As of late the new cool thing to do in computer cases has been leaving out 5.25" bays and 3.5" bays, the excuse generally being that physical media is dying so why include a place to mount a disc drive? Well other than the fact that archival on BluRay is still pretty cost effective, there are a few reasons why the 5.25" bay isn't dead. That hole on the front of the case is called a bay for a reason. It's basically like the I/O cut-out but for the front of the computer and I'm sure there is some innuendo in there somewhere but I can't be bothered to find it. You can throw card readers, extra ports, wee little displays, fan controllers, water cooling pumps and reservoirs, fans, hot swap bays, and even a drawer in those bays so where is the advantage in paving over it? Yes, physical media is dead, but that doesn't mean hot swap bays are too. That's why the sentiment I keep seeing that manufacturers should just forget about the bays is so disturbing to me. The 5.25" bay is still a bay, it's been around since the IBM 5150. It survived the death of the 5.25" floppy it'll survive the death of the compact disc.
Agreed. I use mine to hold my res.
I've never liked having one cause i never used it but i see your point. the 5.25 quarter bay isn't going anywhere especially with people like ASUS shipping stuff on their high end motherboards for it or keeping a nice place to keep your reservoir if you won't want to see it that often, in certain ATX Cases.
Bought the H440 with no 5.25"
Don't regret it . I have everything external . Last time I used my dvd r+rw was for pictures for the family .
Other than that , if removing those bays make it cheaper , smaller , and more importantly , have more cooling ( triple front fans ) .
Personal opinion .
I personally still have ALL of my media on physical back-up. In the event of some epic failure, I still have all of that media that makes my living.
I've always felt that the 5.25" bay was a worthwhile tradeoff for expandability. Who knows a few months down the road you might want to install a card reader or you might need to install a fan controller like the NZXT sentry 3 or Bitfenix Recon for a big rad.
Using the 5.25 inch bay was exceptionally useful for airflow in the Bitfenix Prodigy M. the case was straight ass when it came to HDD space mounts. if you buy the 5.25 bay hard drive adapter to mount your hard drive in the 5.25 bay you could have a 230mm fan on the bottom, an exhaust and 2 fans on the top if you have one GPU.
I will concede the 5.25" bay might become rarer in smaller cases like the Prodigy but in a big case like the H440 it just seems to limit expandability. Mind you the case is good looking but they could have totally at least thrown the cut-out for the bay in there somewhere.
I would like it if they made them detatchable and also offered a extra HDD tray. Because with the exception of a reservior or one of those asus controller things, I don't really see why to use it.
I use my 5.25" bays to hold the extra wires from my non-modular power supply, as well as an SSD I have thrown in there loosely. Then I ghetto mounted a 120mm fan to the front of my computer where the empty bays are to give my hyper evo 212 more air to breath. All-in-all, I find them to be quite useful.
I buy lots of CDs and I use an optical drive in there (obviously) for ripping them.
I use Blu Ray as a tertiary backup, so I agree. 5.25 still has it's purposes. That said, I don't mind when smaller cases leave them out. Though if someone is buying a mid tower or larger case, I think a 5.25 bay should be expected. They have their uses even beyond physical disk drives, as has been pointed out. Especially in larger cases.
I still buy cd's. I dunno why but sometimes I feel like I need a physical copy of my purchase. Steam slowly killed my in store purchases. It is useful though if you go through a company such as comcast. Install the base game, then install updates. Last physical copy of a game I bought was Guild Wars 2, friend borrowed the install discs after buying a digital copy for this reason.
Still buy Music on CD's and not to mention where would you put these if you didnt have a 5.25" bays?
Because fools like me still own blu-ray's like me.
lol
me too .. they sell them for $2 each at my local pawnshop ... beats pirating anyday
Plus I have a ton of old games that need the disc to play
Yeah, I also sometimes buy physical media versions of games, but usually because of a pre-order deal of some sort. Or if it's StarCraft lol.
Pretty much what everyone said, and I mean as well as the Bigfoot HDD.