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PC in the case, or gutted?
michelevit:
I decase and board mount my pc. Hot glue is all you need to secure the power supply. A couple of wood screws secure the mobo.
Todays Mobos have sound, video, and network integrated so there is no worry about cards to secure. Once the OS is installed I also remove the optical drive.
Any tweaks are then done over the network or with a usb chip.
shponglefan:
--- Quote from: UFO on July 26, 2013, 07:04:43 am ---Not sure its an urban legend - I know it to be true but I wonder what the best way to keep cool would be (other than using liquids!).
--- End quote ---
All I can say is that I have never seen a situation where a cased PC has outperformed a partially or fully decased PC in terms of cooling. I can see it being an issue if one puts a decased PC into another type of enclosure without proper ventillation or airflow. But decasing by itself shouldn't cause issues.
paigeoliver:
When looking for authenticity one should realize that pretty much every arcade game that ever ran on PC hardware left the computer in the case.
GiMiK:
I would see 3 considerations for making this decision, heat, dust, and grounding.
Cases can improve airflow, but that is not a given fact, poorly designed cases from ultra cheap big box store PC's can actually make it worse. A high end case can net you a difference of ~5C in my experience between running it open and closing it up. In an enclosed area of a cabinet that performance may be lost. As long as you have good airflow through the case, you should be fine. If you are concerned there are programs you can run to report heat levels from a number of components on your system. Generally speaking below 70C is good, 70-80C is pushing it, anything beyond that risks failure.
On the subject of dust, the most immediate risk of dust in my experience is from clogging vents of power supplies and jamming the fans. I can't speak to how quickly dust accumulates in a cabinet, but I would monitor the amount of dust.
Grounding only really applies if you go without a case, one or more of the screw mounting points on the case will often have a silver ring around it that is the ground. Normally that connects to the motherboard mounting panel in the case, which grounds itself to the power supply. If you are mounting it to the cabinet directly, make sure you maintain the ground in some fashion
UFO:
Thanks guys - all very valid points to consider.
For my own interest, I will install some software to monitor temps while it is currently out of the cab and see what difference there is when it is stripped and installed in the cab.
I hope to be able to report the findings!
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