Cases for large hands?

[bob2k]

Please help me find a case that I can easily perform maintenance in with my large hands.

So, here is my story. I have large hands. It makes it difficult for me to perform motherboard related work on my desktop system without leading to a severe rise in my blood pressure and my desire to turn green and smash things.

Most recently, I had to test for a possibly failing PSU by replacing it with another one. In doing so I naturally was required to disconnect and reconnect several PSU related cables some of which were on the motherboard. However, I'm using a cheap mid-tower and a large cpu heatsink fan unit.

The only thing I had left was the 8 pin 12V connector that on my motherboard sits at the upper left corner of my case near my IO ports. I must have spent no less than 30 minutes screaming obscenities at the case while trying to get the cables disconnected and reconnected. Due to the combination of using a pretty basic el-cheapo mid-tower and having a MASSIVE CPU heatsink fan unit, I had trouble getting my hands in place where I could reasonable place enough leverage onto the connectors to line them up and seat them properly.

History will repeat itself if I do nothing. I want to change the future. I need to save my sanity and my hands from the torture of trying to squeeze them into a place that only a 12 year old's hands could fit. My problem could have entirely been solved if I had used metal cutting snips to cut through the air flow grate at the top of my case so that I could give me hands free access. However that is an ugly solution.

So, are there any modern cases out there that make it as easy as possible to reach every part of the motherboard? Going FULL tower is probably the easy solution. However, I'd like to stick to a mid-tower or smaller. Any good cases that have a removable top panel for hand access?

Thanks.

*I am running completely on air cooling. I don't need a case with support for water cooling.

 

[karder]

Don't know of any mid towers that would provide what you are looking for. Personally, I own a Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra. That case is a Super Full Tower. In other words, it's MASSIVE! But it is sooooo easy to work with. I have large hands and I can basically take the smallest screws and put them in with my fingers without issue.

So I would recommend going Full Tower

 

[SithSolo1]

Look at the Lian Li PC-9F.

In addition to that you want to look for cases that have one or more of the following features:

Bottom mount PSU (bonus if it has its own "case zone")
Top mount PSU that uses a bracket to slide in from the back of the case
Removable motherboard tray
Cases where the motherboard tray is mounted upside down (see Silverstone TJ08-E although this case is too small for big hands)
Fully removable HDD cages

 

[MontyAC]

Maybe a caseless system?