Gimme some feedback on the perfect case.
I'm off to talk with a couple of PC case manufaturers next week (Week of Aug. 18th). I'd like to know what you'd like and what is important to you.
Price range including a PSU (eg: between $30-50)?
Color?
3 biggest features you'd want
16"? 18"? 24"?
Metal?
Aluminum?
A kazillion drive bays?
Basically....tell me what you'd like in a PC case...what's right with them or what's wrong? Don't think a specific brand...think about putting the best of together into one case. I sure want to read what you have to say.
Price range including a PSU (eg: between $30-50)?
Color?
3 biggest features you'd want
16"? 18"? 24"?
Metal?
Aluminum?
A kazillion drive bays?
Basically....tell me what you'd like in a PC case...what's right with them or what's wrong? Don't think a specific brand...think about putting the best of together into one case. I sure want to read what you have to say.
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Comments
Lose the crap-tastic generic power supplies. Either Antec, Enermax, PC Power & Cooling, or nothing.
Price: $250 max, <$100 a plus
Find another place to mount the hard drives; in front of the motherboard is not a good place when you're using a big dually board with big coolers.
Material is immaterial... I'd actually prefer steel because Aluminum cases tend to be flimsy and not terribly well designed (yes, I've used them and no, I haven't been impressed in the least; even less so when the thumbscrews start stripping the threads off the Lian-Li case itself...)
Minimum drive bays:
6 5.25" external
2 3.5" internal
6 3.5" internal
The hard drives MUST have active cooling using 80 or 92mm fans; 120mm fans are too big unless they duct them down to 4" to blow just across the drives.
The motherboard area should be totally free of drive bays, and should use large fans. In fact, I want to see support for 6.75" fans. I also want to see support for 38mm deep case fans.
I'll think of more later.
Color: black, silver, and red.
Features: 2 intake fans blowing across the hd's 2 outtake, removable everything (hd bay, mobo tray), and front usb 2.0 ports.
Aluminum.
Drive bays are a must in server-like (word?) cases, but in lan or regular atx cases they should be limited to about 4 large, 2 small.
Also, should have plenty of space above the top of the mobo for those mobo's with the socket at the very top.
Some sort of switch to control fan speed.... you know.. silent, bearable, deafening, and vantec tornado levels
and plenty of space
price: under $100 (US)
material: Aluminum...nice and light
color: Brushed
Included drive bezels of your choice to match the color and design of my drives. If I pick your case, I want it to match.
Removable motherboard trays.
Drive rails.
Antec and PC Power and Cooling PSUs, 400w at the least.
Max price of 250$
Chieftec size case
Optional windows.
Case front door if you cant give me matched bezels, no door if you can.
Integrated rheobus (Removable of course)
Cable management rings, hooks, and channels. I want it to be EASY to run the cables behind my motherboard tray, or slip a power supply lead down the front of a drive bay to curl back over the top of a drive and plug in. I want to be able to hang wires.
Default fans, manually controlled, top CFM of 48. I'm sick of buying fans with every case because they're crap. I want to be able to make a windstorm when I want it, and control it when I don't. Give us real fans.
he seems to have constructed the perfect case...HOWEVER...i would like more room than the chieftec..the pc70 seems to have boatloads of room...and i love it...
ALso i feel 2 side 120mm blowholes are a must. One will blow across the northbridge and thevidcard...the other will blow across the northbridge and the cpu heatsink..
ALL of the wires from the PSU should be shrinkwrapped (matches the color of the case)
Throw a nice ccfl in there
Removeable harddrive chasis (my addtronics case has this) that sits nicely underneath all the bays (if this is not clear i will throw a pic in) that way the radiator setup wont be fux0red up br harddrives on the bottom...
The psu wires modded so that they fit perfectly into the motherboard (ahhh if it could only happed)
A little wider than most cases, so that u can fit two 120 mm in the front...
USB/FireWire ports (sumwhere undisclosed unlike the chieftecs...it takes away from the beauty)
I'm a huge fan of the way my PC71 mounts the hard drives, 6 of them vertically right infront of the 2 80mm fans with the 3 position switch for the 2 fans.
I know that we extremeists make up a small portion of the market, but something a bit bigger that can easilly accomidate a watercooling setup as far as a reasonable sized radiatior(1x120mm fan) and a pump with a resevoir.
No restrictive fan grills, the little wire ones flow so much more air. Also, even if they just come from the factory as vents, the ability to add a couple of fans to the side window/top would be a bonus.
Lots of channels to hide the extra wires in, and it's probably a big issue that would take too much effort, but I've always dreamed of a power distribution block that would have just the 4 pin molex connectors on a short cable(1 to 2 inch with a sheath) hanging off right next to the drives, and you just feed one or 2 power sources from the power supply into a block somewhere out of site and then you don't have all these extra power cables snaking around.
A couple of front usb/firewire ports would be sweet, but not like the lian li case right at the bottom, they would be so much more usefull at the top.
Integrated temperature display with 2 or 3 probes(cpu/gpu/case) would also be desireable.
That sounds like an excellent idea - I got a window in my case and all the god damn power leads are so annoying, it took me a while to get as many as I could out of sight.
This and removable 3.5" drive bays would rock
It would be nice to see a servercube for that dually setup as it´s not very often any of those gets reviewed. I for one haven´t actually seen a cube full of hardware and the space it carrys.
Apart from that, the case i want to see is from Addtronics which must be the best cases in the world IMO. They have a big lineup and might be worth contacting.
Removeable HDD Cages.
Clean Edges
Drive Rails (Screwless would be nice for HDD and not just CD ROMs)
Screwless Door-Heck make it all screwless
STURDY Case - Dont want one that will bend even if its 30lbs
Windows are good.
Places for fans - 2 in rear, 2 infront and one in side. Top is also good
*GASP* THATS MY CASE!!!! but mine was modded a tad
(then i fux0red up the front bezel hardcore style...but still)
*OMG!!! i have a slideout mobo tray...i feel like such a bafoon...i never tried it out...lol*
I dont think their totally ineffective...think about it...if you have a sidefan blowing cool air right ontop of the HSF and the northbridge...it will run much cooler than if there wasnt...true there is a back and a front fan blowing out and in...respectively....but that doesnt necessarily mean that the HSSF and the rest of it will feel the air all too much...with the side blowholes...ont he other hand...u will feel it