First time PC build case advice please.

Newbie65

Newbie65

Newbie65

Associate
Joined
5 Oct 2018
Posts
11
Hi,
At the grand age of 65, retired and with time on my hands, I am going to attempt my first PC build.
It seems to me that one of the most important things to get right is the case. I want a mid tower with two external drive bays. Nothing out of the ordinary going inside, ATX mb, liquid cooled core i7,
M2 SSD, , 2 X HDD and probably a gtx 1060.
The case needs to be decent quality, and easy to work with, ie plenty of room and decent cabling options. It should also have good airflow and fan options.
I would appreciate any recommendations from people who have been there.
I stress, most important is easy to work with.

I should add, I am not interested in flashy LEDs etc, except for front fans.

Many thanks.
 
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £106.09 (includes shipping: £11.10)​
​

7XrOXaS.jpg
 
Thanks orbital Walsh, that looks a nice case. Not sure about one with front door panel though. My pc tends to be in use a lot, does that mean keeping the front open all or most of the time? Haven't looked at Fractal Define yet.
 
Newbie65 said:
Thanks orbital Walsh, that looks a nice case. Not sure about one with front door panel though. My pc tends to be in use a lot, does that mean keeping the front open all or most of the time? Haven't looked at Fractal Define yet.
Click to expand...

will have to pop it open or not sure if you can remove it entirely.
Both I believe are sound proofed , Pure 600 can be glass or solid panel with sound damp material . Glass doesn;t scratch easily like Plexiglas does.

Pure can house 3x 5.3" HDD but seems most cases now only house 2
 
Newbie65 said:
I stress, most important is easy to work with.
Click to expand...
Fashion is most of the time opposite of functionality and cases with marketing hype "PSU shroud" are just harder to work with...
By decreasing amount of continous free space and cramming PSU into cramped compartment.
Define R5 is actually better than newer fashion's butt licking R6 in that.


Also if you want ease of use and minimum maintenance high reliability for long time operation waterpipe coolers aren't that good.
Waterpipes in place of heatpipes do nothing to the fact that heat has to dissipated into air.
And nowadays common compact/slim radiators don't have especially high surface area.
In fact with more noise sources they often struggle to match good heatpipe coolers in cooling per noise.

And while heatpipes are extremely reliable, waterpipe coolers face multiple challenges.
That pump is wearing part and if it fails, there's no cooling.
And depending on material and thickness individual water molecules permeate through tubing at some rate.
Necessitating having reservoir and/or way to fill loop.
Refilling ability would be already needed for maintaining effectiveness of coolant's corrosion inhibitors.

Sure big custom water cooling systems can provide lot more cooling power than even best heatpipe coolers.
But those have lot higher cost and need some occasional maintenance for maintaining best reliability.
While heatpipe cooler can be just forgotten once installed and if its fan fails after half dozen years, that's not end of the world for cooling.

Newbie65 said:
Not sure about one with front door panel though. My pc tends to be in use a lot, does that mean keeping the front open all or most of the time? Haven't looked at Fractal Define yet.
Click to expand...
Define R5 has selectable opening direction of door.
So its effect can be minimized regardless of on which side you keep PC.
Door also blocks direct noise escape path, allowing case to dampen sounds of components, instead of leaking all noises out unmuffled.

BeQuiet lacks ability to choose opening direction, making door possibly more problematic if you use optical drive.
And Fractal Design uses proper mass damping of side panels, instead of light and thin cosmetic fraud foams like in BeQuiet.
(shame considering BeQuiet makes excellent sound damping mat combining ~2mm bitumen layer to 8mm foam)
Also Define R5 having bottom dust filter accessible from front is lot easier, than having to turn case around to pull filter out from rear.

While that cosmetic fraud foam could be replaced by bitumen with some own work, that dust filter setup can't be improved.

Here's quite thorough review of Define R5.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Fractal_Design/Define_R5/3.html
With GTX1060 and such mainstream graphics cards there won't be problems in getting good cooling.
 
LE1wP5q.jpg

phanteks quality is very nice - doesn't have sound damp i believe, but wasnt one of your requirements and all stock fans of each case are quiet enough

Fractals Design S2 is a very nice case though , shame it doesn't have 5.3" bays :(
 
With fractal design cases you don't need to keep the door open during use. They have airflow channels around the sides of the door.

You would open it if you wanted to use a dvd drive that is in a 5.25 bay for example, but keep it shut the rest of the time.
 
Thank you for your replies, and Mobster, thanks for your in depth reply.
Interesting points about water cooling, I might think again on that.
 
This might be a stupid statement, but aesthetics aside and given a similar spec, would it make sense to get the largest case that would fit in my space? i.e. larger case, more room inside therefore easier build?
 
Newbie65 said:
This might be a stupid statement, but aesthetics aside and given a similar spec, would it make sense to get the largest case that would fit in my space? i.e. larger case, more room inside therefore easier build?
Click to expand...
Correct, the more there's room, the easier it's to work inside case when installing parts.
Full tower height E-ATX case makes normal ATX motherboard look small.
(that's from first built into my current 10 years old case)

But there's literally weighty downside.
Steel case of such size weights ~15kg by itself and because of being made of thin metal sheets still isn't acoustically good.
Mass damping would be couple kilograms more.
Fortunately Lian Li had at that time good versatile aluminium case and with BeQuiet's combination mat lining it ended up weighting IIRC fair 11kg.

Anyway as you won't be having that many drives and/or biggest gaming graphics card, for example that Define R5 would have good internal space when using only smaller HDD cage.
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cases/leo-waldock/fractal-design-define-r5-chassis-review/
Nowadays quite many better cases use such removable HDD cages.

Newbie65 said:
Interesting points about water cooling, I might think again on that.
Click to expand...
Except for more notable overclocking there really isn't even any need for other good heatpipe cooler.
Of course the absolutely highest performance heatpipe coolers are massive and can protrude into space of uppermost PCI-e slot, or above DIMM slots.
But you can get step below top level heatpipe cooler without those issues for very wallet friendly price:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/scythe-scmg-5100-mugen-5-cpu-cooler-hs-046-sy.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom