the year is 2018
and many pc components are smaller faster and more energy efficient so the
power of a full tower can be crammed into something like the Corsair one
so then why the balls are people still buying
massive towers like the obsidian 900d
here is this just pure ep machine
or are there practical reasons
so right here is your typical mid tower with bleeding edge gaming specs now
let's imagine for a second that you want a machine with the same specs but at
literally one third of the size while a custom small form factor is an
option like the insane orthrest that we
built last year we opted to compare to the new Corsair
one because inside this sleek trashcan
chassis is the highest performance per volume
that we have tested compared to the mid tower we did note
slightly higher CPU temperatures in the one but the gtx 1080 ti in this thing is
liquid cooled allowing higher boost so yeah
this small form factor technically actually outperformed
the air-cooled mid tower in our gaming benches while maintaining a similar
level of noise of course CPU overclocking results would
typically be slightly lower than a mid tower but for games this will almost
never make any kind of noticeable difference and the pricing between a diy
small form factor and a mid tower is similar as well
so then what is the downside to this type of a machine
a big one is the lack of expandability you want to throw a three and a half
inch you know 12 terabyte hard drive in here
you will need to use external storage which kind of kills the elegance of a
machine like this whereas with a mid tower you can crown like four in here
and not only will that not be a problem but you won't even see them because of
the way that the internals are laid out it's really sleek this gives you
terabytes upon terabytes of storage right inside your computer
oh wait hold on a minute here so if you can get all of the performance
and the expansion out of this guy
why would you want to go bigger alright let's make our way over here
so if you're a serious business gaming
aficionado and all about that dual card action you need not just the space to
fit the cards because a mid tower even some small form factors can fit them but
you also need space for them to breathe though with that said the truth is these
days even a single gtx 1080 ti can haul
in most titles even in 4k and sli
scaling leaves a lot to be desired
with that said if you were doing something like a multiple user machine
like we did in this very one for our
triple headed vr gaming machine a full tower is pretty much your only
option though i wouldn't call that a
super common use case one other reason though
RAM expandability while a handful of itx
boards which is what you're going to be stuck with if you go with something like this have four memory slots
going atx or up enables you to deck out
your rig with up to 128 gigs of RAM so at that point you're
able to load your games onto a RAM disk
have multiple virtual machines or i don't know analyze particle collisions
for cern to be honest we're having difficulty
coming up with a realistic scenario where this much RAM would be a practical
investment for a desktop user so
that rationale takes a bit of a back seat
bringing us to number three cooling a full tower enables you to not only
slide a fat 360 millimeter aio in there plus
another one for your graphics card if you're into that sort of thing
it also makes it much easier to run a
custom water cooling loop i mean yeah if you've got the skills with the zed you
can make a sick loop in a mid tower or again even smaller but a full size one
is much easier to work with especially if unlike me you've got big hands
you can also fill a full tower up with a redonkulous amount of local storage so
it's kind of like what this can do
this can do better though sometimes that will come at the expense of radiator
space finally a full tower is a bigger
canvas to showcase your hardware
cabling and your uh you know mucho RGB
so it's a flex piece but what about the downsides
well your typical full tower always costs more than a mid tower from the
same manufacturer because it's just more
material and it costs more to ship it around and have you ever tried moving
one of these especially by yourself the 900d empty with no hardware in it
weighs more than twice as much as the
Corsair one with a full system in it so
unless you're into using your computer as weightlifting
equipment it's that's not a practical selling point
so let's summarize then as compared to
a mid tower a 2018 small form factor is
almost as fast is smaller lighter about as loud
costs about the same and only really lacks in overclocking potential
and local storage if you're not using a nas
on the other hand a full tower while more expensive not to mention
heavier enables wider graphics card options
more RAM and more local storage on top
of and i really think this is the biggest reason being easier to work in
as well as being a bigger stage for showcasing your hardware
well computer hardware that is of course so thanks for watching guys if you
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