What Is Atx Chassis？

By definition, most tower cranes will support ATX motherboards. If you want to install a smaller MicroATX or mini ITX motherboard, tower may not be the right choice. (That is, unless you know you need a large number of drive bays and have a way to connect a large number of drives through the serial ATA port or control card on the smaller motherboard.)

Larger tower enclosures may support other form factors larger than electronics project box

, such as XL-ATX or Extended ATX (EATX). These mainly appear in server level motherboards and one-time consumer enthusiast models. Motherboards, especially the high-end desktop (HEDT) processors of AMD and Intel, such as Reelon Threadripper and Core X series motherboards, tend to adopt these oversized shapes due to additional RAM slots and larger actual CPU chips.

Support for these shape factors indicates that the box will be large; If you don't need that size, buy ATX max.

Clearance between CPU cooler, graphics card and PSU

First, consider the CPU cooler: if you use liquid cooling in your PC, this will not be a problem, but if you use a delicate air cooler with a tall radiator and fan component on the top (we are talking about high-performance coolers from Noctua and other companies), you will want to measure the height of the cooler. The computer chassis manufacturer usually lists the maximum cooler clearance on the chassis specification table. If you use air cooling, please check it.

As for video cards, this is a simple custom enclosure. According to the chassis design, the longest video card (usually a high-end video card with a front and back length of more than 10 inches) may touch the front drive bay or other chassis structures. If you use a giant graphics card, please pay attention to this specification.

That is to say, since a few years ago, we have seen some very powerful "short board" versions of Nvidia's Pascal (GTX 10 series), Turing (RTX 20 series) and current Ampere (RTX 30 series) cards. (Check with card manufacturers such as Zotac, MSI and Gigabyte; they tend to occasionally provide short designs.) AMD's card partners, to a lesser extent, have followed suit. This means that you can put a powerful and compact card in a relatively clean chassis, regardless of the length.

The power supply unit (PSU) is the last factor to consider. Almost all tower enclosures will use the ATX form factor power supply instead of the compact SFX and SFX-L form factor used in some compact enclosures. The main specification to be noted is the physical length of the power supply. In some cases, the maximum length is required to fit without interference; This situation is not very common in tower enclosures, but it is still worth noting before purchasing.

It is also worth studying, but it is difficult to distinguish from the simple specification table: the range of 8-pin or 4-pin CPU power cord. In some truly large custom aluminum enclosures, it is difficult or impossible to extend this cable to the maximum extent to reach the remote CPU power port on the motherboard. An extender may be required.