Why not grounded towers?

[reddyuday]

Somebody thought of turning an IBM desktop PC sideways, and the modern tower was born. Shuttle, or perhaps Mac G4, started the cube revolution, by putting the motherboard flat on the ground. Isn't it time to combine the two ideas? That is, build towers where an mATX motherboard sits flat on the floor of the case?

A mATX motherboard is only 24cm square, and there are cubes with 28x37cm footprint. But they are cubes, with height of 30cm or so and, with power supplies and drive bays sitting up top, can't take performance coolers. Why can't the cubes just grow into towers, with the same kind of foot print but no limit on the height?

The advantages are that the coolers sit flat on the ground. They can get taller and heavier without worry. The GPU coolers can suck air in from the top and pipe it down to the chips.

[jhhoffma]

The idea is that you want the hottest components near the top of the case to aid with natural convection and prevent the heat of those hot components from passing along to the cooler running components. BTX attempted to resolve this, but got very little buy-in as it was not backwards compatible and didn't offer any substantial benefits at the time for 90% of the users. Smarter implementations of the ATX form factor have been just as effective, with Antec leading the charge.

[Spare Tire]

What you describe exists in the form of those "Lan boxes".
Of course, you don't get the space for tall heatsinks, except if you use pico-psu and the likes. As of right now, the design is a waste of footprint in my opinion.

[ntavlas]

The increased footprint is probably the reason why we are not seeing this. The reduced height makes sense when the system is on a desk but 25x25 is a little too big to put on a desk IMO.

[reddyuday]

The increased footprint is probably the reason why we are not seeing this. The reduced height makes sense when the system is on a desk but 25x25 is a little too big to put on a desk IMO.

The footprint is no bigger really. NSK 1380 has a footprint of 27x34, about 920cm^2. P180 has a footprint of 21x44, also about 920cm^2. Instead of running from back to the front of your desk (and adding visual clutter), my kind of tower will sit at the back of the desk.

27x34 will fit in the dead space currently behind your mouse pad and look something like a speaker stand. One could buy another empty (or not) case to serve as the stand for the other speaker too.

[reddyuday]

The idea is that you want the hottest components near the top of the case to aid with natural convection and prevent the heat of those hot components from passing along to the cooler running components.

The air will come in at the bottom, blown in by 2x12cm fans or a perhaps a new large 20cm fan, pass over the components and coolers and rise to the top. Exhausts will drive out the hot air at the top rear just as now.

There is also scope for a separate 12cm intake fan for the CPU at the bottom rear. That can reduce the fans at the front and hence audible noise.

The only components at the top are the drive bays, which will continue to be cooled as currently. We either have small vents or separate fans to supply air to them.

[jessekopelman]

Shuttle, or perhaps Mac G4, started the cube revolution

NeXT had a cube all the way back in 1989.

I think the problem with your "fat" tower concept is that it is not aesthetically pleasing to the general public. In general, people don't like looking at computer cases. Those that do tend to get special cases that are oriented towards form over function. So, the design goal for a generic case is to minimize visual impact (ie have the least noticeable case). Cube minimizes all dimensions, but often lacks adequate room for components, or is just a "giant" cube, which defeats the purpose. So, instead we constrain which dimensions to limit in order to have the least noticeable case. Height and width are the more important dimensions for visual impact, in most installations. So, this is why shoebox (minimize both height and width), desktop (minimize height), and skinny tower (minimize width) are so common.

[cordis]

There are a couple cases that are kind of close to what you might be thinking of, although they arrange things a little differently. These cases have the power supply and hard drives underneath the motherboard, typically in a taller cube formation. You can see it in the standard danger den case:

http://www.dangerden.com/store/dd-air-box.html

It's also the same arrangement found in the Antec Skeleton, but without a case around it. Most mATX cube cases go with the motherboard on the bottom though, but some try to change things up a little, like this Aerocool mATX case, where the power supply and drives are in a top section that swings off:

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/6948/ ... ePFx#blank

This qmicro is interesting, it has enough height for a 120mm fan over the motherboard, and the power supply sits above that.

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/6009/ ... d=eeoZePFx

So if they cut the base size down a little more, it might be close to what you'd like. I guess all I'm saying is that there are some alternatives out that might be kind of close to what you're looking for, if they're not exactly perfect at the moment.

[reddyuday]

I think the problem with your "fat" tower concept is that it is not aesthetically pleasing to the general public. In general, people don't like looking at computer cases.

Trust me that I am quite sensitive to the aesthetic and visual issues, which are in fact what drove me to the current idea. I am also sensitive to space (we spend here about 3-4 times the amount you do in USA for space) and air flow (the draft that brushes past my right elbow in trying to get into the computer case).

Let us take apart the tower which you call "skinny". My current case, which I always thought of as being bulky, is 19cm wide, but it couldn't take the Prolima cooler that I recently tried to put in it. At 47cm depth, it takes up almost all the depth of my desk (about 60cm, which is the only size that makes sense for this room.) At 43cm height, it blocks the view out of the window on my right, which has a gorgeous nature preserve and probably part of the reason I spend that much money for this house. Inside the case, most of it is empty space but, when I need the space for the CPU cooler, it doesn't have enough. That is my current case, an Enlight 7250, bought a decade or so ago, when computers were a lot greener than they are now. Most of the cases recommended on SPCR are wider, taller and deeper than my current case. Can we still claim that these are minimalist?

To get around these problems, I have been looking at mini-towers and cubes for my next build. Cubes are particularly attractive to me in terms of their footprint. They can be pushed back to the back of the desk to reduce the visual clutter as well as the air draft on my elbow. (They might also have intake fans on the right and eliminate the draft entirely.) Externally and internally, they make a very efficient use of space. The only problem with them at the moment is the limited height. And, when I started thinking about it, I realized that there is no inherent limitation here; only in the designers' intuition.

At the moment, QMicra v2 seems to be the only cube that can take a 12cm CPU cooler (measured by the fan size). But it is very loud visually. There are a few cases that can take 8-9cm CPU coolers (Lian Li, Microfly and Aerocool M40 - thanks, cordis). But if one wants to put a Core i7, it looks like a 12cm CPU cooler is quite necessary. So the cube makers need to expand their intuition, it seems to me.

[reddyuday]

Here is a mini-ITX cube tower

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/9146/ ... tl=g1c7s29

Looks cool, doesn't it?

The micro-ATX tower I have in mind might be of a similar shape, only slightly chubbier. A height of 32cm should be plenty.

[jessekopelman]

I think the problem with your "fat" tower concept is that it is not aesthetically pleasing to the general public. In general, people don't like looking at computer cases.

Trust me that I am quite sensitive to the aesthetic and visual issues

Of course you know what you want and like. My point is that what you want is not in line with popular opinion. Otherwise it would exist, given how many manufacturers and models there are out there. If something doesn't exist in such a competitive industry, that is pretty good evidence that there is insufficient demand for it. Personally, I would also find your fat tower more aesthetically pleasing than many existing cases, but I suffer no illusions that our taste is shared by enough others to make this a viable product.