You can’t play a scary game like F.E.A.R. without screaming like a little girl and kicking the computer. It doesn’t help that kicking the computer causes it to reboot and you’re swearing like a little girl as the unsaved game disappears into the bit bucket. For several months, I put up with system reboots after bumping the case or plugging a memory stick into the front USB connector, or holding down the power and reset buttons to turn the system on. There’s an electrical short somewhere that I haven’t located. It was time to get a new case for the gaming computer nicknamed Outlander.
Over the Labor Day weekend, I put in an order with Newegg for the Cooler Master Centurion 5 full tower case. I wanted to get this particular case for about six months but haven’t had a good enough reason to buy it. But F.E.A.R. helped me overcome my fear of a thinner wallet, as I wanted to finish playing the game.
When I put the system together in the old case three or four years ago, multiple hard drives and CD/DVD drives required multiple 80mm fans (two in front, two in back, and one on the side panel) to cool the system. The drawback with all those fans was too much noise, especially since the CPU and graphic card had their own loud fans.
The new case has a 120mm fan in the back, an 80mm fan in the front, and a ventilated top-to-bottom front to keep the system cooler and quieter. My gaming rig is a lot simpler today since I have one hard drive, one CD/DVD drive, a passively cooled video card, and a low-noise CPU fan.
As with my recent file server case upgrade, I left the floppy drive out as I rarely used one and can always use the USB floppy drive.