Worthwhile case upgrade?

schumi84

schumi84

schumi84

Soldato
Joined
5 Sep 2006
Posts
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West Ewell, Surrey
Hi there. Having had my Antec Plusview 1000 case for well over 4 years (maybe longer) i fancy a bit of a change. This is down to 2 reasons, the first being i just want something new, as have upgraded the bits inside twice without changing the case.

The second reason and probably most important is the noise factor. Only being able to have 80mm fans is a bit of a pain so would like to be able to have good cooling but without the noise to go with it.

This is my current set up:





Now i have been looking around for a little while at what case to replace it with and i have seen the Thermaltake VA7000WA Shark. After checking the dimensions it will be slightly bigger (which it doesnt really need to be as the Antec is already pretty big) but is a bonus, and also the 120mm fans is what i am looking for.

Any comments are welcome regarding whether this would be a beneficial upgrade, or any suggestions on what case other than the Shark to get. Price wise i dont really want to be spending any more than about £85 really.

Thanks for reading.
 
I would really like to stay with Antec, as said before i have really enjoyed owning this case (though it was a bit of a mission taking round my mate's house for a LAN party.) I have looked at both the 900 and the P182, and noticed they are very popular amongst the OCUK community (and also a certain Jacob Billing, lol). Out of those 2 Antecs i would probably go for the P192 as it looks very stylish, is it possible to get it with a window?

With those being so popular, that is another reason why i would like something a bit different.
 
The Armour does look very good, esp for cooling potential, but a little out of my price range really. Looking at the Coolermaster 690, that is a very nice price for what looks a very well thought out case. Have looked on the Coolermaster website and they do a windowed side panel as well:

http://www.coolermaster.com/products/product.php?language=en&act=detail&tbcate=65&id=3168

I reckon now it is between the 690, the Shark and the P182. I am leaning towards the 690 now, and wouldnt mind in the future going back to water cooling (had a kit on my old XP2500 in my Antec). Would all these cases be able to accomodate a custom kit?
 
Ok, after a lot of debating i think i am going to go for the Coolermaster 690 and buy the aftermarket windowed side panel. Over the next few months i may well change the innards of the machine, as i am not able to overclock as well as i was hoping and for some reason the CPU is running hotter than i was expecting (currently at idle 42,36,34,42) at 2.4GHz and anything above this and UT3 is unstable.

With the new bits i may go for some watercooling as well but will have to see how the funds go.

Thanks very much for the help in deciding on the case, it is very much apreciated.
 
I am hoping so, cheers for the words of advice. I am stumped though as to why my CPU isnt stable at higher clocks and why it is so warm.

May have to try another relap of the CPU and make sure that the Tuniq is definitely flat. Otherwise the only other reason why the cores are such different temps is something to do with the actual heatspreader not making good enough contact with the cores themselves.
 
lmfy2k said:
looking into the CM690 myself, let us know how you get on mate
Click to expand...

I will do indeed, i think i am gonna buy the damn thing now :D, Just to get it over and done with and give me something else to play with.

Also it will give me a chance to reseat my CPU and check to make sure there is good contact and both the CPU and Tuniq are flat.
 
That is a very smart watercooling setup killersheep, especially considering it is your first attempt.

Looks nice and roomy on the inside of the case, mine should be here today at some point so will be posting pics of before and after the install.
 
I have just taken receipt of my new case at work so can only look at it for the time being:



This is what it will be replacing:



and what will be going inside it:

 
Again sorry for the quality of the pics, will try and get hold of sisters now unused camera (lens went on it so she got a new one but we fixed it).

CPU before Tuniq installation:


Front CM690 / Antec Comparison:


Side CM690 / Antec Comparison:


Inside the CM690:


I need to have another look at the other side of the case, where all the cables now are, other than that i am relatively happy about the cable management, feel that it is much better and easier to do than in my old Antec.
 
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Right, have got my hands on a slightly better quality camera so have a couple of better pics of the new case:

Sideview


Frontview


Inside



Also i have now managed to get an 8hr stable overclock of my Q6600. Running 3.36GHz with 1.35 vcore and +0.15 on the FSB and MCH voltage:
 
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shaffaaf27 said:
poor quality camera :p

i love it when people spend load on an amazing rig, only to be et down by the poor camera :D
Click to expand...

Or have no camera at all, only able to use my poor 2.0 megapixel camera phone. Will see what i can do with the pictures coming up and improve the quality.
 
After swapping over a couple of SATA cables to the right angles ones (got the right angle going into the back of the hard drives so there is less pressure put on them from the side panel) everything seems pretty good.

Have just fitted a 120mm fan to the bottom of the case and one to the roof, pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to take the whole case apart. The fans connected directly to the PSU are only spinning at about 500-800 RPM so are inaudible, so the only thing i can actually hear in the case is my Tuniq, and even that is a very dull woosh as it is only at half speed.

All in all i am very happy so far with the cut down of noise (having come from 3 80mm fans), will probably get myself a fan controller to fit at the front just to be able to speed the fans up a bit.

The only issue i have had, which i have commented on in my post in the overclocking section, is that the new overclock i tried - 400x8 @ stock volts, seemed fine, but on running prime95 instead of just failing one core, it stopped recognizing my hard disk and corrupted my profile so have that to fix later on tonight.
Temperature-wise, after about 30mins the cores were sat at 64 60 61 63 ( i think).

/Edit I have now ordered the acrylic side panel for the case, so will be able to post some decent quality pictures of it once it arrives next week some time.
 
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Cheers for that killersheep, i 'think' i have the rev 2. I am gonna do some investigating into trying to get the overclock stable. Dont really want to increase the voltage too much as for what ever reason my chip seems to get quite warm during Prime95, more so than a lot of the chips i have seen on the overclocking section.
With regards to the fan speed controller, i have had a look on the forums and on the OCUk website and the Karma seems like quite a popular choice. I presume it is used with 3 pin fans too.
 
I find that the noisest (and i use the term loosely) is the rear fan, that is if my Tuniq Fan is turned to half way.

The Zalman fan controller is out of stock atm so hopefully it will be in soon, as it does look pretty nice.
 
All of the decent fan controllers are a bit on the expensive side tbh. I have looked on a few various sites at the Akasa Fan Controller (the FC-03) and the pic on OCUK doesnt seem to do it justice.

It looks quite smart with the backlit buttons and the various different LCD colour options and also comes with 4 temp probes. May have to look in to that one a bit more.

Btw i have my new acrylic side panel arriving this week so will hopefully get some pics of that up, along with my UV stuff reinstalled.
 
I am back again, at last.

Finally got my new side for my CM690. I know the window isnt the biggest but i went for it because it only shows what needs to be shown, as the bit below the fan is the PSU, and the right is all the hard drives.



I shall be taking some night-time pics (i have UV cathodes in) once i get my other camera, as my current one hates taking dark pictures, they just come out blurry.
 
Have got hold of my sister's 7.1mp Casio camera to take some night-time pics that will hopefully show up the UV.
 
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