Tempered glass and EFI/RFI

[Rancor]

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[Mr Evil]

To be an effective shield, panels need to be electrically conductive and/or magnetically permeable, depending on what you are shielding. Glass is neither, so it will happily let all the noise out.

This doesn't seem to be a problem most of the time. Strange things might happen if you have some particularly badly behaved component in your PC, or something particularly sensitive outside.

 

[lehtv]

I thought electromagnetic interference was the reason chassis have traditionally been steel boxes.

I think it's mostly due to cost and convenience reasons. SECC sheets are cheap and easy to bend, cut, pierce etc. The ideal material for a case, from the manufacturer's perspective. That it happens to shield from EMI is probably pretty irrelevant in the consumer segment. Almost all home users could run their PC's in plastic boxes and never notice any issues.