What interesting or useful or even innovative features would you like a case to have?

[Imaginer]

?

 

[SubzeroPC]

I like cases to have slide out trays and drive bays to make it easy to get to stuff. The iMac cases that fold out are cool, but they are too proproietary of course. I saw in another thread where there is a company making a case that folds out like a Mac, but they still didn't have it quite right. The case needed to be bigger (mid tower to full tower size) and the power supply was mounted all wrong.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=37&threadid=200762 here is the other thread if you want to see the case.

Another thing that I would like to see is more thought for cooling options. Alot of cases have lousy placement for fan openings. I don't expect to see blowholes or anything, but all cases should have at least 80mm fan openings in the front/bottom and rear/top. It would also be nice if there where more cases with 120mm fan openings since so many ppl like to use 120mm fans. And so many cases have nice big fans openings on the front of the chassis, but no vents in the benzel. How is that air supposed to get in the case with so few openings!?

And while I'm at it, how about some kind of cable keepers to keep ribbon cables out of the way. Some straps to keep the cables flat against the side panel of the case(motherboard side) would be nice. Some extra lights on the front would be great (blue lights!). A light that would show network activity from a network card would be good and maybe a light that just blinks all the time for no reason but to look cool.

A case that used giant heatsinks for all the outside panels would be good too. Ok, maybe that is too much to ask for.

 

[VTBigBear]

I want one of those equalizers..
but they are too expensive..
about 75-100..
dang..
they look really cool though..

 

[Fireloong]

Handle.

 

[TheBigZ]

My dream case... a full tower with a high quality 300w ps, 5 exposed 5.25 bays and 2 exposed 3.5 bays, couple more internal 3.5 bays, consideration for exceptional cooling, and a place for usb ports on the bottom front of the case for the extra usb ports most new mb's have now.

 

[mechBgon]

I'd like to see a shift to putting the AGP card on the bottom of the motherboard, and having a dedicated fan pulling air across it and straight out the back. Also, how about a light inside that you can flick on when you're trying to see the jumpers (for those of us with jumpers to deal with).

An innovative feature would be drive bays that are spaced away from eachother a little, and a fan/duct system that feeds air inbetween the drives, possibly with slide-in baffles to limit the airflow to the areas with drives in them.

Ok, here's another one: instead of having screws to hold the cards into their slots, how about a flip-down bar to keep them in place?

The other thing is noise. If someone put a serious effort into a mainstream case with noiseproofing... I mean, one that you can put loud CPU fans into (YS Tech HO 60mm) and still have a pretty quiet box.

 

[Eug]

I have one with a slide-out motherboard tray, but it's still useless.

Better would be a fold out tray, with extra long cables. Oh wait, that already exists... with the G4. The el cheapo PC knockoffs of the Mac case truly suck.

But what I would really like is a non-beige case with matching drives. Beige is the worst.

 

[MagnusPAH]

Since I have so many peltiers and fans, Ideal case would be a full tower with at least 2 powersupplies each giving 600W. Now that is a dream. Oh yeah, and the case does not cost over $150.

 

[elsevier]

There definately needs to be a better way of dealing with all the cables. My case is just a jumble of cables inside. Maybe have a case hardwired with ports so you just pop in a hard drive, a lot like a pci card.

elsevier