Aluminum enclosures. Genuinely cooler, or hype?

[cloasters]

Aluminum cases are nice-- at least the expensive one's are. Anyone actually measure the heat shedding ability of aluminum vs. steel? Is there enough improvement with aluminum to notice?

[surlyjoe]

I think mostly the weight is what makes them attractive, but they will shed heat quite a bit better than steel. If you have good airflow it prolly wont be noticable, but in a passive cooling setup it could make a difference I think.

[dimmreaper]

Like SJ says, with low chassis air flow they would likely perform better. The most attractive thing is the low weight, if you hit a lot of LAN parties aluminum is easy to tote around . . .

[WyrmMaster]

I say suck it up and haul the heavy one. yah gotta haul your heavy monitor anyway.

[SiGmA_X]

Heh, get a nice 19" LCD I would, if I could put up with out a computer (LCD costs too much!))

[Phat Pat]

heh, my school got computers with lcd displays this year. plus Pentium 4's Windows XP, MS office (the newest one, cant remember if its XP or 2000 or something), optical mice, a nice touch screen projector setup in front of the room, from Dell. government paid for 75% of them when the school agreed to give more credit for programing classes, so it works out great for me. sorry to get off topic, im exited.

[Random Nonsense]

Originally posted by Phat Pat
heh, my school got computers with lcd displays this year. plus Pentium 4's Windows XP, MS office (the newest one, cant remember if its XP or 2000 or something), optical mice, a nice touch screen projector setup in front of the room, from Dell. government paid for 75% of them when the school agreed to give more credit for programing classes, so it works out great for me. sorry to get off topic, im exited.

AAARGH! how i detest it when schools do that.... Think of the huge stress all that word processing puts on the CPU and how they grind to a halt when excel or access is used!!!! really they should each have 4X xeons! ARGH! why dont they just stick with p2's they are beefy enough for every day school stuff, and spend the rest of the money on something that will be used to its full potential, new sports equipment? comfy chairs? things like that?

[Phat Pat]

they got us comfy chairs too, and the football team isnt all that great, and they still have better equipment than most high schools. and you havent seen the way my district usually spends money, we still have a bunch of video disk players (you know, disks are about the size of a record). However I wont defend my school too much, they are in debt because they miscounted students (a lot of students).

[Dave]

how can you miscount students?
anyways, I agree with the other people, alu cases are a little cooler, but only if you have little airflow.

[cloasters]

Interesting. Thanks for the answers, everyone. If one were incompletely conversive with the cooling needs of recent processors, is this where these admittedly stylish cases come into their own?

Somehow, I don't think the simple fact of the better radiative and or convective efficiency of aluminum will compensate for inadequate case throughput. Will modern CPU's simply increase the heat they broadcast ad infinitum?

[loop]

My dad works on the govering body of a college, they miscounted students too, seems its all to do with when students finish and start courses, thats when it gets complicated.

I wouldnt personally bother with an aluminium case unless I had a lot of spare money (I mean a lot).

If you bothered about weight pick up a cheap Midi case for about £15 (www.ebuyer.com) and cram your pc into that. Wont look pretty but it will be lighter than a big beefy full tower.

And if heat is your problem, buy a 8cm fan for a couple of quid, slightly cheaper and probably more efective than an aluminium case.