Logical successor to the Centurion 5

[DrMrLordX]

It's been a long time since I bought a computer case. I got a Centurion 5 years ago for very little money (it was already old hat by the time I bought it), and I've been pretty happy with it except for the 5 1/4 drive bay which blocked a third fan on my nh-d14. Presumably it would do the same on other dual-towers with the capacity for three fans.

Also, I had to use wire cutters to get rid of the rear fan grill so my HSF could blow straight out of the case unobstructed.

I would love a modern take on the Cent5 that was a bit longer to accommodate three fans on a dual-tower like the nh-d14/15 etc, and that had removable fan grills so that I wouldn't have to do a hatchet job on my case to get smooth airflow.

Any recommendations? It doesn't have to be a Cooler Master case, mind you.

 

[ClockHound]

Oh my, a new Case! That's exciting! And a little bewildering.

The new usual suspects are FD Define R5, Phanteks Enthoo Luxe, Enthoo Pro, Enthoo Pro M. All offer lots of space, removable drive racks and decent filtering and air flow. The Corsair 400Q has some nifty style and function too.

If you want to keep it in the family, the Coolermaster Master Case Pro/5 has lots of space, very configurable, good intake air flow and filtering.

Those would be the ones I suggest to check out.

Then purchase a HAF XB EVO like I did and give your D14/D15 the room to breathe easy. ;-) Fugly disclaimer: Altho the XB, with a few mods, has amazing air flow, it also has one of the ugliest, cheap molded plastic front panels, so modding can get serious.

For tweaking tho, the XB is a great case - doubles as a open bench case. Towers suck for accessibility. If I wasn't such a cheapskate, would have saved up for a Lian Li PC-V33WX - ATX cube that looks sexy. At least compared to the plastic fronted XB. ;-)

Oh, BTW, you will still need to take the snippers to any of those cases to improve exhaust air flow. Restrictive rear grilles are the one industry standard that all case vendors adhere to.

Or get a Nibbler from MNPCTECH for clean cuts every time. Every time the operator is paying attention. ;-)

 

[Ketchup]

That would have been a great case if they had put the USB and audio ports on the top instead of the bottom. It was still a great case for its time (stylish, light, good fan design) but year, it's time to move on.

If you want to keep it in the family, my Trooper has been great - everything is in the right place, plenty of place, and works great with water or air. Also, there really aren't grills in the front. I mean there are, but if you want unrestricted flow, just pull off the covers.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Oh my, a new Case! That's exciting! And a little bewildering.

I may need one sooner or later. The Cent5 is still doing its duty for now, but my new PSU doesn't line up with its screw holes very well so I'm going to have to retire it or relegate it to secondary rig duty one of these days.

The new usual suspects are FD Define R5, Phanteks Enthoo Luxe, Enthoo Pro, Enthoo Pro M. All offer lots of space, removable drive racks and decent filtering and air flow. The Corsair 400Q has some nifty style and function too.

Hmm.

The Define R5 looks like I may have the same problem as in the Cent5, though looking back at my Cent5, it appears as though I could fit a third fan on my d14 in there, it's just that it would block the motherboard power connector on my A88x-Pro and force me to route a bunch of cables between the third fan and the motherboard (or behind the backplate). So this may be more of a problem between my HSF and the motherboard than the case . . . still, the PSU doesn't fit the Cent5 right so the need to replace is still there.

The 400Q looks like it has plenty of room. Same for Enthoo Pro M. Maybe it's an optical illusion or something, but the drive bays on the Pro make it look potentially more restrictive than the Pro M?

The Luxe and Master Case Pro/5 look to be a bit out of my desired price range.

I would say among those, the Pro M is the one I'd want to get.

Then purchase a HAF XB EVO like I did and give your D14/D15 the room to breathe easy. ;-) Fugly disclaimer: Altho the XB, with a few mods, has amazing air flow, it also has one of the ugliest, cheap molded plastic front panels, so modding can get serious.

For tweaking tho, the XB is a great case - doubles as a open bench case. Towers suck for accessibility. If I wasn't such a cheapskate, would have saved up for a Lian Li PC-V33WX - ATX cube that looks sexy. At least compared to the plastic fronted XB. ;-)

It looks like it would be fun to work in an XB Evo, but it would force me to redo my cooling strategy which is to remove the side panel and use a Honeywell stator-vane fan from Walmart to provide airflow. Noisy, dusty, and pretty ghetto, but it works.

Oh, BTW, you will still need to take the snippers to any of those cases to improve exhaust air flow. Restrictive rear grilles are the one industry standard that all case vendors adhere to.

Gar. One of these days, they'll be like, "hey maybe we can let people remove those" and then that engineer will just get fired or put on a different project.

Or get a Nibbler from MNPCTECH for clean cuts every time. Every time the operator is paying attention. ;-)

Hmm, maybe.

That would have been a great case if they had put the USB and audio ports on the top instead of the bottom. It was still a great case for its time (stylish, light, good fan design) but year, it's time to move on.

I know, right? It's no fun having your fancy new PSU hanging on two screws, either.

If you want to keep it in the family, my Trooper has been great - everything is in the right place, plenty of place, and works great with water or air. Also, there really aren't grills in the front. I mean there are, but if you want unrestricted flow, just pull off the covers.

Also out of my intended price range, and the issue is more the grills in the rear. I guess I could reverse my heatsink and make it blow out the front, which would be possible since I have so few things mounted up there and I have no actual case fans (just, you know, the Honeywell).

 

[Bubbleawsome]

Honestly the grills really aren't that restrictive. I think having the heat sink blow through the vents in the back would be better than making it blow towards the front.

If you really hate them, you could grab a slim, high static pressure fan. It should be able to push enough air to neutralize the grate.

 

[Ketchup]

Honestly the grills really aren't that restrictive. I think having the heat sink blow through the vents in the back would be better than making it blow towards the front.

If you really hate them, you could grab a slim, high static pressure fan. It should be able to push enough air to neutralize the grate.

You are correct about the grills. In the testing I have done over the years, case fans make negligible difference in cpu temps, so long as they are there, and getting air to flow in the right direction. The heatsink and it's attached fan are where the real cooling power is.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I remove the rear grill so the last fan on my HSF can blow directly out of the case (no case fans involved).

 

[DigDog]

Oh my, a new Case!

i'm not tryin to bust your balls, but i have both and my opinion is exactly the opposite of yours - aside from the fact that the XB does in fact have a disgusting plasticky front panel.

the bottom section of the XB, where the PSU goes, is extremely hard to access, and there's both the PSU cables there, and the SATA which connect to the HDs and DVD; also, the cable management.

the top part is ok, i guess, but there's no dust filters on this thing.

on the other hand, the R4 (and R5 i guess) is gorgeous, quieter, exceptionally easy to work with - everything is in plain sight, except cable management which can be accessed easily by removing the right side panel - and i would guess it even weights less while being just as sturdy.

and dont forget the mic/hp connector in front of the xb, extremely fragile and expensive to replace. i also have had a bad experience (i.e. they have completely ignored me) with CM support.

i'm pushing the R4 over the R5 because apparently (so i heard) the R4 has better panels, which are thinner on the R5.

 

[ClockHound]

i'm not tryin to bust your balls, but i have both and my opinion is exactly the opposite of yours - aside from the fact that the XB does in fact have a disgusting plasticky front panel.

the bottom section of the XB, where the PSU goes, is extremely hard to access, and there's both the PSU cables there, and the SATA which connect to the HDs and DVD; also, the cable management.

the top part is ok, i guess, but there's no dust filters on this thing.

on the other hand, the R4 (and R5 i guess) is gorgeous, quieter, exceptionally easy to work with - everything is in plain sight, except cable management which can be accessed easily by removing the right side panel - and i would guess it even weights less while being just as sturdy.

and dont forget the mic/hp connector in front of the xb, extremely fragile and expensive to replace. i also have had a bad experience (i.e. they have completely ignored me) with CM support.

i'm pushing the R4 over the R5 because apparently (so i heard) the R4 has better panels, which are thinner on the R5.

Ha-ha! Not busting anything. My experience has been the opposite of yours. I use a modular PSU (EVGA 750 G2) and found the multi-level layout super easy to work with. With the MB plate removed cable management is a dream. Maybe requires a little extra planning than a standard tower layout.

Agree the dust filters are missing. Which is a good thing. Prefer to make my own, regardless of the case. Also Demciflex makes a full set for the XB. Yes, the i/o ports are crap, but that's just CM de rigueur. (Fractal is barely better on many of their models)

The XB is not a great case stock. But, it has great modding capability, awesome airflow potential - it's cheap and that's why I like it (If I don't look at the front of it). Plus I'm bored of the ATX tower cases. Those were invented in a previous century when beige was hip. I'm a born-again cubist. And not afraid to be square. ;-)

 

[DigDog]

yeah, my build didnt go like that; i made my cable management very tight, and also i used the cutouts on the mobo plate, so now, even though it's removable, i cannot actually remove it - i need to loosen up all the cables first, which involves snapping off (and then putting back on) a great deal of cable ties. Also my AIO just won't let me remove the mobo unless i get the screwdriver out.

tbh, i did get the XB because i was dreaming of modding it, if anything just the color scheme. never got around doing it though.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Another question: how many mid-size towers are going to line up properly to allow 3 dual-slot GPUs given a motherboard like the Asus A88x-Pro? The board has 2 16x PCIe slots and a 4x slot on the bottom. The way it lines up in the Cent5, a dual-slot GPU can't go in the 4x slot on the bottom since it doesn't line up with back panel. The case is a hair too short to accommodate a dual-slot card in that PCIe slot as well. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the second 16x slot lines up with the 5th and 6th back panel positions, leaving only one spot on the back panel for the 4x PCIe slot. Only a single-slot card could work there.

 

[DigDog]

any respectable modern case will line up with the pci slots.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The Cent5 doesn't . . . not quite. Or at least not how I would like. Of course, it's not exactly modern either.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If your board has three PCI-E x16 slots, chances are that they are in card slot 1, 4, and 7. In order to use a double-wide card in the last slot, requires a case that has 8 slots, not the standard 7. "Lining up" has nothing to do with it. Any properly-made ATX case should let the slots and cards align properly.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I see your point, although the A88x-Pro lines up its PCIe 8x/8x/4x slots to 2 (2,3), 5 (5,6) and 7. So yeah I would need a full tower more likely than not.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I finally bit the bullet and did a case update. After all the hemming and hawing, I found the Rosewill Thor V2 (black) on sale for $79.99 after $20 mir and I got it. It's been sitting around waiting me to move something into it until this weekend.

It's hyuuuge! That's a lot of case for $80. There are a few things about it I didn't like:

1). Due to the ridiculous location of the 8-pin EPS connector on the motherboard, I had to pull the board (my nh-d14 partially blocks the connector) and carefully route the power cable around the HSF and past the DIMMs to avoid making a mess of things. The cable barely reaches. The connector is near the top of the case while the PSU in the Thor V2 is mounted at the bottom so . . . yeah. The connector is completely inaccessible while the motherboard + hsf are installed.

2). For whatever reason, the top PCI-e 1x slot didn't quiiiite line up right with the expansion ports on the base of the Thor V2, so I had to reseat the motherboard a second time just to get my PCI-e wireless NIC in there. Basically I had to remove all the screws and shimmy the board around until I could plug in the NIC. Then I had to screw it back in, with some of the screws at odd angles. Happily, the video cards did not present similar problems. Just the NIC.

3). While the built-in fans (3x 230mm, 1x 140mm) are completely awesome for airflow, the cheesy fan control system built into the case is . . . well for me, it's not awesome. There's a tone of cable clutter thanks to that system, so despite some really nice cable management elsewhere in the case, the 5 1/4 drive bay is yet again cluttered with excess cable spam mostly thanks to the case itself. I just run all the fans balls-out so the system is basically meaningless to me. They're fairly quiet even at 100%.

4). Fit n' finish is a bit off here and there. Sometimes it feels like the case is about to come apart at the seams. It is also curiously light for its size. The Cent5 really isn't that much lighter.

The upsides: it brought my GPU temps down considerably. Now that I'm able to use the third PCI-e 16x/8x slot, I've got my 290 down there and my 390 in the first slot, and they both run a lot cooler now while mining. I retired my Honeywell desk fan. The three 230mm fans are moving enough air into and out of the case that it's actually a better airflow than the ghetto/trailerpark setup I had before.

 

[ClockHound]

I finally bit the bullet and did a case update. After all the hemming and hawing, I found the Rosewill Thor V2 (black) on sale for $79.99 after $20 mir and I got it. It's been sitting around waiting me to move something into it until this weekend.

Congrats!

I retired my Honeywell desk fan.

LOL!

I've used floor fans before when urgently required, but nothing as sophisticated as a desk fan.

 

[VirtualLarry]

2). For whatever reason, the top PCI-e 1x slot didn't quiiiite line up right with the expansion ports on the base of the Thor V2, so I had to reseat the motherboard a second time just to get my PCI-e wireless NIC in there. Basically I had to remove all the screws and shimmy the board around until I could plug in the NIC. Then I had to screw it back in, with some of the screws at odd angles. Happily, the video cards did not present similar problems. Just the NIC.

Ahhh... Rosewill QC for ya!

 

[Ranulf]

What is the system for the optical bays in the Thor? Wondering if I could easily get two 4 in 3 hotswap bays installed.

 

[DrMrLordX]

It's fairly open with plastic locks on the outside of the 5 1/4 bay to hold standard-sized drives into place. I don't have any 5 1/4 drives anymore, but if I did, I imagine I'd just slide one in there and then move the plastic dingus to get it held into place.

The case mostly succeeds at being tool-less. Mostly.

Ahhh... Rosewill QC for ya!

It's either Asus or Rosewill. I'm not sure how they managed to get the PCI-e 1x slots to line up wrong while the 16x slots are perfect. If I used a USB NIC instead I wouldn't have even noticed . . .