Akasa Hi-engineered professional side panel

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Does anyone have one of these ?

1. Does it ruin the front fan / rear fan airflow or does it help keep your video card cool.

2. How is the fan that is included ? They quote 17.5db on Akasas site which I have a hard time believing. The quietest fan I ever heard and the best sounding was the Nexus 120mm Orange fan and that is rated around a "real" 22db.

By the way, I am building a new PC for a friend based around an Intel sli mobo, 3.73 extreme edition cpu overclocked to 4.4ghz, and a pair of 7900gtx's in sli. Probably use a Forton 700w psu to drive it. I am thinking the Eclipse would probably be the best case to drive that rig.
 
Might go down the Lian-Li route. I like the removable tray on the Akasa though, and nice and airy over the width, plus lots of space to hide the psu cables around the side of the psu cage.

Actually the 7900gtx's are dead silent. I have one in my system right now and can barely here it, even under load. Which is the reason I went for the 7900gtx instead of the 1900xt. The ambers fans are also too noisy (well at least for me).

Any other recommendations on the psu ? I don't think the Forton is overkill because the cpu really drinks a lot of juice. Dual core with hyperthreading and it is easily good for 4.4ghz on air. I failed to mention this rig as well as sli will be running a xifi, 2 WD 150gig raptors, 2 WD 500gig drives, 2 opticals, and bunch of usb stuff connected up - tvtuner, printer, scanner, wifi, etc...

I wanted to go for an Antec Neo HE 550 which actually maintains a full 550w at 50 degrees and can peak close to 700w. The Forton looses almost 100w at only 40 degrees. So in many respects the Antec is better then the Forton. However sli compatability issues put me off. I also want something that is sleeved so the Seasonic is out (plus the pci-e connectors are too close together). I considered the Tagan 580w easy connect too, but that has some powerloading issues as well whereby if you don't load the 3.3v and 5v rails sufficiently this causes instability in the 12v area, even in combined mode. Same problem with the Silverstone PSU's. Solution is to use pci-e to molex adaptors. The Enermax libery irritates me over the way each cable has 2 molex's and 2 sata connectors. And the Akasa 650w is a tad noisy under load. <Sigh>
 
True, but only with a 12v eps connector for the ee cpu.

Really...you think the 7900 coolers are noisy ? The gt's certainly. But the gtx's are very quiet I think though the fan makes a slighy buzzing noise. I can easily hear my case fan over it.

For this rig, I think the fans will be on at 12v as this person does not want to bother with a controller. For that reason the Nexus 12v which can be had for the same price as Ambers are a great choice.
 
I think the fans on the 7900gtx are acceptable to me for what it does...cools a high end card much quieter then the stock x1800, x1900 or previous 7800gtx generation. I do admit I can hear a very low hum, and if I put my ear to my case I can hear the buzzing from the fan (due to pwm). But so far this has been the quietest stock fan ever. If it was any noisier I would definitely consider a mod. Of course you probably have your cards watercooled and I guess once you go down that route there is no going back to air :)

Another choice for this rig would be an Antec P180...the thick panels would definitely muffle the quiet video cards even more and deaden the hdd seek. Plus good cpu cooling with those 2x120mm fans on low. But from the 3 or 4 of these I have built for friends, this is all at the cost of poor cooling of the gpu and chipset. I found nvidia chipsets can run up to 10 degrees hotter idling compared to using a normal atx case setup, even with a 120mm fan blowing onto the gpu's from the front, and the gpu duct is pants for sure.

It's the PC-7 or the Eclipse then. Only minus is the front panel, and the replacement on the Mirage or whatever it's called looks even worse.
 
I agree. It's the Eclipse then.

Going back to one of my original questions....does the sidepanel with the fan help do you think, as I always thought these things messed up airflow.

Thanks
 
Actually I am have thinking of transplanting my PC's inards into an Eclipse too, as I want an SLI setup :)

The replacement for the Eclipse really has a horrid front. What you reckon ?
 
So do you reckon the Eclipse is the best cooling case out there without going down a brute force route like the TJ07 ?

I don't mind the front panel on the Eclipse to be honest. I had an Eclipse before and did not hold onto it long enough to really give it a chance as I sold it to buy a P180 when they came out. Pity.

Only weird thing I noticed with the Eclipse was I had to bend the top of the mobo tray slighly to get the cards to screw down into place. Also terrible for fingerprints :)
 
I just ordered one from OcUK, along with a new PSU, Motherboard, and a 2nd 7900gtx. Everything else I can take out of current case. Good times ahead next week. 2 systems to build now :) Only problem is I have a VX922 LCD so limited to 1280. I guess I will have to play everything with 6x or 8x AA :)
 
Everyone says that 1280/SLI is a waste, but I find it means at 1280 you can push the eye candy way up....some games might let you run 1600 4xaa/16xaf, but at 1280 they can run with 6xAA or higher. Other older games like HL2 which are still a bit cpu dependent will play nicely on this rig using Nvidia's 16x SLI AA, helped slightly by the fact the mobo I ordered uses 2 x 16x lanes and does not share them. Other games like Oblivion I think should be able to handle most of the eye candy turned on and maybe 6xAA at 1280. I think you really need to push up the graphical detail to let the cards do it's thing at the lowish 1280 res. Of course I would get a bigger screen if I could find something that performs as well as the 2ms Viewsonic.

By the way, the credit card has the money :)
 
I'm not. System I have from work has one (does not overclock though) and I get to keep it indefinitely. It's a 3.77, but I have already tested it on a friends rig, and runs at 4.5ghz without breaking a sweat. At this speed with the 4 cores (well 2 cores plus hyperthreadiing) just about matches an FX60 in gaming. Seems to have the edge in Oblivion too.
 
Not when I didn't pay for the cpu it's not :) Anyway, an overclocked P4 at 4.5ghz can match or come close to an FX60/Overclocked Opty in gaming and beat it in most other things.

Well maybe I exaggerate a bit about an Intel beating an AMD but In Quake4 and Fear 1280x1024 Tests, the FX60 and 965 are neck in neck. At least in this test.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/03/22/intel_pentium_ee_965/4.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/03/22/intel_pentium_ee_965/5.html

Although most reviews still show the FX60 well ahead in gaming, the 965 or any of the Preslers from 3.2 up are no disgrace by any means. I would still buy an AMD, if I had not picked this up for free.

In terms of overclocking the 965 and even the 3.4 Presler can be overclocked to as high as 4.5ghz with ease with stock cooling, helped by the fact it's 65nano. That's a nice jump from stock speeds.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/pentium-xe-965/index.x?pg=15

The hyperthreading also gives it the advantage in media encoding and multimedia in general. Helps big time in games like Oblvion and Quake 4 too.
 
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