Originally posted by: eleusive
I'm trying to decide if the extra $50 to get the 1200 over the 900 is worth paying.
Depending on where you buy from, the 1200 may be as low as $129.99. MicroCenter has it at that price for sure if you have one near you and Newegg had a few sales for around that price with free shipping. If the difference is only $40-50 and the case price is less than $150 I'd say its definitely worth it. Big improvements on the 1200 over 900 are external fan controls, fan grilles and more room. There's some other cosmetic additions, like black interior finish on the 1200. Also few things I liked on the 900 better - smaller honeycomb grilles, side fan placement, top slope and tray style, side door mounting.
I'll have a Q9550 cooled by an OCZ Vendetta 2, a BFG GTX-280, and will eventually have 2 or 3 hard drives and 2 external drives. I plan on overclocking fairly aggressively. I know the 1200 is "roomier", but will it really make much of a difference in temps? Does anyone have firsthand experience with both cases?
I personally did not see temps lowered from just moving to a 900 to a 1200 despite the additional rear 120mm, addiitional front 120mm and even an additional passthrough fan (taken from my 900). Your results may vary however.
I do greatly prefer the 1200 however because there's an additional 3.5" or so at the top and an additional 1.5" or so between the mobo area and the HDD cages. Both make a pretty big difference in terms of how easy it is to navigate the internals of the case and in the case of the HDD cages, allows for much easier use of the passthrough fan cages for your vid card and cleaner cable management.
The extra fan/drive bay is also a nice feature, since you can't have a HDD installed where you have a larger vid card, like a GTX 260/280 or 4870X2. So if you want more than 6 drives/HDDs the extra bay is essential. I'm not using the additional cage yet, however, I plan to for 2 SSDs in RAID once they work out the kinks with random writes.
Question 2: Does anyone know the actual specs on the fans included in these systems? I'm wondering if it'll be worth it to replace them with a few Scythe fans, or if the fans provide adequate cooling on lower speeds.
SPCReview ratings and specs for TriCool 120mm
You'll see they rate them as good, not great in terms of performance. I've found them to be quite good also, particularly the adjustability of the fan speed. On the 1200, I'd definitely recommend against replacing the fans as they're wired into the case's fan controls, 3 rheobus on the front cages and LMH controls on the rear for the 2 rear exhaust and top exhaust.
Last question: Does putting an extra fan on the side panel actually help lower GPU temps? I know more fans doesn't necessarily equate to better airflow.
I know there's plenty that don't think so, but they definitely do IME, with a 8800GTX mainly in the 900 and now a GTX 280 in the 1200, the side fan typically drops temps 3-4C idle and 5-10C load. I have my optical drives and X-Fi bay loaded at the bottom so there's not as much airflow near the vid cards as my 900, so the side fan is even more important. I actually wish there was an extra 120mm fan, or that the fan was located closer to the front of the window so that its closer to the vid cards intake.
Btw chizow, how many CFM is your side fan pushing?
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