New Case Recommendations

death_looms

death_looms

death_looms

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4 Oct 2007
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After several years putting up with a thermaltake armor jr., I desperatly need a new case! This is what I'm looking for in a case, in no particular order

1. Low Noise
2. Good cable management
3. 'Minimalist' styling (i.e. not an LED farm!) - no preferance to a window or not
4. Easily hold 4 HDD's, with cooling
5. Cost < £200

The case will need to accommodate an OCZ Vendetta 2 CPU cooler (possibly a TRUE at a later date, so not essential), and will have one 4970 (a sapphire model, so not all hot air is exhausted out of the back)

I have been considering an antec P193, but for a std. atx layout, the cable management is not fantastic. So, fire away please :) Thanks.

P.S. Before anyone suggests them, I definitely don't want the antec 300/900/902/1200!
 
another one that hates thier armor :eek: i too had a amor it sucked pretty much I was going to do it up new 230mm aska blue fan and xgimiga fans but it just costs too much.

So I got a HAF932 10x better case, not very good looking through but its awsome at cooling, I only managed to break one thing on it, the exenable card clips , got it wedge on the case I glued it back on through still does the job.
 
i made the huge mistake of buying the Armour jr because it looked flashy ...a bit of ``bling``..... but this soon wore off and i noticed the noise it made, those front ``foils`` rattled like crazy.... but once removed, the case looked even worst.

the Liam looks even better on their website, but i cant put links up, it has a brushed high quality finish and it's top quality inside...it oozes class.

dont buy a ``blingy`` case, you'll get fed up with it.
 
moppy89 said:
Lian Li?

I dont know much about its other specs, but Lian Li PC-B25 looks absolutely sexummajig.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-106-LL&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=187

That looks good too.
Click to expand...

now the silver version is one of the coolest/ sexiest cases i've ever seen, especially with wheels on it. it's also huge, so loads of space for cooling..... this case is expensive but very interesting indeed :cool:

to show off a high end rig, i think you need a bit of class and this has it...it's a shame i cant upload the close in photos, it's awesome..you can get it for 150 quid.

it only has two fans, one in front and back, but because it's so vast inside maybe it's ok, even so; you could always install one more into the roof... but not into the side, it would spoil it....just measured it, it's miles bigger than mine
 
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£200 is a lot for a case, you could get almost anything you wanted.

I have a Coolermaster Stacker 832 and I'm really happy with it. It's on serious sale this week too, down from 176 to 116! http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-108-CM

- it's black
- has a decent front panel with 4 USB ports
- has lots of fan slots on the side door
- easy to open and pull out the motherboard
- loads of drive bays (though they are almost all 5.25", you can get 4-in-3 3.5" adapters, it comes with one set as standard)
- has wheels!

only bad point I've found with it is it got a bit cramped with the biggest coolers out there. I had a tuniq tower and I had to remove one of the fans in the side door to get it to fit. I have an arctic cooler pro 7 now and it is just fine.

Good case at that cheap price, for sure.
 
death_looms said:
I have been considering an antec P193, but for a std. atx layout...
Click to expand...
Not much standard in dual chamber design... but on the other hand that also limits choises in cable routing.

And from cases at stock Antec's P-serie has only really noise containing design. Cases with direct noise escape paths (nowadays majority) in front and sides are acoustically like non-existing wall. And what's left pretty much lack vibration resisting and/or airborne noise blocking ability at stock.


fross said:
I have a Coolermaster Stacker 832...
- has lots of fan slots on the side door
Click to expand...
That's good for increasing noise.
And actually small total amount of bays.
 
moppy89 said:
Im the guy from ******** who wants to buy your case for £40.

Pleas sell it to me :(

BUT, finding out that you have to open the door to turn the PC on is quite annoying...I thought the big blue ring was the on button lol
Click to expand...

Hehe I'm not selling my case but check the lancool k7 on ocuk. It's pretty much the same thing but with a steel interior and much cheaper.
 
Too dull lol, doesnt have the schmexiness of the B25.
I'll stick the Antec 300. Has about a billion fan mounts and good ventilation at the price I can afford lol
 
moppy89 said:
Too dull lol, doesnt have the schmexiness of the B25.
I'll stick the Antec 300. Has about a billion fan mounts and good ventilation at the price I can afford lol
Click to expand...

take care...front and rear fans only ..if you put a fan on the side panel it'll run hotter.....so the experts say! :cool:
 
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Coolermaster ATCS 840 is a very good case at your budget. Not too bling, plenty of space to work with and pretty cool inside. It's a very big case though, and pretty heavy, so don't plan on moving it about too much!
 
the Lian Li PC-A71A has 6 fans.....two at the lower front, two behind directly in line (on the other side of the hard drive bays) and two in the rear..the two in front of the hard drive bays; cool the Motherboard...it looks like a 5'' gap

this case is massive inside, mine will be virtually empty..as i plan to have only one massive hard drive.

this huge interior volume...about 7'' higher and longer than mine...will have great cooling.

it's about 150 quid, which seems ok considering its a quality product.
 
Wow, thanks for all the replies guys (and/or girls!), really appreciate the help!

Having now had a wee noisy, I'm interested in the Lian-Li's (PC-A7110B // PC-A71B // PC-V2010B - although at the extreme of the budget!)

Can anyone who owns any of these cases comment on the noise of stock cooling and difficulty of building/ cable management? I hear some of them come with a full complement of fans, this true?

Cheers for all the help so far!
 
the lian, the one i like, comes with the 6 fans.... but i think it's a bit noisy...this doesn't bother me, i might fit accoustic panneling..its huge inside ...i guess cable management is ok, it looks ok in photos.

i read a review on American website and it's pretty classy..with 6 x 120mm fans and a huge interior volume, it'll run quite cool....intake front exhaust rear, no fans in the side panels..... that's the way to do it :D
 
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death_looms said:
Having now had a wee noisy, I'm interested in the Lian-Li's (PC-A7110B // PC-A71B // PC-V2010B - although at the extreme of the budget!)
Click to expand...
A7110 doesn't have really anything over A71 except acoustically more leaky non-solid door and expensive acoustically clearly worser HDD mounting... And has anyone had HDDs breaking up at such pace to need backplane?
Even with full 10 HDDs failures wouldn't occur constantly assuming drives weren't lemons and PSU bad/ripple happy.

V2010 again is acoustically still more leaking thanks to open front for main chamber. (at least HDD cage works as "baffle" in A70)
And big number of 5.25" bays is really bogus because you need to reserve many of them for intake of main chamber where majority of heat is produced in gaming PCs... Already adding single 12cm intake fan would drop number of usable bays down to four so dual chamber design isn't without its problems.


All Lian Li's come with pretty much ass big complement of fans as possible... which isn't many in dual chamber models but half dozen in A70-based cases.
1200rpm fans (called as silent in Nordic Hardware's review) coming with A71 aren't acoustically best but neither bad (so I replaced them without further thoughts) and quite OK especially for ball bearing stock fans and would scale decently with controller.
A71's graphics card's support pillar has slots for attaching same memory cooling fan as in V2010 so it's easy to rig standard fan in there if needed and all of these can take additional cooler for expansion card area so adding some spot cooling is possible.

Light aluminium isn't acoustically best material but otherwise design has practically most silencing friendly features after Antec's P-serie (which can't compete in space) and with this kind combination mat lining seek noises of acoustic management disabled WDs stay pretty much completely inside when door is closed which is better than I was expecting. (door's effect to intake fan noise is "near 200rpm")
A71-kesken_s.jpg



There's not much cable management at stock but there's lot of space so functional cable management (preventing cables from blocking airflow) is just question of wrapping them away.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/LianLi/PC-A70/4.html
http://www.nordichardware.com/Reviews/?skrivelse=532&page=5
Adding few of these helps if you're drawing cables for longer distances, like from fans in rear to controller in 5.25" bay:
http://www.vekoy.com/index.php?cPath=78_1199_1868
http://www.vekoy.com/index.php?cPath=78_1199_1867
 
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