Looking for a new case, I have a coolermaster elite 335 at the moment, and I can barely fit all my stuff in. Case needs to house an atx motherboard, 4 hdd, 2 optical drives, a 5850 and sound card.I also have a coolermaster hyper 212+ on the cpu, so it needs to have no problem housing that.
I have a budget of £100 (might be able to stretch it, but would rather not).
I've been looking at few cases, but just can't decide
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I don't want a NZXT Phatom, any of the HAF series or the antec 900, as I don't like the design of them.
So that leaves me with the cm 690ii lite, dragon lord k62 and the fractal design xl or r3.
Cm690 ii lite is nice, seems to have a lot of space and is the cheapest of the lot. Seems to have plenty of room for my hdds, my only concern is the graphics card space. The 5850 is non-reference, so it's a bit longer than a normal one (10.5" I think it is), also the power connectors go into the end of it, rather than on top, so I'm a bit concerned about that. Will it still fit without having to bend cables too much? Also what about future cards? the 69XX and 580 series are a bit longer aren't they?, will they fit it? As I'd like the case to be fairly future proof.
Lancool Dragon lord k62
Quite a bit more expensive than the cm690ii and doesn't look much bigger. Some reviews seem to have some concerns about build quality,so I'm not really sure about this one, guess it's just here to keep my options open and get some opinions on it.
Fractal desgin define xl.
Now this seemed to be the perfect case for me. Plenty of space, but according to reveiws, not so good on the cpu cooling. Although it seems from a few reviews this is something that plagues most full tower cases as the cpu is so far away from the intake fans. I have a phenom 2 955@stock speeds and for now I have no intention to overclock, although if I did decide I would like to, it would probably only be a modest one, rather than trying to push as far as it will go. So I'm not sure if the cooling issues would be a problem for me or not?
Define R3
Smaller version it seems, better cooling because of it, but at £10 less than the xl, doesn't seem like such a good deal any more
Also not right now, but in the future sometime, when I can afford it, I wouldn't mind trying out watercooling, however at the moment I know nothing about it, so any of these cases suitable for it while having all that stuff in there, or is trying to stuff 4 hdds, 2 optical drives and water cooling into a £100 case just asking too much?
So really not sure which to get , are there any other cases I'm missing that I should consider?, picking a case is really hard
Thanks.
I have a budget of £100 (might be able to stretch it, but would rather not).
I've been looking at few cases, but just can't decide
.I don't want a NZXT Phatom, any of the HAF series or the antec 900, as I don't like the design of them.
So that leaves me with the cm 690ii lite, dragon lord k62 and the fractal design xl or r3.
Cm690 ii lite is nice, seems to have a lot of space and is the cheapest of the lot. Seems to have plenty of room for my hdds, my only concern is the graphics card space. The 5850 is non-reference, so it's a bit longer than a normal one (10.5" I think it is), also the power connectors go into the end of it, rather than on top, so I'm a bit concerned about that. Will it still fit without having to bend cables too much? Also what about future cards? the 69XX and 580 series are a bit longer aren't they?, will they fit it? As I'd like the case to be fairly future proof.
Lancool Dragon lord k62
Quite a bit more expensive than the cm690ii and doesn't look much bigger. Some reviews seem to have some concerns about build quality,so I'm not really sure about this one, guess it's just here to keep my options open and get some opinions on it.
Fractal desgin define xl.
Now this seemed to be the perfect case for me. Plenty of space, but according to reveiws, not so good on the cpu cooling. Although it seems from a few reviews this is something that plagues most full tower cases as the cpu is so far away from the intake fans. I have a phenom 2 955@stock speeds and for now I have no intention to overclock, although if I did decide I would like to, it would probably only be a modest one, rather than trying to push as far as it will go. So I'm not sure if the cooling issues would be a problem for me or not?
Define R3
Smaller version it seems, better cooling because of it, but at £10 less than the xl, doesn't seem like such a good deal any more
Also not right now, but in the future sometime, when I can afford it, I wouldn't mind trying out watercooling, however at the moment I know nothing about it, so any of these cases suitable for it while having all that stuff in there, or is trying to stuff 4 hdds, 2 optical drives and water cooling into a £100 case just asking too much?
So really not sure which to get , are there any other cases I'm missing that I should consider?, picking a case is really hard
Thanks.
. Although just one more thing , in all the pictures I've seen with it fitted for watercooling, the 4 hdd bays at the bottom have to come out to fit one of the radiators in. If I did go water cooling, to start with it would just be the cpu, so I'd only need the one? and could mount it up top while leaving all the hdd bays in. Two are only needed if you want to do both cpu and gpu? or is it just for sli? as a lot of the pictures with two radiators in are sli setups.
![[Olly]](/styles/overclockers/avatars/2.png){kind=avatar}
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