Your PC needs enough room to develop. If you are a power user, you really need enough room to expand nicely. (A power user is a person with substantial computer experience or a person who needs a fast computer for advanced purposes) Adding gimmicks and other toys can quickly lead you to outgrow a typical desktop case.
Trust me, it’s absolutely a royal pain to move to a larger PC case because you literally have to disassemble the entire computer, take away the motherboard and other portions, and get them all to a larger PC case. Always keep these upgrade possibilities in mind when you choose your case and consider your future needs and wants.
Desk Footprint
You need enough room on your desk. If the desktop space is badly limited (by either the actual size of your desk or your current work habits), you can essentially save yourself some precious real estate by choosing a tower (vertical) case and putting it under your work desk. Or, you could select a space-saver case.
Actually, most cases come with at least a few rectangular cutouts near the empty drive bays. You surely can use those open bays to hold most components that need to have access to the outside world, like a DVD drive or a removable hard drive. (After all, it’s a bit hard to connect a DVD into an empty drive if it’s buried deep inside the PC case.)
An empty open bay is usually covered with plastic piece in rectangular shape that is integrated with the outside of PC case. Other drive bays are hidden inside the PC case, with insufficient access to the outside; those bays are usually intended for extra hard drives, which usually don’t have to be handled during everyday use.
Integrated Fans
Most PC cases also come with one fan for cooling and a case can also be configured to maximize flow of air, with cutouts for extra fans, and also more vents for circulating more air through the case.
If organizing your PC with your room design is important, surely those cases in designer shapes and colors are continuously calling your name. However, before you buy an aerodynamic case in an attractive canary yellow or metallic blue, remember that you’ll probably find it hard to find other components in such exotic design and colors later on. And, unusual colors often mean higher prices.
Many computer components with those external faceplates, such as DVD drives, usually come in only black and white, which are more likely to stand out like a painful sore thumb in metallic orange case. Because the main colors for computer cases are mostly black and white; and I urge that you stick with those colors unless you look for a PC that looks like you just assembled it at a junkyard.
Drive Doors
If you need to have a case in a flashy exotic color, consider buying one with a big hinged door that completely covers your drive bays – you can easily close the hinged door when you’re not using the CD or DVD drives and hopefully no one can tell that you are (gasp!) a fashion-impaired person.
Most new PC cases have hardware mountings needed to attach your motherboard even though it never hurts to ask the seller when you order the case. You also need plastic spacers and screws, and they must be included with either the motherboard or the case. (You can also buy those plastic spacers and screws at big electronics stores.)
You can pick from three standard types of PC cases: desktop, pizza & shoe-box, and tower. Each case has its merits and also different amounts of space for upgrading.
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