Need help picking out a case.

[VulgarDisplay]

It comes out sometime in the middle of September I believe. I plan on picking one up ASAP. The plastic stuff has never bothered me. The people complaining about plastic cracking don't seem to realize that if you did something drastic enough to crack the plastic on most computer cases it would also dent the living crap out of an aluminum case. In my opinion aluminum cases and plastic clad steel cases are all about features inside and not their exterior. You'll be hard pressed to find better features in a case than what corsair is putting out.

 

[balane]

If Glock made a case it would look and function like the 600T imho.

 

[balane]

Well I couldn't wait for the Corsair. My case is just too beat up and falling apart, it's a decade old. I went ahead and got the Thermaltake Element G. It had all the features I wanted. I'll still get the Corsair in the future and move this case to the garage computer. I like the same features on this Thermaltake that I liked about the Corsair so it will be great in the mean time and I'll be happy when it's in the garage as well.

 

[ehume]

What I like about this case and a number of other Thermaltake cases is the width. It seems that other cases are stingy with the width. So many cases give you no room for cables behind the MB. Or they give you no room for a side panel fan as well as a full tower cooler. Some of the CM cases are ten inches wide. That's good. This Case is 9+ inches wide. Also good.

 

[balane]

I think I'm a fan. It was a pretty straight forward install. The hardest part was extending my 8 pin motherboard power cable so I could run it in the back. Took a while with all that stripping, extending and heat shrinking but it was worth it. I like this case I think. I picked up a Corsair H50 while I was at Frys, unused customer return for $55. Couldn't pass it up and I always wanted to try one.

It's idling at 31C right now, 44C before with the Mugen 2. Case temps are down a few points with all fans set to their lowest.

I'll grind it up a little bit after dinner and see how it does but right now I'm pretty pleased.

Here's some pics. I like to keep things as stripped down as I can. I didn't use the big cover thing that separates the PSU section from the motherboard section. I also didn't use the 3.5" drive cage tower either, just have the whole thing all opened up. I could fit my DVD, my data drive and my raid 0 SSD array all in the top 3 bays.

I believe this will be its permanent home.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Slap another fan on the h50 to get a push pull going. Nice clean install.

 

[balane]

I have a 2nd fan ready to go if I need it but right now temps are really good and the noise level is right where I want it. If I decide to push the system more down the road I'll definitely add the second fan. Thanks.

 

[ehume]

I love what you did with this case. I have a question: how much room was there behind the mb?

 

[balane]

Towards the front of the case there's a ton of room. Behind the processor, the whole rear half of the case really, not so much. You can fit a thin chunk of cabling there but that's it. It's just barely enough to lay a 4 pin molex connector flat or about the thickness of an 8 wire motherboard power cable.

The problem is that the case side panels recess as they near the rear so it sucks up all the room. But you can pretty much fit anything you want in the front half, tons of room there. If you leave the 3.5" drive tower installed you would be able to do a 100 percent hidden cable install but I like the added airflow with it gone.

This morning I removed the 230mm side panel fan. It is easily the loudest fan in the computer and does not appear to be of the same quality as the 200mm fans used in the front and on the top. The computer is 25 percent more quiet with it gone. Plus, unlike the front fan, it has no filter and pulls in dust. So I removed it and now I have a trapezoidal mesh window on the side, I like it better. Case temps went up 1C and the CPU also seems to have increased in temp by 1C. Not a bad trade off at all. Things are still mighty cool and now even more quiet.

Edit: If I could have one wish it would be to have a 3.5" cut out on the front. I had to leave out my card reader. I didn't use it much but when you need one it's nice to have. I'll install it in the garage computer and read cards there if I need to.

 

[balane]

One thing that ticks me off a little is useless cut-outs on the motherboard tray. On my Asus P6T I have access to only two of the heatsink mount holes from the rear which makes it pretty much useless. If you're going to make the effort to put a cut-out in your case why not make it large and functional and cover a wide array of motherboards? It could have been 2-3 times the size that it is and things would have been much better. If I ever decide to upgrade or change my cooling situation, for whatever reason, I'll have to yank out the motherboard anyway so this hole might as well not even exist.

 

[ehume]

If you need a set of front IO, check this out. I bought one and I love it. The wires are nice and long.

 

[balane]

That looks like something I could use. I didn't see dimensions listed on the site. Do you have any idea how deep it goes into the case? I only have a couple of inches because I have all my hard drives/SSD's mounted in the 5.25" bays.

 

[ehume]

That looks like something I could use. I didn't see dimensions listed on the site. Do you have any idea how deep it goes into the case? I only have a couple of inches because I have all my hard drives/SSD's mounted in the 5.25" bays.

It only goes in a couple of inches.

I have my own HD in the 5.25 bay, but it sits on top of the DVD drive on some foam. My SSD, OTOH, is in a 3.5-inch bay that has no access to the outside. I have it fastened with a single pad of double-sided sticky foam. If I hadn't had that I would have stuck it to the side or bottom of something. They're small, they don't vibrate and they don't care how they're mounted.

That bright blue horizontal bar you see above the fan is the front of my SSD reflecting a row of LED's.

 

[wbynum]

I'm a bit late to the party but the CM Storm Sniper all black case is $99.99 shipped at newegg through 08/23. Seems to meet most of the OP's criteria. Hopefully it will help someone else.

 

[balane]

Thanks. I looked at the Sniper very closely when I was at Frys, it was right next to the Thermaltake I bought. I was really torn between the two. In the end I picked the Thermaltake because it was black inside and not silver and because the knob on the Sniper felt incredibly cheap. It wiggled back and forth and just felt like low quality. To make sure it wasn't just a beat up display model we opened a box for a new one and it felt nearly as bad. Other than that it was a very nice case which met nearly every criteria I was looking for.

 

[shingletingle]

I wonder if the lack of a side door fan on the Corsair 600T will be a problem for cooling. It seems almost all cases have a side fan now for the latest graphics cards.

 

[ehume]

I agree. I just dropped my load temps 2c by adding a Kaze Maru 500 rpm fan on the side panel, on a 120mm fan's window. That's a weak fan, and look what it did.

 

[BHetrick]

sorry, double post

 

[BHetrick]

I'm a bit late to the party but the CM Storm Sniper all black case is $99.99 shipped at newegg through 08/23. Seems to meet most of the OP's criteria. Hopefully it will help someone else.

I got the CM Sniper with the $99 promo. This thing is a lot bigger than the pictures make it look. Cooling is definitely not going to be a problem with this.

I was torn between this and a HAF case. A friend already had a HAF, so I was able to check it out in person. Now having the Sniper, I'm glad I chose this.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119194

 

[ehume]

@BHetrick - how much room between the mb tray and the right side panel?

 

[balane]

@BHetrick - how much room between the mb tray and the right side panel?

I can answer that in case he doesn't chime in. See in the photo how the sides swell outward instead of being flat or even inward like the Thermaltake? It gives a ton of room behind the mobo for cables and whatnot. Probably 2" would be my guess.

I really liked this case, I had a hard time not getting it. Like I stated, the only reason I swayed to the Element G was because of the fan speed knob feel.

Edit: Overall the CM is 10-15 percent larger, in all dimensions, than the Element G. It makes a big presence. The one I looked at was silver inside though, I did want black. This guy painted his inside, looks great. Some good photos here; http://forum.coolermaster.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13330

 

[anishannayya]

Have you looked into the Antec 300?

 

[balane]

Have you looked into the Antec 300?

I did. Didn't strike me as anything special. It was silver inside, no mobo cutout. Seemed like a decent but generic case.

 

[mv2devnull]

Antec is not entirely generic for it has PSU at bottom. That is one step forward from the "current generic" design. The next design step(s) paint black, cut holes into the tray, and turn the hdd rack 90 degrees. It might take a while before the $20 cases pick up such features.

 

[BHetrick]

@BHetrick - how much room between the mb tray and the right side panel?

Sorry about that delay. I was offline while assembling this.

Here's some pics. You can see there's a real nice recess in the panel allowing for room. Also plenty of room even with long vid cards (2- Gigabyte GTX 480).

*edit
Also, it comes with 1- 120mm fan and 3- 200mm fans, all Coolmaster of course. The 3- 200mm fans have blue led's which can be turned on and off with a push of the fan speed control button. I thought having those big fans would be noisy, but really they're not. I was pleasantly surprised.