Errr ... haven't looked at cases for a long time. You just need something quick and easy to get apart, enough space for all your bits and looks nice?

I say just get one!

FWIW I picked my power supply and bought a case it would fit, I wanted a quiet one though with enough molex connectors for all your devices, some new video cards need their own molex connector now and one even takes two!

Thanks

Jasper, how much do you want to spend?

Coolermaster cases are probably one of the best, but aren't cheap, Chieftec (who I think make Coolermaster cases) are another good quality brand.

PSU wise, there's so many to choose from, just get one which suits your needs, plenty of connections for IDE/Floppy/SATA etc

one not just buy a ready built Dell ??? its not like they are expensive anymore .... or am I mising something ???

Because you can build a much higher spec machine with the bits you want, no compromises, for the same price or build a similar spec machine a lot cheaper.

I used the Dell's as a benchmark when I first came to the UK to see if it was worthwhile building or just buying. I built my machine for something like £900 at the time, the equivalent spec Dell (still including compromises) was over £1300.

Took me half a day to lob it together and get an operating system on it.

Then it took Ange a week and a half to stop me playing Unreal Tournament on there :D

To be honest Dibble, Dell or as the industry calls them "hell" are some of the leat reliable bits of kit on the market, their cheap for a reason!

As Tony has said building your own system might possibly work out more expensive, but it's a no compromise system, and can be upgraded as and when new technology appears, unlike legacy hardware such as Dell, HP etc, etc...

Anyway... lets talk more about UT2004... who's up for the challenge? Onslaught anyone?;)

Jasper, I think I have an Enermax in mine (I only upgraded it at the end of last year, you'd think I'd remember!)

They are here

I went for a 450 or 500, can't remember, but the biggest thing for me was the number of molex connectors to power all the devices I have in there. I upgraded the video card at the same time and it needed two of the bloody things! And it generates a fair bit of heat so add some extra cooling, the video card and PSU combined I mean.

[Edited on 22-4-2005 by TP]

oh, ok .. is that because Dell dont use organically farmed DDR Ram and wooden cases from sustainable resources ???

Built in Ireland...

Sorry Ian, for I am about to sin!

Dibble, it's because Dell build down to a very small budget - it's like buying a Kia! Which is why they are infesting companies as a preferred desktop supplier and, lord help us, server supplier in some organisations because techo's don't make many of the decisions anymore - beancounters do!

The 'large, blue chip' I work for is going down the Dell server path at the moment and I have seen some of the estimates in time and money to add management software into our monitoring and management infrastructure which is scary! Lots of money is going in to making them work in our environment so they must be a LOT cheaper than the HP kit we used exclusively before.

I'm glad I don't do hands on anymore!

Edited to add: I feel sorry for guys like Freak who are at the coalface with this sort of kit - it can be a bit repetitive explaining to your boss that the server has lost its RAID config again ... and it puts a lot of pressure on your backups which now have to be perfect and are called upon frequently.

I rest my case ...

[Edited on 22-4-2005 by TP]