Do you know the drive bay and front panel ports？

The drive bay formula is very simple: you need the same 2.5 inch, 3.5 inch, or 5.25 inch bays as the drives you have to install solid state drives, hard disks, or optical drives, and make room for future drives. Today, many tower enclosures have dedicated shelves for 2.5-inch drives (mainly solid state drives) and 3.5-inch drives; In most cases, the 3.5-inch shelf also supports smaller 2.5-inch drives with screw mounting at different locations.

Please note, as we mentioned above, if the optical drive is now outdated, in most cases, even large cases, the 5.25-inch bracket will be completely removed. If you need a built-in DVD or Blu ray drive, pay attention to this when shopping. In addition, most large enclosures now favor large liquid coolers, rather than the large 3.5-inch hard disk carrier enclosures for electronics that used to appear. Today, most tower machines have two to four 3.5-inch hard disk bays.

On the other hand, the front port has not changed much in the nearest tower chassis. The usual combination is a pair of USB 3.0 ports, possibly a pair of USB 2.0 ports, and a headset and microphone jack. Make sure your motherboard has the correct mix of connectors for the chassis ports. This is usually not a problem, although some very old motherboards may not have a 20 pin connector for the USB 3.0 front panel port. In a few metal enclosures, there may be four USB 3.0 ports, so two USB 3.0 connectors are required to connect all ports; Many circuit boards have only one such connector. You may need an adapter to connect the second set of devices to the USB 2.0 interface - note. (It will run at a slower USB 2.0 speed.)

An occasional feature in the latest motherboard and PC 6 space rack case is support for the front panel USB 3.1 Type-C port. The chassis and motherboard manufacturers have agreed on the plug connector of USB Type-C, and the plug connection appears on most of the latest motherboards. Some chassis will have a USB Type-C port and these Type-C connectors, but you may need an adapter to bridge these ports between the chassis and the motherboard for a period of time. Chassis manufacturers and motherboard suppliers are not inclined to bundle these connectors. Even in 2022, not all new motherboards will have Type-C connectors, which is very different from the 20 pin USB 3.0 connector.