What's the chassis?

Chassis generally include housings, brackets, panels on a variety of switches, indicators and so on. The shell is made of steel plate and plastic, and the hardness is high, which mainly protects the internal components of the chassis. The bracket is mainly used for fixing motherboards, power supplies and various drives.

There are many types of chassis. At present, the market is more common is at, ATX, Micro ATX and the latest BTX. The full name of the at chassis should be baby at, which is primarily applied to an earlier machine that can only support installation at the motherboard. The ATX chassis is the most common chassis currently, supporting most types of motherboards today. The Micro ATX Chassis is built on the ATX chassis and is smaller than the ATX chassis for further savings in desktop space. Each type of chassis can only install the types of motherboards it supports, which are generally not mixed, and the power supply is different. Therefore, we must pay attention to when buying.

The latest BTX, is the abbreviation of Balanced Technology extended. is the new specification of the desktop computing platform defined and guided by Intel. BTX architecture to support the new shape of the next generation of computer systems, enabling the industry to achieve optimal balance in thermal management, system size and shape, and noise.

BTX New architecture Features: Support Low-profile, also known as narrow board design, the system structure will be more compact; In view of the heat dissipation and airflow movement, the main board of the circuit layout optimization design; The motherboard installation will be more simple, mechanical properties will also be optimized design. Basically, BTX architecture is divided into three types, namely Standard BTX, Micro BTX, and Pico BTX.

The full range of BTX platform motherboards are not smaller than the ATX motherboard in size, so BTX development is not for smaller desktop computers, but the more resilient circuit wiring and modular component areas are the key to BTX. The most obvious difference between a BTX chassis and the ATX chassis is that the side panels that were previously opened only on the left side are changed to the right. The other I/O interfaces have been changed to the opposite position accordingly.

The BTX chassis interior is significantly different from the ATX the most interesting design for BTX chassis is the improvement in heat dissipation, where the CPU, graphics card, and memory locations are completely different than the ATX architecture, and the CPU position is completely moved to the front panel of the chassis, rather than the original rear position. This is to more effectively use the cooling equipment, improve the chassis of the various equipment cooling efficiency. For this reason, BTX-structured devices will be configured linearly and designed to reduce the impedance factor of the cooling airflow, by inhaling the cooling airflow backward from the front of the chassis, and by smoothing the device along the internal linear configuration, and finally out on the back of the chassis. This design not only helps to improve the internal thermal efficiency, but also can reduce the fan speed of the cooling equipment, ensure the low noise environment inside the chassis.

In addition to location transformations, the BTX specification has been normalized on the motherboard installation, most importantly BTX has an optional SRM (Support and Retention module) Support Protection module, which is a buffer between the bottom of the chassis and the motherboard. Usually the use of high strength of low carbon steel to manufacture, can resist strong external force and not easy to bend, so can effectively prevent the motherboard deformation.

In addition, the chassis also has ultra-thin, half high, 3/4 high, full height and vertical, horizontal chassis of the points. The 3/4 high and full height chassis has three or three more 5.25-inch drive slots and two 3.5-inch floppy drive slots. The ultra-thin chassis is primarily a few at chassis, with only one 3.5-inch floppy drive slot and 2 5.25-inch drive slots. The semi-high chassis is primarily a micro ATX and Micro BTX chassis with 2-3 5.25-inch drive slots. It is best to use standard vertical ATX and BTX chassis when choosing, because it is large in space, has many mounting slots, has good expansibility and good ventilation condition, so it can fully adapt to the needs of most users.

Chassis category

Server Chassis

For the server, the chassis is also a problem that can not be ignored, the main problems of the chassis include:

Temperature: How to cool the internal chassis components? Fans (usually from power supplies) should be blown directly or blown over the processor.

Scalability: Select a chassis with enough space for the network to expand. Make sure you have enough space to add more hard drives and other peripherals. Check the inside of the chassis to make sure there are no sharp edges. In future upgrades, it is important for technicians to be safe and to prevent cable accidents from being cut off. The chassis should also enable maintenance personnel to easily access internal components for future upgrades or troubleshooting.

Security: Because your server will save important files and more expensive items on your network, consider security issues. The server chassis should be lockable to prevent unauthorized disassembly.

Certification: Select the chassis and power supply that has the certificate to meet your environment requirements. The typical certification has FCC, UL and CE.

For the general Enterprise departmental server, generally will choose more than 4U or tower server, however, how to choose a stable server for such a strong performance of the home, but is a often overlooked problem. Senior PC DIY players will certainly not ignore the chassis and power in the whole machine key, high-quality power supply is the premise of stable operation of the machine, and well-designed chassis, on the one hand can provide excellent heat dissipation environment, on the one hand can also fully use space or even shielding electromagnetic interference. Therefore, as a 24-hour perennial server system, the stability of its operation and timely cooling means, is a crucial factor. For the server, the stability requirements even more than a little difference in performance, want to choose an ideal server, first of all should choose a good server chassis.