Smaller Case or Bigger Case?

[Hipstair]

My brother built a pc about a year and a half ago, and I'm building one soon. His PC is in the Antec 900 and I'm looking at building in the Bitfenix Phenom Micro-ATX, and he thinks I need a bigger case. So, which do you think is better, a smaller case, like Micro-ATX, or a bigger ATX case and why? Also, please leave a suggestion for a good case based upon your answer.

[ThyFeared]

I like bigger cases because they're easier to build in (for my man hands).

[thekeemo]

biggger case = better airflow and cable management and expandibilty

[Johannes_Lazor]

It depends, If you need your computer to be small or you simply like your copmuter to be more portable you should get a smaller case.

And with a bigger case you get more expandability and better airflow (No suprise here)

[othertomperson]

Personally I wouldn't go smaller than ATX unless I had a specific reason to, such as portability or HTPC or something like that. ATX leaves to more open to things like PCI-E slots, a wider range of cooler options, a wider choice of motherboards.

 

Even within that, though, there's still a lot of choice. For example, do you go with something like the Air 540 or the 900D? 900D would give you lots and lots and lots of watercooling options, lots of opportunity for your PC to double as a server, with lots of networked storage (which if you're using the PC as a processing server or a streaming-host in other says it might make more sense to have storage in this PC too, instead of a NAS). I saw one review where they put a hi-fi amp in a 900D because they could.

 

Personally I'm more inclined to go for a relatively small ATX case but there are some quite interesting things you can do with a huge form factor.

[eugenius]

Both.

[EeveeTechTips]

Love smaller cases for sure. If you just get past the hard building part and pre-plan out the airflow, smaller cases all the way.

[kishagi]

It  depends what your needs are and if you might change your needs in the future. I myself am currently using a microATX case, but now I wish I chose the ATX version of it because I wanted to do SLI plus have a soundcard. due to me using mATX, this was only possible if I used waterblocks on my GPU. This cleared the bottom row so I could install the sound card via riser cable. 

The case I am currently using is the Fractal Design Arc Mini. It has excellent features all around and can easily beat many ATX cases in terms of ease of use, but for the long run I probably should have gotten the Arc Midi (which truly isnt much bigger) for more choices when upgrading. 

If using an mATX motherboard, then a mATX chassis is probably a better idea.