As a brief go-between from one manufacturer and designer of cases to the next, I thought it would be cool to take a look at just what the OEMs will be turning out over the next few months. These new chassis, much like the recently reviewed ICute 0508 will feature a 250mm side fan, which is quickly becoming a "Standard", along with a forward 140mm fan, and rear 120mm fan. Rather than maintain the current structure of bays, the cases will begin having either 5 1/4" bays the entire way from top to bottom, or 4 at the top and 3 at the bottom, presumably to aid in the cooling of disks.
There are also two other models of chassis which may hold interest to the public. Firstly is the yet to be released M-ATX model. Featuring a forward 120mm fan, and dual motherboard side 60mm fans, it provides good airflow for critical components. On the top layer, an 80mm fan in and out also helps to keep the air moving, over the hard disks, and through the case. For what it's worth, this design is leaps and bounds ahead of traditional desktop M-ATX casings, and even many cube cases for that matter, as the total thermal output is actually considered, rather than fans placed with bits of wisdom.
The third case architecture of interest is a fusion of many ideas. By placing the ATX motherboard and power supply vertically, and having the drives vertically, a VESA mount can be placed on the "Front" of the case, so to speak, forming a fully powered and relatively small footprint'd PC. The only thing of potential issue is feeding airflow into the case, which will be hard with an LCD there. As well, the casing may be a little bit thick, causing that small footprint to be a bit too big.
