it is a very very nice looking case.
Spivonious - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
My first PC used an In-Win case. It had a Celeron 333A to give you a time frame. :)They've always been a quality, value-oriented case manufacturer.
Belard - Saturday, May 14, 2011 - link
Around that era, I sold some In-Wins. They even had decent PSUs.shamans33 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Nice to see CPU HSF clearance values on the features table.It might be nice to see a list of unusual features onto a table as well (as a summary of key new features)
kmmatney - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
The only thing I don't like about routing the power supply wiring behind the motherboard is that its a pain if you want to swap it out. I spent a long time routing all my power supply wiring in my case, and then my son's computer had trouble. I suspected the power supply, but needed to put mine into his computer to properly troublshoot. So I had to undo my hard work...jrocks84 - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
The noise and thermal testing graphs are very helpful for making decisions on cases. Not that many case reviews give this data, so it's nice to see more sites adopting this testing.Ammaross - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
Anand, perhaps while you're on full ATX cases with backplanes for the hard drives, could you look over the AzzA Hurrican 2000? (yes, no 'e' in 'Hurrican'). I used it recently for my home rig and I think others might like to see your take on it. :)nightalon - Monday, May 9, 2011 - link
I don't mean to sound like a snob, but Mr Sklavos needs to clean up his article a bit.Anand's style is much more coherent, uses fewer cliches, and adheres to more conventional and conservative journalistic style.
I'm not implying that reviewers shouldn't be creative with their language, but using the word "popped" about 15 times seems excessive to me.
Also, if there are any questions for readers in an article, they should come at the start or in the conclusion.
I highly recommend some of the Engadget editors and reviewers for examples of good writing. Pogue and Mossberg, of NYT and WSJ respectively, also do a good job, although I think their target demographic is slightly different.
Nonetheless, adherence to standard grammar and to Strunk and White would be wonderful! Otherwise, this seemed to me to be a pretty good review.
earle36 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
"I highly recommend some of the Engadget editors and reviewers for examples of good writing. "You're kidding right??? Those guys write article full of cliches and more importantly they lack the technical depth found here at Anandtech. After being consistently appalled with the reviews at Engadget, I'm glad that Anandtech ramped up their coverage of Mobile devices too.
Personally, I think Mr. Sklavos did a fine job.
cjs150 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
Please include case dimensions in metric as well as inches. Motherboards, fans, radiators are all in metric measurements and it makes it a lot easier for those, like me, who stuff cases with lots of kit to work out will fit.I am also as frustrated as reviewer with cable routing. It really is not that difficult to allow a bit more space behind the motherboard tray. It is worse for me because I like silence from my pc and therefore want to put noise reducing stuff on the side panels.
Finally, I am not particularly bothered by the number of HD the case can hold (I am building a 6TB file server which will be enough for decades of films), all I need is space for 2 drives, an SSD + one HD. However, I do like to have an optical drive in the system. I have yet to see any case deal with providing real noise reduction/anti-vibration for an optical drive.
bhima - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
The Antec 900 has become sort of the mainstream case standard. I think getting the data for that case will make it easier to judge what these numbers mean in the real world when testing other cases against it. That way, people can pick a case based on whether it cools better than the 900, or is quieter than the 900.Of course, once you have a bunch of cases reviewed, you won't need a reference case anymore, but while you build up a review archive it would be nice to get the info for such a popular case.
e_sandrs - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
We've been using INWIN cases for a long time to build a few hundred computers per year and I have only good things to say about them! Very nice build quality for the price - I'm glad they're getting some love here on AT!xrror - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
I kinda miss the stop motion video of you fighting with a screwdriver and actually installing a build into a case in this review. I wholeheartedly recommend buying a cheap electric screwdriver and having every case review feature you doing assemblies with the time lapse footage.I mean, reading about how all the pieces and such fit together is good - but seeing one wrangle with the cables and such really brings out a more practical view of a case. For instance in this review one thing that might stand out is the decided lack of need for a screwdriver. Also it would help show off the "backplane wiring" as you hooked up all the power connectors and then slide (I guess somehow?) the motherboard into the case.
jerem43 - Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - link
I've been using in-win cases for years. A strong sturdy case with ease of access, no sharp edges, quality power supplies and good heavy gauge steel make for an excellent case. Even their ,ore consumer oriented cases are a joy to work with, simple to access and maintain.kenyee - Friday, May 13, 2011 - link
That'd be a more useful noise test...use a standard drive and test how well you can hear the drive working...Michael Meio - Sunday, June 26, 2011 - link
It would be nice if as regular rule of computer case testing / reviewing, some part was dedicated to dust filters and the way they compare to other brands and models.IMO there are two kind of filters that cover the majority of options out there: Sponge and plastic.
I find that the presence of sponge or foam dust filters in a computer case shows some sort of lack of respect and a desperate corner cut attitude on the case manufacturer's part. A foam filter is in all aspects, the cheapest way to deal with it. It needs no special gap, no channel or punch holes to seat on, and obviously, minimum head scratching for the case's designer.
A plastic / nylon dust filter is different. It requires thinking. It needs a specific place to be. Just as the front cover or the side panels.. it relies on a designed mechanical solution to be attached to the case and held in place. It simply shows the attention to detail on the manufacturer's part.
The dust filters location, functionality, ease of use / remove / "washability" truly plays a big deal on my buying decision when it comes to chassis.
I don't own a BUC case and currently, I'm shopping around. It surprises me how difficult it is to find out what are computer case filters made of in pretty much every single review out there. Needless to mention, their location, ease of use, etc. This review unfortunately, is not an exception to that.