Antec NSK4400

p4radox · 27 Jun 2006 at 22:05

Really I'm just looking for opinions on this case. I can't find any reviews or user comments anywhere. I like it because it's cheap, has a PSU and looks ok really for the price.
It'll be housing a new Conroe based system probably with an X1800XT. Any opinions?

p4radox · 27 Jun 2006 at 22:11

Yewen said:
Not used one with a system in only saw one behind a counter so this is very vague for me.

Looks like the normal Antec affair, solid case priced very competatively but nothing groundbreaking.

Looks very nice though. Still would get one of the Lascalas if it was my money though.

Lascalas? You mean those really expensive Media Centre type cases I can see in the SS section? :confused:

Yewen · 27 Jun 2006 at 22:16

Haha, read it as 2400, sorry about that! Ignore what I posted!

(I blame that on going into GH!)

WJA96 · 27 Jun 2006 at 22:20

The PSU isn't remotely oomphy enough for what you are planning, plus you're going to be generating a lot of heat in that small case and the fan capacity isn't that special for the air volume. You would only have very small vents at the front, plus the possibility of mounting an 80mm directly behind a solid front panel - what genius thought that up? It's going to positively growl with back-pressure. Then the other fan mount is another 80mm on the Intel tunnel which you'll have to remove if you want to fit a sensibly sized cooler on the Conroe anyway which leaves 1 120mm fan to cool that lot.

p4radox · 27 Jun 2006 at 22:46

WJA96 said:
The PSU isn't remotely oomphy enough for what you are planning, plus you're going to be generating a lot of heat in that small case and the fan capacity isn't that special for the air volume. You would only have very small vents at the front, plus the possibility of mounting an 80mm directly behind a solid front panel - what genius thought that up? It's going to positively growl with back-pressure. Then the other fan mount is another 80mm on the Intel tunnel which you'll have to remove if you want to fit a sensibly sized cooler on the Conroe anyway which leaves 1 120mm fan to cool that lot.

The PSU can't be that bad surely? I run an overclocked Opty, and an X850XT on an Antec 300W with no problems at all. I thought Conroe consumed a relatively low amount of power?

I thought Conroes were pretty cool too? 65nm? Surely the 120mm fan will be fine - I only have a 120mm fan and an 80mm fan in my current Opty system and temps are cool enough.

I was thinking more along the lines of build quality issues or links to reviews. Obviously the aternative is something like the Lanboy and maybe a 400W Tagan or Seasonic. Just throwing ideas around really - but the budget is very tight.

@Yewen - you seem to be enjoying your new priveledges, congrats buddy

edit: I probably should have made clear: there will only be one graphics card, one HDD, one optical drive and no PCI cards! Purely a gaming PC.

WJA96 · 28 Jun 2006 at 11:23

p4radox said:
The PSU can't be that bad surely? I run an overclocked Opty, and an X850XT on an Antec 300W with no problems at all. I thought Conroe consumed a relatively low amount of power?

Relatively is a good word. It actually is more thermally efficient than the current crop of processors, but that doesn't mean it doesn't want a lot of power available. It just means it wastes less power as heat. The issue (as I understand it) is getting stable current on the CPU and PWM lines.

Intel P4 Northwood 2.6GHz - Power Req. 62.6W/72C
Intel P4 Prescott 2.66GHz - Power Req. 84W/67.7C
Intel P4D Smithfield 2.66GHz - Power Req. 95W/64C
Intel Core Duo 2.6GHz - Power Req. 65W/65C

These are Intel's own figures for an IDLE processor, at 100% load these figures can double, especially the dual cores.

Unfortunately AMD don't calculate the Thermal Design Power figure in the same way as Intel, but they use about 80% the power and dissipate significantly less heat (which I think we are all aware of).

p4radox said:
I thought Conroes were pretty cool too? 65nm? Surely the 120mm fan will be fine - I only have a 120mm fan and an 80mm fan in my current Opty system and temps are cool enough.

I have only my own experience to go on and I only got my E6700/Abit AB9 Pro yesterday but it runs as hot, if not marginally hotter than the 950 in my gaming rig. In either case, it will almost certainly run significantly hotter than any current AMD chip. What Intel have managed to do, is to get FX62 processing power into a chip that runs about as hot as the original Northwoods. That's pretty good, but most AMD users would still say that runs hot.

p4radox said:
I was thinking more along the lines of build quality issues or links to reviews. Obviously the aternative is something like the Lanboy and maybe a 400W Tagan or Seasonic. Just throwing ideas around really - but the budget is very tight.

What's the worst that can happen - it's not massively expensive, so even if it's pants I'm sure you could sell it on at a relatively small loss.

p4radox said:
edit: I probably should have made clear: there will only be one graphics card, one HDD, one optical drive and no PCI cards! Purely a gaming PC.

Yes, but gaming PC's tend to run hot because the GPU, CPU and (for Intel rigs) PWM are all running flat out while you're playing.

I'm honestly not trying to be negative, I'm only attempting to point out that a lot of current AMD users are going to get a fright when they start using these new chips in anger as the CPU and case temperatures will appear very high in comparison to their old systems.

p4radox · 28 Jun 2006 at 12:45

I know you weren't trying to be negative, thanks for the feedback.

The PC's not for me, but I'll be building it - if it was mine I'd certainly get a better case and PSU but aesthetics are low on the list of priorities here and the PSU doesn't need to be a colossus. I might make the jump to the Sonata with the 450W PSU and 120mm fans front and back - probably a better option tbh.

I'm interested in the rig you're running - would you mind giving me a full spec and how it's going so far?

WJA96 · 28 Jun 2006 at 13:27

E6700ES with AC Freezer 7 Pro
Corsair Value Select DDR2 667 RAM (@4-4-4-12)
Abit AB9 Pro demo board (both this and the CPU are on loan from a computer firm)
2 x 160Gb Maxtor HDD in RAID 0
OcUK 6800GS
Hiper 580W Type R Modular PSU

So far it doesn't feel that special... I'm used to a 950 Presler so it's not massively faster. I got a 25 second SuperPi time which is phenomenal for a stock processor (not overclocked at all) but nowhere near 10s which is more like what I was expecting.

I've installed BF2 on the machine and it just runs like normal to be honest.

I think it will let you knock £400 off the price of a truly fast PC, but if you already had a truly fast PC, I'm not sure you'll notice much difference. But I haven't overclocked it at all.

=assassin= · 28 Jun 2006 at 15:37

I'm hoping to get one of these cases for a CORE 2 DUO E6300, 2GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM (maybe higher if it's cheaper), 7600GT, and while I have every confidence of the PSU and cooling being perfectly alright for that kind of spec, maybe an X1800XT and a higher clocked Conroe might begin to push the case a little. It'll probably still be just about Ok though, and in fact, may be perfectly fine, only really limiting the OC potential, but then, a new PSU can easily be bought as the case is so damn cheap anyway!