Corsair 800D and air cooling

Gray · 26 Sep 2009 at 06:54

After hours of researching, I'm still not 100% convinced on which case to buy, but I think I'm going to take the plunge and just get an 800D.

The only thing I'm slightly concerned about is that some reviews on the web mention it has pretty poor air flow with its stock fans. I won't be water-cooling (but may in the future) so should I be looking to replace the stock fans or are they in fact good enough?

Shawreyboy · 26 Sep 2009 at 10:09

If you can stomach the guy slapping his lips together all the time. There are some pretty astounding statistics for this case on air cooling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9yMF6etqAw

IMO from this review its a no-no on air.

Gray · 26 Sep 2009 at 16:18

Oh..! Well that's kind of confirmed what I thought. Damn, and I was almost hitting the "BUY" button

So what case do I go for now?

The Asgard · 26 Sep 2009 at 23:01

I moved my 920, GTX 260 and Noctua NH-U12P from a Cosmos to 800D and I have seen better temps with stock fans. I admit the CPU is not overclocked but seems OK to me. For me it's all about no rattles and the case being quiet plus the option of watercooling on top. I'm going to move my 120.3 over from my Lian V2000 when I get time. Great case that oozes quality. I can't recommend it enough.

Plus you will have no hassle with the new X2

madindehead · 26 Sep 2009 at 23:14

The Asgard said:
I moved my 920, GTX 260 and Noctua NH-U12P from a Cosmos to 800D and I have seen better temps with stock fans. I admit the CPU is not overclocked but seems OK to me. For me it's all about no rattles and the case being quiet plus the option of watercooling on top. I'm going to move my 120.3 over from my Lian V2000 when I get time. Great case that oozes quality. I can't recommend it enough.

Plus you will have no hassle with the new X2

A bit off topic here sorry, but can I ask, what did you think of the Coolermaster Cosmos as a case? Did it have good air flow? Also, did you have your 920 overclocked in that at all?

The Asgard · 27 Sep 2009 at 09:00

madindehead said:
A bit off topic here sorry, but can I ask, what did you think of the Coolermaster Cosmos as a case? Did it have good air flow? Also, did you have your 920 overclocked in that at all?

I'm running a I5 rig in there running at stock. I develop software so I need a nice quiet case. The Cosmos fits the bill. Plenty of room and pretty solid but very heavy. There is one intake fan and four extraction fans. Air flow is probably fairly poor but it ran a GTX 280 and 920 without issue. I think it comes down to the level of noise your prepared to accept. The case pales next to the 800D.

roman59 · 27 Sep 2009 at 10:16

In answer to your question about case temps etc here goes.

I have also got 3 Sythe Sflex 120mm fans running at 1200 rpm in the top of the case plus the stock 140mm fans running on auto from the Asus P6T motherboard.

At present the ambient temperature in my room is 19 degress c.

All the temps are taken from everest

Case temp 30 degrees
Motherboard 32 degrees.
Cpu 29 degrees (running at stock settings)
Gtx295 core 1 52 degrees core 2 50 degrees
Hard drives 4 in total coolest one is running at 31 degrees & hottest running at 40 degrees ( but that is an old drive not eco friendly)

When gaming the cpu never gets above 40 degrees under load due to the Coolermaster V8 (great cooler).

I normally set the fan speed manually to 60% on the Gtx295 & it never goes over 75 degrees, one thing I would say is that I have never been happy with the temps on the Gtx295 as it seems to run too hot but maybe its me being paranoid

As an experiment yesterday I installed a 120mm fan in the 3 empty drive bays on the front of the case to see what would happen to the temps in the case and it only dropped by around 1 degree, not much difference so that was taken out.

At some point this week I will be swapping out the stock bottom & rear fans for a couple of 140mm Xigmateks & will be interested to see if they pull more air into the case as the stock fans do seem to be a little weak but I dont want a tornado sitting beside my desk

Also very tempted to go for a couple of the new Ati 5870 cards which are supposed to run cooler etc but at present they are really hard to get in the U.K.

As they say I will keep you posted hope this helps?

Cheers all

Gray · 27 Sep 2009 at 10:52

roman59 said:
In answer to your question about case temps etc here goes.

As they say I will keep you posted hope this helps?

Cheers all

Please do. At the moment I'm torn between the the Corsair 800 and the Coolermaster 840 which seems to be better for air cooling. I don't want to pay over £200 for the 800 and have to spend even more on better fans!

MartinBen · 27 Sep 2009 at 11:15

The Asgard said:
I'm going to move my 120.3 over from my Lian V2000 when I get time. Great case that oozes quality. I can't recommend it enough.

Can I ask what's wrong with the Lian V2000 as I had shortlisted that to replace my nice (but ageing) Akasa Eclipse.

The Asgard · 27 Sep 2009 at 14:24

MartinBen said:
Can I ask what's wrong with the Lian V2000 as I had shortlisted that to replace my nice (but ageing) Akasa Eclipse.

Vibration issues which bugged the hell out of me. Had a fair few Lians and they all seem to have this issue. I put it down to thin Alu loose fitting panels.

The Halk · 27 Sep 2009 at 17:31

MartinBen said:
Can I ask what's wrong with the Lian V2000 as I had shortlisted that to replace my nice (but ageing) Akasa Eclipse.

Mine has the sides off, it rarely ever had the sides on. It vibrates, and resonates badly. Currently I have it stuffed with foam to try to stop the vibrations, but every few days I have to move the foam slightly, and over time more and more foam gets added.

I'm seriously considering the Corsair 800D.

MartinBen · 27 Sep 2009 at 18:08

Sounds like my Akasa.

Put sound dampening on inside of side panels but it also vibrates which is annoying

Cross Lian Li off my shortlist then.

setter · 27 Sep 2009 at 18:21

My akasa eclipse was starting to vibrate a bit, managed to trace it to the motherboard tray, i put a small strip of rubber along the top edge of the tray where it slides along on the guide slots, seems to have done the trick.

EsaT · 27 Sep 2009 at 19:02

The Asgard said:
Vibration issues which bugged the hell out of me.

V2000 has hard plasticky HDD mounting so it isn't wonder if it's vibrating.

The Halk said:
Mine has the sides off, it rarely ever had the sides on. It vibrates, and resonates badly. Currently I have it stuffed with foam to try to stop the vibrations

Foam helps as much against vibrations as t-shirt against bullet.
Damping/stopping vibrations needs mass... and preferably insulating vibrating parts from case at the first place.

setter said:
My akasa eclipse

Again hard HDD mounting...

setter · 27 Sep 2009 at 19:19

I think that may have contributed, but my TRUE cooler due to its weight tends to pull the mobo tray in the sliding rail, hence the rubber strip. On the bottom edge at the front of the tray there is a screw to hold the tray to the case frame, unfortunately akasa neglected to add a similair screw at the top

The Halk · 27 Sep 2009 at 19:30

EsaT said:
V2000 has hard plasticky HDD mounting so it isn't wonder if it's vibrating.

Foam helps as much against vibrations as t-shirt against bullet.
Damping/stopping vibrations needs mass... and preferably insulating vibrating parts from case at the first place.

Again hard HDD mounting...

Don't you think I might have tried that?

The pump is decoupled from the case by rubber holding two screws together. The hard drives are also decoupled - they don't cause any vibration. However even the small amount of vibration from the watercooling tubes is enough to resonate.

Sadly the case is badly designed, aluminium seemed to be the material of choice for a while, I'll be looking for steel from now on. The case itself though does nothing to isolate and remove vibration, in fact there's little that could be done to increase vibration.

Finally, foam does cut out vibration. I don't know what you had imagined I had done, but the foam is forced between pieces of metal to prevent them moving so much, and to ensure it's the foam that moves to dissipate vibration rather than the metal.

Leviathan · 28 Sep 2009 at 11:45

Ive been looking at fans to for the bottom of thise case and need 140mm fans do OC stock any ? an i mean real 140mm fans not 140mm with 120mm mountings ?.

Can some list the names of a few 140mm fans with that are quiet, have high rpm and push lotos f air ?. as ifi ts a rival company and you can post links atleast i know what to look for ?.

EsaT · 28 Sep 2009 at 12:11

The Halk said:
Finally, foam does cut out vibration.

Foam can insulate vibration if that's the way how vibration gets into case structure but for actually damping vibrations it's useless.

The Asgard · 28 Sep 2009 at 21:53

The Halk said:
Don't you think I might have tried that?

The pump is decoupled from the case by rubber holding two screws together. The hard drives are also decoupled - they don't cause any vibration. However even the small amount of vibration from the watercooling tubes is enough to resonate.

Sadly the case is badly designed, aluminium seemed to be the material of choice for a while, I'll be looking for steel from now on. The case itself though does nothing to isolate and remove vibration, in fact there's little that could be done to increase vibration.

Finally, foam does cut out vibration. I don't know what you had imagined I had done, but the foam is forced between pieces of metal to prevent them moving so much, and to ensure it's the foam that moves to dissipate vibration rather than the metal.

Ended up wedging card in mine to tighten up the panels. Like you say poor design looks good but thats it.

roman59 · 29 Sep 2009 at 19:51

Hey all

Just fitted 2 Xigmatek 140 fans in the case one on the bottom pulling in & the rear fan pulling out, you will be pleased to know that they have taken 5 degrees off my Gtx295 at idle!

No extra noise either so I am really pleased with the result.

So I have managed to get a better airflow into the case.

Hope this helps some of you

Cheers all