Budget ~£135 - I challange you to find my dream case!

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Soldato
Joined
2 Dec 2006
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Hey, well basically I shall be upgrading to sandy bridge soon and I will be wanting a new case to go with it. My lian-li pc 60b plus II is just not big enough for my needs.

I am however lost, I see so many cases and none of them tick all the right boxes for me so I come to you with the challenge of finding me my dream case. My budget is flexible but I would rather it be as cheap as reasonably possible. Obviously I didn't set a budget of £135 to buy a £50 case.

Boxes you need to tick:

1- Must be decent sized but not huge. I'm looking to fit the biggest graphics cards to date with some room to spare if possible. I don't run a lot of hard drives so if there is an option to remove one of the hard drive caddies for this then that is fine provided I can mount up to 3 hard drives still.

2- I want it to be very tidy inside, which means some good cable management system. The corsair graphite 600T has the sort of thing I'm looking for but unfortunately not very good cooling at all. The p183's cable management I don't think is good enough for its price. It is also very heavy.

3- Minimalistic style, I love the looks of things like the p183 or the sleak lian-li cases. Sadly I can't find a lian-li case to tick the boxes, unless I have missed one?

4- Easy to use. I want a spacious interior to work with. I'm fed up of having to try and cram my hands down into tiny spaces in my current case so I want a nice gap around the motherboard to work with.

5- It goes with out saying I expect it to cool reasonably while being quiet.


Optional interests:

6- While I dont have any plans to water cool at the moment, a case that can accommodate it is always a plus.

7- Decent fans, failing that I will replace them. I want a quiet system.



Free internet cookie for who ever manages to find my case!

Cheers, good luck!
 
I have an Antec P193 - it's very cool and near enough silent.

IMO the pictures online don't do it justice. It is subtle, tidy, sleek, just like the P182 was. (I have them sat side by side)

I've put some of my photos online for you to get a better idea of what it's like to work with: Click Me!

Spec is in the sig :)

If you were wondering - to get the 4-pin and 24-pin round the back I would have needed to get an extension, I couldn't be arsed to place another order and go back to it - but if you plan ahead you could.
 
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billysielu said:
I have an Antec P193 - it's very cool and near enough silent.

IMO the pictures online don't do it justice. It is subtle, tidy, sleek, just like the P182 was. (I have them sat side by side)

I've put some of my photos online for you to get a better idea of what it's like to work with: Click Me!

Spec is in the sig :)

If you were wondering - to get the 4-pin and 24-pin round the back I would have needed to get an extension, I couldn't be arsed to place another order and go back to it - but if you plan ahead you could.
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Thats a nice build there.

I have to agree it is a very nice case. But it is things like the fact that you need cable extensions and some of the holes could be better placed and its weight that for me I just feel I might rather something else. It is definitely a top case in the price bracket however, but I really want to have a case with next to no wires showing.


sldsmkd said:
Silverstone Fortress 01 can be had for £140 notes.
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This is along the right lines, I do like their cases. However having read a few reviews, particularly bit-techs. It has several bad flaws. One being the fact that the dust filters rattle and not all of them are removable, along with it being tight around the motherboard. However I definitely intend on looking further into the silverstone range as I think they do some great cases.

Here is the review if you are interested, it didn't score very well overall sadly: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2008/10/20/silverstone-ft01-review/5

Thankyou for the replies so far.
 
8igdave said:
This is along the right lines, I do like their cases. However having read a few reviews, particularly bit-techs. It has several bad flaws. One being the fact that the dust filters rattle and not all of them are removable, along with it being tight around the motherboard. However I definitely intend on looking further into the silverstone range as I think they do some great cases.

Here is the review if you are interested, it didn't score very well overall sadly: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2008/10/20/silverstone-ft01-review/5

Thankyou for the replies so far.
Click to expand...

The lower drive bay comes in 2 parts, you can remove the top half which goes a long way towards fixing the airflow issue with the graphics cards. This leaves you with space for 3 hard disks in the lower hot swap drive bay (as per request). If you need more there's a bunch of 5.25" bays.

The fans don't rub against the filters, that was corrected before it hit retail.

The top filter isn't easily removable, and that's an annoyance. I just vacuum mine from time to time :)
 
sldsmkd said:
The lower drive bay comes in 2 parts, you can remove the top half which goes a long way towards fixing the airflow issue with the graphics cards. This leaves you with space for 3 hard disks in the lower hot swap drive bay (as per request). If you need more there's a bunch of 5.25" bays.

The fans don't rub against the filters, that was corrected before it hit retail.

The top filter isn't easily removable, and that's an annoyance. I just vacuum mine from time to time :)
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I shall look back into this then. Thankyou for the recommendation. Though I shall keep my eyes pealed for slightly bigger cases.
 
No window = no wires showing
Just sayin' :P

I started with a similar set of requirements as you. I came to the conclusion that the cases with better cable management had other problems - usually overkill with the loud fans and bright lights. I intentionally chose a case without a window to avoid LEDs distracting me. I wanted my PC to be as subtle and quiet as possible. It's damn near silent - a few cables scattered around is a small price to pay.

I think you owe me a cookie.
 
Haha it is true, you are speaking sense and I have never intended on a window to begin with which does as you say make the cable management arguably pointless.

The problem is that I am coming from a tiny case where cables are impossible to manage and just go where they fall with a case which such little room around the motherboard that I had to get someone with smaller hands to fit some of the cables in. I just want as far opposite to this hell as I can. While I love the case, It was not designed for my uses.

I'm currently looking at cool master. They seem to have some very good cases. I believe there may be some revisions of the cosmos that arn't on ocuk that I've yet to check up that may be perfect for my price range. Also the sniper with an additional 240mm fan looks to be a decent buy. Though it is not the sleek look I was really wanting to aim for.
 
burrell said:
Corsair 600T?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-026-CS&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=1489

Very nice looking case with excellent cable managment.

Ticks ALL your boxes.
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Already mentioned in the OP that it has terrible cooling but does have a lot of the point I want. However I think it would be silly to choose pretty cable management over practicality of actually cooling my pc.

Biffa said:
Cosmos S = V.good case, the Antec 1200 is also in your price range.
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Yes at the moment I'm feeling the cosmos s is going to win. Are there any other coolmaster cases that are perhaps a tad cheaper that are well worth the look?

The antec 1200 is also a good shout, checked it out. It's not got all the extras that some of the more expensive cases has but it's cheaper and does what it aims to do well by the looks of it.
 
8igdave said:
Already mentioned in the OP that it has terrible cooling but does have a lot of the point I want. However I think it would be silly to choose pretty cable management over practicality of actually cooling my pc.
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Ah sorry, missed that.

A friend has one and hasn't reported any problems with cooling and loves it to bits.
 
burrell said:
Ah sorry, missed that.

A friend has one and hasn't reported any problems with cooling and loves it to bits.
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It does look like a nice case indeed, but it seemed like the only reviews which didn't mention the bad cooling were the ones who never actually tested it saying "it should cool your pc well" etc instead of "it does cool your pc well".

However the coolmaster s looks like it may do the job. I'm also checking out the nxzt phantom. Not something i'd ever even consider but really it is a fantastic case. Just don't know if I could really put up with how it looks, not sure if it would just look cheap and tacky really. I'd get it in black if I was too.

:EDIT:

The only thing that puts me off the coolmaster s is the fact that it might actually not fit the gap I want to put it in, I shall have to measure that.
 
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I'd recommend a Fractal Design R3. Cable management, v quiet and lots of mountings for additional fans that give you lots of options.
Just got one myself, am very happy with it. Great build quality in contrast to the 600t side panels that put me off.
 
LiamJ said:
Lian Li PC-B25FB.

Review.

I win?
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You know I just get warm and fuzzy inside every time I see a Lian-Li case. I had originally wrote that one off looking at its dimensions and thinking it might be too small but It seems to be a very nice case indeed. You may in fact have won, more research is needed!

Slam said:
I'd recommend a Fractal Design R3. Cable management, v quiet and lots of mountings for additional fans that give you lots of options.
Just got one myself, am very happy with it. Great build quality in contrast to the 600t side panels that put me off.
Click to expand...

This does look to be a good case also. I shall have to look into it further!


Good recommendations guys, keep them coming :P
 
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