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Please Help With Deciding Upon An Aluminum Case

A

ABEG

Junior Member
I am currently looking for a higher-end aluminum case. Price is not too important if the case is appealing enough. I run a raid setup so need good hard drive cooling within the case. I have narrowed my search down and am looking at the following cases:

Lian-Li PC-6089A - I like the acrylic front, but don't find it that great looking. Like the fact that there are two fans cooling the hard drive enclosure but I am a little worried about the air intake being small and underneath the computer. I am a quite disappointed that Lian-Li does not have a Firewire port upfront as this is a key feature I am interested in and I would prefer to not have to add a port replicator.

Kingwin KT-436/Directron 201S - I really like the three acrylic windows. I actually like the look of this computer better than the Lian-Li, but am worried about the drive mismatch problem. I don't really want to paint my drives since I regularly upgrade and re-sell my drives and don't want to have to deal with selling a painted drive. I also don't like how the silver spray paint jobs look a little off since aluminum and silver spray paint aren't an exact match. How do the Lian-Li faceplate stickers look? Does anyone know of a company that actually cuts aluminum bezels for drives so that it would truly match? I like the fact that this case has front Firewire as well as USB. The version at Newegg also has a top blowhole in the acrylic window.

AMS GTower CF-1006SP - I like the look of this case best, but am again worried about the drive mistmatch problem. This case also only has one front fan and one large rear fan. It seems that there would be negative airflow with this case. This worries me since I need good cooling considering past cases have caused drive failures with my raid setup due to the fact that the system runs almost 24 hours a day. I suppose I could add HD fan coolers, but I am also trying to keep case noise down.


If anyone has experiences with these cases or some answers to the questions above please let me know. I am also looking for other aluminum cases with firewire/acrylic fronts/good cooling that I may have not seen yet. Any help is extremely appreciated. Thanks.
 
I have no practical experience yet, because I just ordered my own aluminium case yesterday. However I am missing Coolermaster on your shortlist.

If price plays no role, what about the ATC-410 ? Very good design and very good cooling.

If you really like the acrylic front, then maybe the ATC-210 is interesting, however it only comes with 2 case fans instead of 4.

I myself took the ATC-201, a midi tower with 4 case fans pre-installed, this one won several reviews and is quite cheap (at least compared to the 410 and 210).

I think all three models have 2 USB ports on the front, unfortunately no firewire. I think if you want to have firewire on the front from Coolermaster, you have to take the aluminium 3.5inch slot port with USB/Firewire (for about 30 Euros).

Cheers
Speedy
 
I really did like the specs and looks of the ATC-410, but we do use a floppy for school/work purposes so I want to have at least one external 3.5 drive bay which the ATC-410 does not provide.

Cooling was pointed out as mediocre to poor on reviews of the ATC-210 because of the lack of fans and I believe, correct me if I am wrong, only having space for one intake cooling fan by the drives, which again is a problem because of the RAID setup.

I did like the ATC-201 since it has the nice cooling through good intake fans and there is no negative airflow, but it was just a personal issue as far as the looks were concerned with preferring the Kingwin/Directron case, although I do like the fact that the Kingwin/Directron case offers firewire out of the box.

Anyone know of any other cases with front firewire/good cooling?
 
Take a look at the Thermaltake Xaser II A6001 plus. Featurewise it is absolutely brilliant and includes 4 case fans as well as USB/Firewire front slots.

The only thing I did not like with it, was the plastic front (the case itself is made from aluminium).

Cheers
Speedy
 
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