 The year is... 2018. And many PC components are smaller, faster, and more energy efficient. So the power of a full tower can be crammed into something like the Corsair One. So then... Why the balls are people still buying massive towers like the Obsidian 900D here? Is this just pure E-Pen machine or are there practical reasons? Oh So right here is your typical mid tower with bleeding edge gaming specs. Now let's imagine for a second that you want a machine with the same specs but at literally one third of the size. While a custom small form factor is an option like the insane Orthrus that we built last year, we opted to compare it to the new Corsair One because inside this sleek trash ca- eh- ehh- chassis is the highest performance per volume that we have tested. Compared to the mid tower, we did note slightly higher CPU temperatures in the One, but the GTX 1080 Ti in this thing is liquid cooled allowing higher boosts. So yeah, this small form factor technically actually out-performed the air-cooled mid tower in our gaming benches while maintaining a similar level of noise. Of course CPU overclocking results would typically be slightly lower than a mid tower but for games this will almost never make any kind of noticeable difference and the pricing between a DIY small form factor and a mid tower is similar as well. So then what is the downside to this type of a machine? A big one is the lack of expandability. You want to throw a three and a half inch, you know 12 terabyte hard drive in here? Pfft. You will need to use external storage which kind of kills the elegance of a machine like this. Whereas with a mid tower you can cram like four in here and not only will that not be a problem but you won't even see them because of the way that the internals are laid out. It's really sleek. This gives you terabytes upon terabytes of storage right inside your computer. Wait, hold on a minute here. So if you can get all of the performance and the expansion out of this guy, why would you want to go bigger? Alright, let's make our way over here. So if you're a serious business, gaming aficionado and all about that dual card action, you need not just the space to fit the cards because a mid tower even some small form factors can fit them. But you also need space for them to breathe. Though with that said the truth is these days even a single GTX 1080 Ti can haul in most titles. Even in 4k and SLI scaling leaves a lot to be desired. With that said if you were doing something like a multiple user machine like we did in this very one for our triple-headed VR gaming machine a full tower is pretty much your only option. Though I wouldn't call that a super common use case. One other reason though, RAM expandability. While a handful of ITX boards, which is what you're going to be stuck with if you go with something like this, have four memory slots, going ATX or up enables you to deck out your rig with up to 128 gigs of RAM. So at that point you're able to load your games onto a RAM disk, have multiple virtual machines, or I don't know analyze particle collisions for CERN. To be honest we're having difficulty coming up with a realistic scenario where this much RAM would be a practical investment for a desktop user. So that rationale takes a bit of a backseat. Bringing us to number three, cooling. A full tower enables you to not only slide a fat 360 millimeter AIO in there, plus another one for your graphics card if you're into that sort of thing, it also makes it much easier to run a custom water cooling loop. I mean yeah, if you've got the skills with a ZED, you can make a sick loop in a mid tower or again even smaller, but a full-size one is much easier to work with, especially if unlike me you've got big hands. You can also fill a full tower up with a redonkulous amount of local storage. So it's kind of like what this can do, this can do better, though sometimes that will come at the expense of radiator space. Finally a full tower is a bigger canvas to showcase your hardware cabling and your you know mucho RGB. So it's a flex piece. But what about the downsides? Well your typical full tower always costs more than a mid tower from the same manufacturer because it's just more material and it costs more to ship it around. And have you ever tried moving one of these? Especially by yourself? The 900d empty with no hardware in it weighs more than twice as much as the Corsair one with a full system in it. So unless you're into using your computer as weightlifting equipment, it's that's not a practical selling point. So let's summarize then. As compared to a mid tower, a 2018 small form factor is almost as fast, is smaller, lighter, about as loud, costs about the same and only really lacks in overclocking potential and local storage if you're not using a NAS. On the other hand a full tower while more expensive, not to mention heavier, enables wider graphics card options, more RAM and more local storage on top of, and I really think this is the biggest reason, being easier to work in as well as being a bigger stage for showcasing your hardware. Computer hardware that is of course. So thanks for watching guys. If you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like, get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description. 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