New air cooled case advice

bagaante

bagaante

bagaante

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Joined
23 Jan 2012
Posts
278
Hi there, i did a thread a while ago but i cant seem to find it 6 or so months on (plus im wondering if things have moved on)
Been wanting a new build for a while (since last year) but wife made me spend budget on new kitchen.
Anyway I'm hoping to finally get one built soon, going for an ivy bridge 3770k with z77 mobo , card reader for camera, a graphics card for gaming (edging towards 670 windforce, but we will see), possibly a noctua d14 cooler for CPU , blu ray player , anyway I was leaning towards a antec 1200 v3, but wanted to check first .



Budget 125- 150 or under
Needs USB 3 (for my memory stick) and mic and headphones on front (preferably )
I'd prefer it to have side window and very good cooling, and
Hopefully to look quite good (hence why I choose that 1200)

The only thing that's putting me off 1200 is someone in another thread I read here recently said it had no cable management and I'm wondering if that means it will get hot easy with poor cable management (was even leaning towards a modular psu with that in mind


Can you name me some good cases with those things in mind ?
 
HAF-X
CM Storm Trooper
Corsair Carbide 500R (Smaller than the others but i just built a rig with pretty much what your after this week and it had tons of space spare and huge cable management in the back)
Corsair 600T

Those get my thumbs up! I would personally buy the CM Storm Trooper but im biased as i just bought one and swapped my rig into it and am now happier than a pig in mud with the results :)
 
SiDeards73 said:
HAF-X
CM Storm Trooper
Corsair Carbide 500R (Smaller than the others but i just built a rig with pretty much what your after this week and it had tons of space spare and huge cable management in the back)
Corsair 600T

Those get my thumbs up! I would personally buy the CM Storm Trooper but im biased as i just bought one and swapped my rig into it and am now happier than a pig in mud with the results :)
Click to expand...

so the storm trooper is nice and cool then?

i was considering the haf x before but its not exactly "pleasing on the eye"
 
well to put it into perspective, previously my rig was in a Zalman Z9+, my i5 2500@ Stock was idling around 37c with my Antec Kuhler 920 with stock fans.

I swapped the lot into my Storm Trooper, it idles around 29c @ Stock now in the same room (which is fairly hot most of the time) with the fans set to medium via the built in fan controller.

I bumped it up in my Bios to 4.4ghz via the Auto OC option, which i believe feeds it more volts really than required thus generating more heat too, and it idles around 34c, never gets over 48c when gaming either.

So yeah im impressed, very impressed, the case is so nice to work with, i swapped 2 x 120mm fans that are set to intake from the side as default, to intake from the front, removed the 140mm exhaust fan and replaced with my Antec Kuhler as an intake, leaving only the top fan as an exhaust and well, its been wonderful, my only gripe is it only has 140mm fan spots on the rear exhaust and the top which is taken up by the huge fan, wish they had put 140mm locations on the side door or the bottom and then it would be totally perfect for me! i hate having the 140mm fan from the case sat on my desk now lol
 
sideears73,

I know you can change the orientation of the hard drive cages but can you do it so they are orientated with the fans next to the graphics cards rather than on the front of the case?

If not the only problem I see with the white (windowed) version of this case is lack of cooling on graphics card(s) if needed.
 
The side panel has drill holes for about 3 or 4 120mm fans so you could use that option to blow air onto the gfx cards?

Switching the fan orientation on the the 2 fans supplied though was very easy, at first i thought it looked a bit daunting, once i undid all the screws (theres about 8 or so) and took the plates out, i found the plates all have direction arrows on them for aligning, plus rubber knobs which push into the holes on that area of the case making a really snug fit with no vibration i guess? it really is simple, took me about 10mins tops to switch the fans from the default side intake to the front intake, you could actually have them inside the case if you wanted right next to the GPU fairly easily.

Shame the side panel doesnt have a 140mm set of holes though, i guess i could dremel out a set to place the spare 140mm ive been left with though.
 
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