Testing, Testing
LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY
THE CONCEPT
SOMETIMES we need to test stuff. In fact, sometimes it feels like testing makes up most of what we do here; the writing side of this business is really more of a casual hobby. One of the things that we find quite hard to test is cases, because cases are rather stupid.
No, we don’t mean that—at least, not in the rude sense. Cases are “stupid” because they (with some strange exceptions) lack the intelligent technology that enables us to run programs and games, and by extension benchmarking software. We can fire up a graphics card or a laptop and run software tests on it until the cows come home, but cases don’t offer us that same luxury.
Our case reviews typically involve the building of a system in said case to get a good feel for what using it is like. We can then follow this up with more hands-on testing, looking at thermals, airflow, and noise production, all to determine whether the case is worth buying or not. But what we don’t have right now (thanks, COVID) is a unified system for testing these cases. That’s what this build is going to be: A powerful ATXscale PC, designed to be transplanted into other cases further down the line.
Now, we know this won’t work for every single case review we do (ITX
