Why would ANYONE build a HUGE PC??
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,049 words · ~5 min read
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the year is 2018
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and many pc components are smaller faster and more energy efficient so the
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power of a full tower can be crammed into something like the Corsair one
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so then why the balls are people still buying
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massive towers like the obsidian 900d
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here is this just pure ep machine
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or are there practical reasons
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so right here is your typical mid tower with bleeding edge gaming specs now
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let's imagine for a second that you want a machine with the same specs but at
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literally one third of the size while a custom small form factor is an
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option like the insane orthrest that we
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built last year we opted to compare to the new Corsair
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one because inside this sleek trashcan
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chassis is the highest performance per volume
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that we have tested compared to the mid tower we did note
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slightly higher CPU temperatures in the one but the gtx 1080 ti in this thing is
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liquid cooled allowing higher boost so yeah
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this small form factor technically actually outperformed
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the air-cooled mid tower in our gaming benches while maintaining a similar
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level of noise of course CPU overclocking results would
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typically be slightly lower than a mid tower but for games this will almost
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never make any kind of noticeable difference and the pricing between a diy
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small form factor and a mid tower is similar as well
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so then what is the downside to this type of a machine
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a big one is the lack of expandability you want to throw a three and a half
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inch you know 12 terabyte hard drive in here
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you will need to use external storage which kind of kills the elegance of a
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machine like this whereas with a mid tower you can crown like four in here
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and not only will that not be a problem but you won't even see them because of
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the way that the internals are laid out it's really sleek this gives you
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terabytes upon terabytes of storage right inside your computer
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oh wait hold on a minute here so if you can get all of the performance
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and the expansion out of this guy
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why would you want to go bigger alright let's make our way over here
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so if you're a serious business gaming
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aficionado and all about that dual card action you need not just the space to
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fit the cards because a mid tower even some small form factors can fit them but
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you also need space for them to breathe though with that said the truth is these
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days even a single gtx 1080 ti can haul
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in most titles even in 4k and sli
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scaling leaves a lot to be desired
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with that said if you were doing something like a multiple user machine
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like we did in this very one for our
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triple headed vr gaming machine a full tower is pretty much your only
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option though i wouldn't call that a
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super common use case one other reason though
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RAM expandability while a handful of itx
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boards which is what you're going to be stuck with if you go with something like this have four memory slots
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going atx or up enables you to deck out
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your rig with up to 128 gigs of RAM so at that point you're
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able to load your games onto a RAM disk
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have multiple virtual machines or i don't know analyze particle collisions
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for cern to be honest we're having difficulty
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coming up with a realistic scenario where this much RAM would be a practical
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investment for a desktop user so
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that rationale takes a bit of a back seat
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bringing us to number three cooling a full tower enables you to not only
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slide a fat 360 millimeter aio in there plus
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another one for your graphics card if you're into that sort of thing
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it also makes it much easier to run a
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custom water cooling loop i mean yeah if you've got the skills with the zed you
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can make a sick loop in a mid tower or again even smaller but a full size one
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is much easier to work with especially if unlike me you've got big hands
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you can also fill a full tower up with a redonkulous amount of local storage so
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it's kind of like what this can do
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this can do better though sometimes that will come at the expense of radiator
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space finally a full tower is a bigger
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canvas to showcase your hardware
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cabling and your uh you know mucho RGB
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so it's a flex piece but what about the downsides
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well your typical full tower always costs more than a mid tower from the
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same manufacturer because it's just more
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material and it costs more to ship it around and have you ever tried moving
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one of these especially by yourself the 900d empty with no hardware in it
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weighs more than twice as much as the
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Corsair one with a full system in it so
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unless you're into using your computer as weightlifting
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equipment it's that's not a practical selling point
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so let's summarize then as compared to
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a mid tower a 2018 small form factor is
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almost as fast is smaller lighter about as loud
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costs about the same and only really lacks in overclocking potential
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and local storage if you're not using a nas
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on the other hand a full tower while more expensive not to mention
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heavier enables wider graphics card options
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more RAM and more local storage on top
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of and i really think this is the biggest reason being easier to work in
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as well as being a bigger stage for showcasing your hardware
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well computer hardware that is of course so thanks for watching guys if you
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