Case spec please

Echo

Echo

Echo

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
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South-West Wales
Hi all,

I'm so out of touch with today's cases, I've popped in here for some advice.

My current case (a Chieftec Dragon full tower from 2003), excellent as it's been, is starting to bulge with the amount of stuff inside. The Arctic freezer fan is almost touching the hard drives, the 8800GTS' power connector collides with a SATA cable, and cables are literally all over the place! Specific needs are:

  • At least 6cm more depth than the Dragon (which is 47.5cm according to an old review) to accommodate increasingly huge graphics cards and cpu coolers
  • Ability to house 8 or more 3.5" hard drives + 1 floppy bay, leaving 4 x 5.25" free (I saw a case a couple of months ago that held hard drives at the bottom - was an interesting concept)
  • Linked to the above, the room to add/remove drives without having to unseat other hardware - one thing that's doing my nut in currently!
  • Well ventilated but no Deltas inc. please (:D)

Aesthetics aren't too important, especially if it keeps the price down. All my dvd drives are still beige though, so that would need considering.

What will be in there from day 1 if it helps:
BFG 800w psu / Evga 680i / E6600 + Freezer pro 7 / 4 DDR2 sticks / 8800GTS / PCIe SATA card / Audigy 2 / 8 SATA HDs / 3 DVD burners / 1 floppy drive / 5.25" fan controller


Cheers :)
 
I agree about Lian Li A70.
Good low noise overall design, open holes for important fans and PSU on bottom.
Space for ten individually soft mounted HDDs with good cooling for every one of them. Five 5.25" bays.
Lot of space for long graphic cards:
http://lian-li.com/v2/tw/product/upload/image/A70/detail.jpg
http://www.nordichardware.com/skrivelser_img/532/A71_20.jpg

In later revisions all HDDs have soft mounting, you just attach screws with rubber grommets to HDD and then push it into its place and connect cables:

Or more precisely that's frame of A71 which has solid metal door.
If you're worried about wrong coloured drives/devices that would be good option... And also quieter because of door blocking direct noise escape path (I'm sure you've noticed even that light plastic door of Chieftec muffles optical drives nicely) and neither does that door block air intake because of holes in sides of door and gap between front and door.

And if you have plenty of expansion cards/dual graphic cards or ones without exhausting dual slot cooler BS-03 or BS-06 would help in keeping cards cooler by exhaust air from between cards.
http://www.lian-li.com.tw/v2/en/product/product04.php?cl_index=2&sc_index=34&ss_index=83

Echo said:
(a Chieftec Dragon full tower from 2003)
Click to expand...
Isn't it maxi-tower? DA-01's height is surely one of the highest of all if not the highest.
BA/CA-01 are newer versions with more depth:
http://pcgamma.com/TR/Case/Chieftec/BA01BBB/BA01BBB-078.jpg
http://pcgamma.com/TR/Case/Chieftec/BA01BBB/
But that quick attachment of 5.25" devices is rather bad because there's no way to attach any half length devices like many fan controllers and neither knobs of fan controllers fit behind door.
Also design starts to be old in other ways, PSU has to suck in heat from mottherboard area while that upper exhaust fan doesn't do much anything, small fans (for HDDs) are noisier etc.
 
The A70 does seem to look the business - not gonna run out of space in any direction it looks like.

EsaT said:
Or more precisely that's frame of A71 which has solid metal door.
If you're worried about wrong coloured drives/devices that would be good option... And also quieter because of door blocking direct noise escape path (I'm sure you've noticed even that light plastic door of Chieftec muffles optical drives nicely) and neither does that door block air intake because of holes in sides of door and gap between front and door.
Click to expand...
Yeah think I'd prefer the door, then I can slowly swap out the beige while hiding the truth most of the time, lol. The other solution (stealth) always looked a bit clunky to me.


Isn't it maxi-tower? DA-01's height is surely one of the highest of all if not the highest.
BA/CA-01 are newer versions with more depth:
http://pcgamma.com/TR/Case/Chieftec/BA01BBB/BA01BBB-078.jpg
http://pcgamma.com/TR/Case/Chieftec/BA01BBB/
But that quick attachment of 5.25" devices is rather bad because there's no way to attach any half length devices like many fan controllers and neither knobs of fan controllers fit behind door.
Also design starts to be old in other ways, PSU has to suck in heat from mottherboard area while that upper exhaust fan doesn't do much anything, small fans (for HDDs) are noisier etc.
Click to expand...
It's this thing: http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/dragon/blackdragon.htm

It does indeed challenge Blackpool tower, but because of the lesser depth even a short-ish GTS is 1mm from the hard drives and cables are bending slightly :o

And yeah, my fan controller is kinda wobbly because of the quick attachments, that would be another nice fix.


Just to double check, the last 3 hds go in their standalone cage in a choice of either PSU spot yeah?
 
Apparently it's possible to attach upper HDD cage to bottom but it would slightly cover motherboard's bottom edge.
Also top cage doesn't have that much holes so 12cm fan of PSUs would be mostly blocked... and just no sense to put PSU to draw in heat from CPU, better leave that as sole right of back exhaust fan.


Echo said:
The other solution (stealth) always looked a bit clunky to me.
Click to expand...
And leaves feeling of barely working plastic trash (occasionally drive's tray nearly gets cought in some of those) and any kind feel of drive's eject button generally flies through window.
A71's door makes Chieftec's door really feel as what it is: cheap, flimsy plastic! (+opening direction can be changed)

9kg weight is also nice, you can even install components without weight instantly shooting over 20kg.
I still put handle to top like in Stacker for making carrying easier because otherwise it's hard to use other hand for keeping case upright when carrying it. (smallish depth of DA-01 made it possible to wrap other hand around case)
 
EsaT said:
A71's door makes Chieftec's door really feel as what it is: cheap, flimsy plastic! (+opening direction can be changed)
Click to expand...
No argument there, I've superglued the hinge several times after an accident :D
 
Well something a few days ago made the decision pretty simple.

My GTS decided to corrupt its memory and the excellent people at BFG RMA'd me an upgrade to a GTX which arrived today. Being even longer and despite vertically placed power connectors, the thing is miraculously wedged precisely between two hard drives - it's like 5mm *into* the drive bay lol. So before I short something out, this case has to go.

PC-A71B ordered for Mon/Tue :)
 
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