What would make the perfect case?

[Vidar]

Having gone over many cases for my new build and deciding on the Antec 902 so i could invest more money elsewhere though what i want to know is what features would you guys want in the perfect case?

 

[alex24]

Good cable management.
Cool.
Light.
Subtle, expensive, refined looks.
Silent.
eSATA + USB front panel.
Room for long gfx cards.

Could probably think of more..

 

[Ducky Spud]

This

 

[reflux]

This

^^this, but with 120mm rear fans, and £150 off the price.

My criteria on cases is that they must look good and have a lot of space - building a PC in a cramped case is very irritating.

 

[mjones1]

Black inside and out
watercooling room/features
Smoked window.

 

[arc@css]

Love the cooling my skeleton allows but on reflection it is a bit cramped.

Cases need to look good, have good cooling and allow for plenty of space which is why I am going to get a full tower or even a super tower.

 

[LukeTW]

Black inside and out
watercooling room/features
Few LED's/cold cathodes
Great cooling
Smoked window.

Added a few more

 

[Ducky Spud]

Smoked window is always a nice addition

 

[mjones1]

To me LED's/cold cathodes make a case look cheap and all chaved up.

 

[Vidar]

I was getting at placement of fans.... materials used, amounts of drive bays etc

 

[LukeTW]

I was getting at placement of fans.... materials used, amounts of drive bays etc

I'd say,
3x 140mm fans at the front (intake)
1x 200/240mm fan at the top (intake)
2x 140mm fans at the rear (out take)
Maybe a side one..

 

[mjones1]

stealth drives always do look nice.

 

[Duran]

To me LED's/cold cathodes make a case look cheap and all chaved up.

yeah I agree with that but some favourite cases of this forum look horrible.

 

[Fenris]

*cough*

*cough*

Just trying to justify how much I spent on the damn thing

 

[Ducky Spud]

fortress... nice

I was getting at placement of fans.... materials used, amounts of drive bays etc

As for these, you want some intake fans at the front and exhaust fans at the back Luke gave an idea... well, an extreme idea haha, I'd be happy with 2x 120mm intake at the front, a single 120 at the rear and somthing in the roof as well... but for me the roof would be radiator location for water cooling

Amount of drive bays, I want at least 4 5.25" bays really, and I only use 1 3.5" drive at the moment so not too fussed about those. Number of bays is a personal thing really, depends on what you want in your case

As for material used, aluminium is pretty good if you ask me (with my Lian-Li case). Its light and strong and just pretty good! Steel is heavier but stronger and less vibratey (if thats a word.. you know what i mean anyways) too.

 

[Kennysevenfold]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-134-LL&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=187

 

[FaceplantSi]

I'll add another vote for the Silverstone Fortress.

As for drive bays, I need at least 5 x 3.5" bays due to having an array of SSD's and a couple of data storage drives, but imo a really modern home setup could use a home server or NAS for data storage and thus would only need an OS/Apps drive or array internally - having less drives would make for cleaner airflow and better cooling too.

Fans - hmm, as others have said a couple of front intakes, a top intake and a rear exhaust make for good airflow, and with the right speed fans you can get a decent positive pressure setup to help reduce dust ingress. Also having the PSU 'upside down' with a dedicated inlet helps too as it'll not be drawing warm air from the system through itself.

All in all that takes me straight back to the Fortress... and they look cracking too!

 

[EsaT]

Light.
Silent.
Room for long gfx cards.

Big steel case is always so heavy that aluminium is only practical material... thin enough steel case to be light would be very resonance prone.
Soft HDD mounting is already required by steel case and with combination damping mat aluminium case is acoustically better with still notably less weight than plain unlined steel case.
Also door is required for good component sound muffling cabability.

This

Hard HDD mounting... and dual chamber design makes:
- Free space divided to smaller areas further complicating wiring.
- Use of airflow inefficient, two 12cm fans just for few HDDs! (+noise leaking)
- Airflow of motherboard chamber is anything else than laminar.
And anykind window is always serious challenge to EMC. (which requires opaqueness to micro/radio waves)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-134-LL&groupid=701&catid=7&subcat=187

No soft HDD mounting. Really complex design puts different parts to more cramped areas. Too little external bays pointing to extremely impractical direction. (and then some complain about doors!)

I'll add another vote for the Silverstone Fortress.
As for drive bays, I need at least 5 x 3.5" bays

So not enough of them, with dense spacing of that case four HDDs is sensible number for not blocking also airflow.
And if knuckles hit to anything when installing graphics card then case is plain cramped.

 

[Ducky Spud]

So Esat, you would reccomend...?

 

[HighlandeR]

Definatly todays Cases need too move past the 120mm fans and onto 140-200+ size fans for more silence/better airflow and cooling

But its happening slowly