buying the cheapest possible case, bad idea, why??

holystungun9

Hey,

I am going to build my first PC. I am living in South America right now and will be here for another year or so before I head home. I have a laptop and use it daily for web and surfing and skype etc. I have taken a notion of building a pc. It will be a basic enough rig but I think that I will learn alot by doing it and my plan would be to always build my own in the future. I personally will only get a year's use out of it and when I leave I will donate it to the school where I work. I can buy all the standard CPU and mobo and basic components with ease but I think I will have little to no options as regards the case. The only ones for sale seem to be the absolute bottom of the barrel type, costing maybe 30€ including the power supply. There are no brands here from what I have seen so far. I am planning to get an Intel dual core cpu and a biostar board. The mobo box says they are compatible. Why wouldn't a basic cheapo case do the job. I won't be doing any upgrading and when I leave it here noone would be tech saavy enough to either so why invest?? Also, should I have any concerns about the included power supply unit? Any need for special cooling of this chipset? Thanks.

uberpixie

holystungun9 wrote: »

Why wouldn't a basic cheapo case do the job. I won't be doing any upgrading and when I leave it here noone would be tech saavy enough to either so why invest?? Also, should I have any concerns about the included power supply unit? Any need for special cooling of this chipset? Thanks.

Cheap cases a lot of the time have bad airflow, shoddy construction, they also don't muffle sound very well, so you can end up with a very hot and loud pc.

Not all cheap cases are bad, but you have be a little careful getting one.

Also cheap power supplies are death traps if you are building any sort of gaming/high end build that uses a lot of power.

Cheap power supplies are usually nasty muck that run hot and loud and do not provide stable power. If you are building a very simple pc with no gfx card in it you will prob get away with it.

Case and power supply were the two components I skimped on for my first build: replaced both in a month they were so bad.
Both have a huge effect on the running of a pc and I would never again skimp on a case or psu.

holystungun9

thanks uberpixie, I will try to find a better setup but I think that I may have to bite the bullet and go for the bog standard case. The pc will only be used for basic stuff, internet and wordprocessing. Some photos may be stored on it but that's it. You also raised an issue that concerned me. Given the very basic nature of use, are you saying I don't need to buy a graphics card. If so, great. As I am new to all this I want to know, if a graphics card isn't providing everything I see on my screen, what does this then??

Effluo

Some motherboards have internal graphics(mostly matx) considering what you'll be doing on the pc it's a good pretty always cheaper option.

ozt9vdujny3srf

In terms of cost, its cheaper to buy a bog standard pc from one of the big manufacturers. You aren't going to learn a whole lot building your own PC tbh, its far easier then assebling a piece of flat pack furiniture, and will teach yu as much about electronics as building flat pack furniture will teach you about carpentry.

Wait til next year when you are getting a new one again and you want something a bit higher end. Only in mid and high end is building your own cheaper then buying it built.

holystungun9

Hey truckle, thanks for your input. I suppose I just wanted to get over the initial first build pc so I would be a bit more savvy for when I get home and build my own rig. I am a mechanic by trade and generally love tinkering with things but maybe I would not get much out of it. I have to say I never got anything out of assembling a flat pack as you say. And yes I know it would cost more than an out of the box pc, I suppose I'll re think it over again. Another personal thing I had in mind was that I would try vista and tweak it and trim it down like I read in all these computer magazines. I was going to use the machine to try things I read about like running two operating systems, dabble with vista, record a copy or ghost of my harddrive.....etc. I have a laptop that is my everyday machine and the 60gig disk is always about full and I don't want to be fooling around with what is my super reliable link to the internet. I want to learn and experiment with different programs and applications and browsers without putting my laptop at risk. Anyone else got any opinions. I suppose now I think about it I want to be a geek, damn you cruel world!!

uberpixie

holystungun9 wrote: »

Hey truckle, thanks for your input. I suppose I just wanted to get over the initial first build pc so I would be a bit more savvy for when I get home and build my own rig. I am a mechanic by trade and generally love tinkering with things but maybe I would not get much out of it. I have to say I never got anything out of assembling a flat pack as you say. And yes I know it would cost more than an out of the box pc, I suppose I'll re think it over again. Another personal thing I had in mind was that I would try vista and tweak it and trim it down like I read in all these computer magazines. I was going to use the machine to try things I read about like running two operating systems, dabble with vista, record a copy or ghost of my harddrive.....etc. I have a laptop that is my everyday machine and the 60gig disk is always about full and I don't want to be fooling around with what is my super reliable link to the internet. I want to learn and experiment with different programs and applications and browsers without putting my laptop at risk. Anyone else got any opinions. I suppose now I think about it I want to be a geek, damn you cruel world!!

if you enjoy tinkering: go for it. Price difference is worth it if you want to tinker. You will learn a lot about pcs especially troubleshooting when it all goes wrong!

If you could get a hold of some dead pcs/old pcs to dismantle and play with first it really helps backed up with a good guide/book on how to build pcs.

If you are keen: just do it, sod the difference it won't be mega bucks.

TerrorFirmer

holystungun9 wrote: »

thanks uberpixie, I will try to find a better setup but I think that I may have to bite the bullet and go for the bog standard case. The pc will only be used for basic stuff, internet and wordprocessing. Some photos may be stored on it but that's it. You also raised an issue that concerned me. Given the very basic nature of use, are you saying I don't need to buy a graphics card. If so, great. As I am new to all this I want to know, if a graphics card isn't providing everything I see on my screen, what does this then??

To be honest, even the worst case out there, in terms of materials and airflow quality, is going to be adequate for general day to day usage. Even in terrible cases, temperatures never really become untenable to the extent that the machine is unusable i.e auto shut down. I've had gaming PC's with high end processors and video cards in cheap cases with poor/stagnant airflow apart from active fans on gpu/cpu and while temperatures were pretty poor, they were not dangerous, nor where they in danger of passing the threshold of normal operation. Most of the times temperatures are spoken about in this forum about desirability rather then functionality. The same can be said of power supplies - the cheapo ones that often come bundled with cheap cases are, without doubt, extremely poor quality and incapable of acheiving anything remotely near their specified output - but they only generally crap out when any sort of load is placed on them, even if its a light one. Daily use in terms of web browsing, music, movies and similar is not generally going to place much strain on a power supply nor stress its weakest links. But again, recommendations or endorsements for same would never be seen on this forum, because the bracket in which people build PC's are those that have certain demands beyond simple uses.

Personally for me what's far more disconcerting about cheap cases is that...well...they look like ****.

Many boards - mostly mAtx (small form motherboard; micro-atx) as someone has mentioned - have integrated video, which means that for every purpose bar gaming, these cards are generally suitable. Some of them are even capable of playing slightly older games at a very reasonable rate, as well as HD playback. There are other features too that a dedicated card offers aside gaming capability, but nothing related to average day to day use. The advantage of such is that your machine is quieter and draws less power. The board will have a pci-express lane, should you ever want to add a dedicated card for any purpose.

witnessmenow

The cheap cases tend to have rough edges too, im still recovering from a boo boo after rebuilding my girlfriends pc! a few weeks ago :P

death1234567

uberpixie wrote: »

Cheap cases a lot of the time have bad airflow, shoddy construction, they also don't muffle sound very well, so you can end up with a very hot and loud pc.

+1. I got a cheap case and now I regret it as my PC is very loud.