Does a Gaming Case Improve Performance?
A well-developed PC gaming case unlocks the true potential of your gaming hardware. The CPU, GPU, Storage Devices, RAM, PSU, and motherboard depend on stable temperature for optimum performance. A good gaming case can increase your games' fps (frames-per-second) by 20%.
Understanding how the gaming PC case ensures optimal performance requires diving deep into the technical aspects of how this hardware prevents itself from overheating. To counter such unwanted situations, gaming PC case suppliers ensure design aspects in their cases that improve heat transfer. What are these design aspects, and why are they important? Let's get into the details and build a broad understanding of performance-oriented gaming PC cases.
Heat-Induced Factors that Impact Your Gaming Performance
Whenever electricity flows through electronic components, it generates heat. Have you ever felt your smartphone heat up while gaming? Heat also represents the phenomenon that happens inside the gaming case. When gaming, the components heat up and must reject heat. The only medium in which all the PC heat is rejected is air.
Ensuring a PC case that allows increased, smooth, and unrestricted air flow can improve performance and increase the lifespan of hardware. Here are the reasons that cause your gaming PC's performance to drop when heating up:
Thermal Throttling
While gaming, the processing chips consume electricity to perform millions and billions of calculations that result in gaming graphics and physics. However, when the electricity passes naturally due to the resistance in conductors, it starts to produce heat. If the heat goes high enough, it may damage the electronics inside gaming hardware.
To prevent this, hardware reduces its calculation speed or frequency of operations to reduce heat production. This phenomenon is thermal throttling. It results in a drop in fps and causes the game to stutter, which can be critical in competitive gaming conditions.
Increase Noise Levels
When hardware components heat up, the first method to reduce the heat is to increase the cooling. Increasing the airflow inside the gaming case can reduce the temperature. However, increasing the fan speed can increase noise levels. Performance-based gaming PCs can have more than 7+ fans within a single micro-ATX case. Here is a graph showing how noise and fan speed increase with temperature:
Instability and Crashes
As the first step to increasing temperature, the component processor tries to decrease the temperature by increasing the gaming case fan speed. Then, it resorts to changing the frequency to reduce current flow. At this point, there will be high instability and gaming performance degradation. Finally, if both measures cannot cope with the rising temperature, the computer will have no choice but to shut down. It is usually a BSOD, or a computer shutting down or restarting.
Impact on Gaming Hardware
Besides impacting gaming performance, the heat rise can damage PC parts, sometimes temporarily or permanently. If the PC gaming case does not have a proper air flow, a thermal buildup will start to affect all the components inside the gaming case. The heat can reduce the lifespan of your graphics card, RAM, motherboard components, PSU, cooling fans, AIO cooling system, etc.
How Gaming Case Improves Your Gaming Performance
To improve gaming PC performance, ruling out the gaming case is not an option. A bad case can lead to many problems, starting from cooling system installation constraints.
High-Air Flow Casing Design
High-performance gaming cases consider air movement. They offer large vents on the front, under, rear, and top. They also have an enhanced cable management system with two chambers separating cables and components. The separate chamber keeps the wires out of the air flow direction, allowing cold air to flow over the components efficiently.
These high-air-flow casing designs are generally bigger than typical PC cases to allow more space around components for airflow.
Mounting Options for Cooling Fans
Modern PC gaming cases also offer extensive support for installing cooling fans. The PC cooling fans come in 92 mm, 120 mm (the most common), 140 mm, and even 200–220 mm diameters. A bigger cooling fan will run at lower RPMs and push a larger air volume. Moreover, a slight increase in speed will result in a higher flow rate due to the higher static pressure.
Support for AIO Cooling Radiators
Premium and high-end gaming PC builds will offer AIO cooling systems with radiators. A liquid flows over a high-temperature chipset and returns to the radiator, which has fans that take the heat away from the fins. PC liquid cooling radiators typically come in sizes like 120mm, 140mm, 240mm, 280mm, 360mm, and 420mm, corresponding to the number and size of fans they support. The most popular is the 240mm AIO cooling radiator, which provides enough cooling to support modern gaming hardware. Therefore, a gaming case supporting a 240mm or higher radiator suits PC components.
Superior Cable Management Features
Cable management features include grommets/cutouts for the cable to pass over to the chamber, which conceal unwanted hardware. The system can also have pre-fitted Velcro straps or ties that allow the cable to route seamlessly to the other side without disrupting the air. It will also have a PSU shroud/basement to keep the large PSU cables away from sight, leaving behind space for air movement.
Quality Material for Heat Dissipation
A high-stability metallic frame allows more air to pass through. A PC gaming case can have perforations underneath it to cool the power supply unit (PSU). Using materials such as steel (SPCC), aluminum, and mesh panels adds to the heat dissipation of internal components. If your PC case feels warm to the touch when gaming with high heat exiting from the back and radiator, it means the case is doing its job.
Dust Filtration Systems
Dust can wreak havoc on PC components. It can settle on the vents and block the airflow. Users can clean the components to revive the original temperatures, but there is a prevention technique that is better than this cure: dust filters. These filters can prevent the air from entering the case, and users only have to clean the filters to revive the airflow instead of cleaning each component.
Final Words: Gaming Case Improving Your Gaming Performance
We can clearly establish that a gaming case can significantly impact your gaming performance. A carefully designed gaming case can lead to higher frames per second and system stability. Every gamer, streamer, or creator needs a gaming case built to support high-end gaming components. It should fulfill the necessary airflow and mounting requirements to run games smoothly.
If you are looking for a high-end PC gaming case, consider ESGAMING. They offer a wide variety of cases that will ensure that you have the right aesthetics with powerful performance. Each case is designed to support the latest PC components and offer spacious interiors for smooth airflow. Visit the ESGAMING website to explore all the options.