Cases around the £80 mark

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

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Hi All,
Looking for a case around the £80 mark. Something pretty quiet would be nice. Looks....well something modern would be prefered and nothing looking "kiddy". Not interested in side windows or anything like that.
Couple of recommendations from this site and others:

Antec P280 at around £65

LianLi PC-6B at around £80

Any owners of the above? Recommend?
Anything else to look at around the same kind of price?

Cheers.
 
I certainly would recommend the P280, best case I've ever owned or worked on (although I don't have any experience of it's current "competitors").
 
Just ordered the P280 for a build for my sister. Couldn't resist for £65 (about 1/2 what it used to be at some point). I'm still not sure if I'll pass the 500R on to her, and keeping the P280 for myself instead :)
 
After a bit of a mix up and thanks to 5UB, should have my P280 tomorrow.
Was thing of doing a comparison between my Thermaltake Dokker(existing case) and the P280 but not sure what to use to record the sound. Don`t have a mic..
 
This thread just stopped me making one of my own :)

I hadn't realised the 280 was so cheap now, last time I looked it was ~£100, and I need a new case (my Sonata 550 is too small for many modern video cards, and generally cramped).
 
Werewolf said:
This thread just stopped me making one of my own :)

I hadn't realised the 280 was so cheap now, last time I looked it was ~£100, and I need a new case (my Sonata 550 is too small for many modern video cards, and generally cramped).
Click to expand...

It's like xmas come early, if I didn't have a nice case and had £65 spare, I would have had snapped up as soon as I saw it at that price.
 
Just got mine this morning. :D
Was going to order it next Wednesday, so it would arrive on my birthday, but could`nt wait any longer. :)
It`s bloody heavy :eek:, compared to my present and previous cases.
But it is a beauty. First impressions, what can i say, well impressed. :D
Hopefully, should have everything installed and up and running this afternoon.
 
Im upgrading my sons computer soon and the had decided on the P280 for him but after seeing the reviews on this case im going to order 2 next month ...one for my son and one for me :)
 
p280 my thoughts after some thinking

everyone bigging up the p280 its good for £65 myself included thought it looked a great bargain but then I noticed a few things such as is the hdd cage modular ?

so you can get airflow to the gpu's it would seem not and 2x 120mm even at high rpm is just going to waft warm hdd air towards the gpu's slightly not much air is getting through those cages, also exactly which material is being used for sound dampening ? is it just some cheapo foam ? as £10-£15 more will get you a fractal with proper dense bitchumen dampening

I have also noticed it doesn't come with any front fans and you can only mount 120mm x 2 at the front which is very outdated so as you can see £65 seems more realistic now and not such an amazing bargain as many would think I'd pay a wee bit more and get a fractal.

So.... £65 then you'll have to add cost for needing to buy 2x 120mm fans may as well get an R3 it's a much better package for not much more money.
Even if they included the fans antec fans aren't exactly much cop so...My money would go on a fractal still for £70-£75 if I wanted quiet.
 
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IIRC the P280 uses the same basic sound dampening system as the Sonata series for the side panels (basically a sandwich of metal and two plastics), which certainly works well with the Sonata series (I've had the original Sonata, the second gen, and 550, and also used them for a several other builds).

120mm fans aren't that expensive, and there is a huge choice of them (I've actually got about 10 new ones spare here, as I bought a bunch of tricools when OCUK were doing them at 99p each, and some other models that were meant to be really quiet but I've yet to try out)).
Yes they're not as great as 140-180mm fans for airflow vs noise, but then 140mm+ fans tend to be a bit more limited in choice.

One of the things that put me off the R3 was some of the reports of poor QC with them last time I was seriously looking into cases (about 6-9 months ago) - something I know is unlikely to be an issue with Antec (I've used loads of their cases over the past 10 years, and QC has always been top notch).

I don't want it for running dual GPU's, but for a spacious, quiet case with loads of drive room :) and given that the 280 has significantly more cooling than my Sonata, which itself doesn't run hot, means the 280 fits the bill fairly risk free :)

I like the R3 looks, and cooling myself, but I also know that Antec cases tend to be very well built, and usually their sound dampening works well (also iirc the R3 is a little more restrictive than the 280 in terms of PSU if you want to use the bottom drive cage/fan mount).

Also OCUK don't seem to sell the R3 anymore.
 
I didn't know they just thickened the side panels or used the sonata design instead of dampening material but yea 2x decent 120mm fans are still going to be what £8-£12 ? so I see this case as being £75 ish really not saying it's bad as it's clearly decent for the money but I completely overlooked the fact that it doesn't come with front fans as I am sure many others have I just presumed it did.Yea there were QC issues a while back I recall thought they sorted all that out or many have R3's without the issues.
 
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C64 said:
p280 my thoughts after some thinking

everyone bigging up the p280 its good for £65 myself included thought it looked a great bargain but then I noticed a few things such as is the hdd cage modular ?

so you can get airflow to the gpu's it would seem not and 2x 120mm even at high rpm is just going to waft warm hdd air towards the gpu's slightly not much air is getting through those cages, also exactly which material is being used for sound dampening ? is it just some cheapo foam ? as £10-£15 more will get you a fractal with proper dense bitchumen dampening

I have also noticed it doesn't come with any front fans and you can only mount 120mm x 2 at the front which is very outdated so as you can see £65 seems more realistic now and not such an amazing bargain as many would think I'd pay a wee bit more and get a fractal.

So.... £65 then you'll have to add cost for needing to buy 2x 120mm fans may as well get an R3 it's a much better package for not much more money.
Even if they included the fans antec fans aren't exactly much cop so...My money would go on a fractal still for £70-£75 if I wanted quiet.
Click to expand...

AFAIK the front fan malarkey is to do with the case design. Negative pressure. I find it weird that they would put two exhaust fans on top and no front intake fan apart from design reasons. May not be ideal for HDD and SSD temps though.

I'll see when I put it through its paces.
 
Spend a bit more and you can get the Corsair 550D thing of beauty.

Best looking case around in my opinion.

CA-064-CS_41208_350.jpg


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-064-CS&groupid=2362&catid=1489&subcat=
 
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