Best rated and inexpensive watercooled case?
- Thread starter mlahatte
- Start date
PCTC2
Diamond Member
- Feb 18, 2007
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You're probably better off sticking with a cheap air-cooled case and getting a nice air-cooler.
Those prebuilt watercooled cases are usually crap. Gigabyte, Thermaltake, etc are all crap.
One case that might be worth it is the Swiftech P180. It's an Antec P180 with a Swiftech H20-120 Kit inside, premodded. It only comes with a MCR120 radiator, but that can be replaced by a MCR220 with a little modding to mount it externally in the rear with a Swiftech RadBox. It's a nice kit.
Those prebuilt watercooled cases are usually crap. Gigabyte, Thermaltake, etc are all crap.
One case that might be worth it is the Swiftech P180. It's an Antec P180 with a Swiftech H20-120 Kit inside, premodded. It only comes with a MCR120 radiator, but that can be replaced by a MCR220 with a little modding to mount it externally in the rear with a Swiftech RadBox. It's a nice kit.
I love the Mountain Mod cases. I was just wondering if there were less expensive versions. Be nice to buy a case that is already modded to fit a 3 120mm fan radiator. I'm not really looking for a case that comes with the water cooled parts. Just one that is already modded to fit water cooled stuff. (ie. radiator)
Are you looking into water cooling for overclocking/Temperature reasons or for silence? There is a major difference in what you'll need between the two.
The Thermaltake watercooled cases are expensive, and sub-par compared to custom / swiftech watercooling kits. Having used one for about a year, it wasn't too bad. However, it was MUCH more expensive than an average case + air cooling, and didn't give me a ton of benefit.
The Antec P180 with the Swiftech kit doesn't look too bad, but again, don't expect revolutionary performance. The nice thing about it is the premodding and professionalism. However, the cooling is aimed more at silence than performance, and will probably only perform as well as a top-end air cooler. You always have the option of upgrading later, though.
Your absolute best bet in terms of performance-per-dollar is a decent full tower case (CoolerMaster Cosmos, Silverstone TJ-07, Thermaltake Armor, etc.) with a do-it-yourself liquid cooling loop. You will, no doubt, blow $300+ by the end, but you should have great performance if you follow the advice of the water coolers here. Learn from my mistakes - prebuilt kits aren't the way to go if you want performance; if you just want silence or ease of use, by all means go for it.
The Antec P180 with the Swiftech kit doesn't look too bad, but again, don't expect revolutionary performance. The nice thing about it is the premodding and professionalism. However, the cooling is aimed more at silence than performance, and will probably only perform as well as a top-end air cooler. You always have the option of upgrading later, though.
Your absolute best bet in terms of performance-per-dollar is a decent full tower case (CoolerMaster Cosmos, Silverstone TJ-07, Thermaltake Armor, etc.) with a do-it-yourself liquid cooling loop. You will, no doubt, blow $300+ by the end, but you should have great performance if you follow the advice of the water coolers here. Learn from my mistakes - prebuilt kits aren't the way to go if you want performance; if you just want silence or ease of use, by all means go for it.
- Sep 28, 2005
- 21,037
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most prebuilt h2o cases are total crap.
Even the old koolance cases, some of them were based off the Lian Li series cases, and just moded to take the top cooling unit.
Case moding is not very difficult to do. The TJ-07 like a member recomended is probably one of the few large towers which will require almost no modding to migrate.
The TJ-07 is however very price at near 300 dollars for the case alone. Add another h2o gear to it, and you can easily run almost 600-700 dollars for the case and cooling aspect to your design.
A cheaper and fairly easier case to work with is a CM Stacker T01. A radiator adapter can be bought at Performance-PCS.com to mount on the bottom to natively take a 120x2 radiator.
Now a 120x2 radiator is only about good for either just the GPU or the CPU. I wouldnt recomend adding both onto a small radiator like this.
What most people do with the Stacker T01, they cut open the bottom a bit wider and longer so it can take a 120x3 radiator. Usually the radiator will weight a lot so very little bolting is required once you drop mount the radiator, but i still recomend a decient mount for it.
The stacker can be bought for around 120-150. Sometimes cheaper, so that maybe another alternative for you.
I did a work on a CM690 which im in the middle of writting up. Still having a hard time making things simplar and easy to understand, but the project was not easy. It took a fair amount of time, and a lot of planning is needed. I skimped on the planning and made a few mistakes. Which is why i have a delay in my thread. Trying to use another members first portion to overlap mine, to make things a bit easier.
Hope this helps.
Even the old koolance cases, some of them were based off the Lian Li series cases, and just moded to take the top cooling unit.
Case moding is not very difficult to do. The TJ-07 like a member recomended is probably one of the few large towers which will require almost no modding to migrate.
The TJ-07 is however very price at near 300 dollars for the case alone. Add another h2o gear to it, and you can easily run almost 600-700 dollars for the case and cooling aspect to your design.
A cheaper and fairly easier case to work with is a CM Stacker T01. A radiator adapter can be bought at Performance-PCS.com to mount on the bottom to natively take a 120x2 radiator.
Now a 120x2 radiator is only about good for either just the GPU or the CPU. I wouldnt recomend adding both onto a small radiator like this.
What most people do with the Stacker T01, they cut open the bottom a bit wider and longer so it can take a 120x3 radiator. Usually the radiator will weight a lot so very little bolting is required once you drop mount the radiator, but i still recomend a decient mount for it.
The stacker can be bought for around 120-150. Sometimes cheaper, so that maybe another alternative for you.
I did a work on a CM690 which im in the middle of writting up. Still having a hard time making things simplar and easy to understand, but the project was not easy. It took a fair amount of time, and a lot of planning is needed. I skimped on the planning and made a few mistakes. Which is why i have a delay in my thread. Trying to use another members first portion to overlap mine, to make things a bit easier.
Hope this helps.
ok, then you're going to need a custom water cooling set-up, none of the pre-assembles systems are going to give you the actual results you're looking for. As for case, you're going to either have to do a lot of work yourself or pay a good chunk of change to have someone do it for you as there are VERY few places that will do custom water-cooling set-ups without charging you an arm and both legs.
Your next step needs to be to set a budget for yourself. A realistic one. I don't really know about anyone else but, I do custom cases and case modifications by mail for people, fairly reasonably. places like Frozen Cpu sell some generically modified cases for water cooling.
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