Seriously, don't. This case is not for you. It's not MADE for you. Or me. I honestly don't know who it is made for, but I'll tell you why it's not for us.
You can see the case in question in the top two pictures, recently relieved of the duty of holding my computer. It is marketed as a performance case, for enthusiasts, a category I fit into quite nicely. :P However, this is not a case for enthusiasts.
Enthusiasts will have a performance power supply. These things aren't small, like your regular power supply. They're long. In fact, last time my PSU went boom, I couldn't get the PSU I wanted, because it simply WOULD NOT FIT in the area assigned for PSUs in this case. See 'that fucking annoying bulkhead' there? That's meant to have a fan mounted on the left side, to cool the PSU and the drives (mounted in the boxy bit to the right), but unless you have a small, standard PSU, there will be no room for the power cords to come out of the PSU. So I had to remove it, to fit my second choice of PSU into the case. As I said, first choice wouldn't fit, even with the fan removed.
The compartmentalised nature of this case makes it a nightmare to work with, which also makes it fail as an enthusiast case, since enthusiasts are the ones that will spend the most time faffing about inside the case. Let's say you have the fan in, but want to use the lower drive by, which holds 4 drives. Well, then you have to thread the power up through a small hole, then back down again to the drives. You have to thread the power up a small hole anyway, to get to the motherboard and optical drives.
Notice, by the way, I don't have the second drive bay in the case. It's not there because my graphics card (8800 GTX. It's kinda long, and another thing enthusiasts are likely to have) wouldn't fit with the drives and drive slides sticking out of it. At least with it out I could mount the fan I removed from the lower drive area in there, to help cool the system.
Another failing is the lower drive bay itself. There's just not enough room between where the drives protrude and 'that fucking annoying bulkhead'. You have to bend the SATA cables quite a bit, and if you have stiff power cables you can find them sometimes pushing themselves off the drives, from pressing against the bulkhead, even if you thread the power cables through the hole where the fan goes. Oh, the fan comes with nothing to protect it from errant cables, by the way.
There is no motherboard tray, which is a shame, since the area the board goes into is just barely big enough. You'll scrape the sides getting it in and out, and using the lower expansion slots can be tricky, particularly with big cards, as the hole the power cables come up out of is right under them. My poor soundblaster X-Fi had to suffer getting bent a little by the big ATX power cable :(
'Ah, but Stelard', you might be thinking, 'I'm not a crazy spend-all-my-money-on-my-computer enthusiast type like yourself, so this might be the case for me!' Wrong. Very wrong. Because despite being cramped on the inside, the case is big on the outside. Bulky and heavy; it's made of 0.8mm rolled steel, FFS! Moving it about will be a PAIN, even before you put anything in it. If you're not an enthusiast, get yourself a smaller, lighter case...
Or, get what I recommend to enthusiasts! My new case is amazing, a real joy to work with. It's also heavy, but it has handles, and slides nicely along the carpet due to similar 'handle rails' on the bottom. It's got lots of USB on the top, firewire, even eSATA! The inside is spacious, even though I managed to fill it up quite nicely. It's got lots of fans, but they move the air without being noisy thanks to padded sides, and said sides come off really nicely with a little handle on the back.
Plus, it has drive bays that can be removed individually! Since I have a RAID5 setup, which went bad several times due to the power-plug-loosening qualities of my former case, necessitating that I pull the whole drive bay out, I can say this feature pleases me a lot. About the only bad thing I can see with this case is that the door doesn't have enough space behind it to fit the knobs on my X-Fi Platinum's drive bay module. But I hardly use that anymore anyway, so it's no great loss.
Oops. Forgot. The new case is a Coolermaster Cosmos 1000.
You can see the case in question in the top two pictures, recently relieved of the duty of holding my computer. It is marketed as a performance case, for enthusiasts, a category I fit into quite nicely. :P However, this is not a case for enthusiasts.
Enthusiasts will have a performance power supply. These things aren't small, like your regular power supply. They're long. In fact, last time my PSU went boom, I couldn't get the PSU I wanted, because it simply WOULD NOT FIT in the area assigned for PSUs in this case. See 'that fucking annoying bulkhead' there? That's meant to have a fan mounted on the left side, to cool the PSU and the drives (mounted in the boxy bit to the right), but unless you have a small, standard PSU, there will be no room for the power cords to come out of the PSU. So I had to remove it, to fit my second choice of PSU into the case. As I said, first choice wouldn't fit, even with the fan removed.
The compartmentalised nature of this case makes it a nightmare to work with, which also makes it fail as an enthusiast case, since enthusiasts are the ones that will spend the most time faffing about inside the case. Let's say you have the fan in, but want to use the lower drive by, which holds 4 drives. Well, then you have to thread the power up through a small hole, then back down again to the drives. You have to thread the power up a small hole anyway, to get to the motherboard and optical drives.
Notice, by the way, I don't have the second drive bay in the case. It's not there because my graphics card (8800 GTX. It's kinda long, and another thing enthusiasts are likely to have) wouldn't fit with the drives and drive slides sticking out of it. At least with it out I could mount the fan I removed from the lower drive area in there, to help cool the system.
Another failing is the lower drive bay itself. There's just not enough room between where the drives protrude and 'that fucking annoying bulkhead'. You have to bend the SATA cables quite a bit, and if you have stiff power cables you can find them sometimes pushing themselves off the drives, from pressing against the bulkhead, even if you thread the power cables through the hole where the fan goes. Oh, the fan comes with nothing to protect it from errant cables, by the way.
There is no motherboard tray, which is a shame, since the area the board goes into is just barely big enough. You'll scrape the sides getting it in and out, and using the lower expansion slots can be tricky, particularly with big cards, as the hole the power cables come up out of is right under them. My poor soundblaster X-Fi had to suffer getting bent a little by the big ATX power cable :(
'Ah, but Stelard', you might be thinking, 'I'm not a crazy spend-all-my-money-on-my-computer enthusiast type like yourself, so this might be the case for me!' Wrong. Very wrong. Because despite being cramped on the inside, the case is big on the outside. Bulky and heavy; it's made of 0.8mm rolled steel, FFS! Moving it about will be a PAIN, even before you put anything in it. If you're not an enthusiast, get yourself a smaller, lighter case...
Or, get what I recommend to enthusiasts! My new case is amazing, a real joy to work with. It's also heavy, but it has handles, and slides nicely along the carpet due to similar 'handle rails' on the bottom. It's got lots of USB on the top, firewire, even eSATA! The inside is spacious, even though I managed to fill it up quite nicely. It's got lots of fans, but they move the air without being noisy thanks to padded sides, and said sides come off really nicely with a little handle on the back.
Plus, it has drive bays that can be removed individually! Since I have a RAID5 setup, which went bad several times due to the power-plug-loosening qualities of my former case, necessitating that I pull the whole drive bay out, I can say this feature pleases me a lot. About the only bad thing I can see with this case is that the door doesn't have enough space behind it to fit the knobs on my X-Fi Platinum's drive bay module. But I hardly use that anymore anyway, so it's no great loss.
Oops. Forgot. The new case is a Coolermaster Cosmos 1000.
Category Photography / Miscellaneous
Species Unspecified / Any
Gender Other / Not Specified
Size 1144 x 856px
I note that you have too much crap in your case :P and I thought my brand new dual core had too many wires o.o I'm suprised that your case hasnt caught fire o.O I suggest a full size server case next time. *the ones that are square, they are that tall but as tall as they are wide with the hotswapable raid drive bays in the front for easy pull out access. Either that or a full mount rack and just go to blades, then you can hotswap whole computers :D
Caught fire? No. Hm, the motherboard chipset is fairly warm tho.
It's not as bad as it looks tho.
It's not as bad as it looks tho.
I see no way for good air flow to be happening here -.- Maybe you can find wireless harddrives!
Hm, okay.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3.0GHz
Primary storage: 8GB DDR2 800MHz
Graphics: 8800GTX
Secondary storage: 4x320 GB Seagate SATA-300 drives, in RAID5
RAID: Areca ARC1210 RAID card
Sound: Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum
PSU: Coolermaster Real Power M1000 (1KW PSU)
Enclosure: Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 case with 2 intake fans, 3 exhaust fans
That's all the important bits, unless I forgot anything
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3.0GHz
Primary storage: 8GB DDR2 800MHz
Graphics: 8800GTX
Secondary storage: 4x320 GB Seagate SATA-300 drives, in RAID5
RAID: Areca ARC1210 RAID card
Sound: Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum
PSU: Coolermaster Real Power M1000 (1KW PSU)
Enclosure: Coolermaster Cosmos 1000 case with 2 intake fans, 3 exhaust fans
That's all the important bits, unless I forgot anything
KILLER...............
go get a big ThermalTake case,those rocks...
go get a big ThermalTake case,those rocks...
I have 1 step lower then that :D at was only 580$ though :P I go cheap ^.^
Ah, forgot some bits.
Motherboard: Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 (rev 2.0)
And the primary storage is low-latency G.Skill stuff.
Motherboard: Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 (rev 2.0)
And the primary storage is low-latency G.Skill stuff.
Call me crazy but for the life of me I think you never mentioned what the 2nd case was. It's kinda mean to recommend a case but leave it as the case that shall not be named :P Or is the point that any case is better is that a P180.
BTW the wiring in the new case is insane, please tell me you just don't take the time for proper cable management and it did'nt have to be that bad.
BTW the wiring in the new case is insane, please tell me you just don't take the time for proper cable management and it did'nt have to be that bad.
Hm, a bit of both. I did forget, but I'm convinced the P180 sucks, so yeah, that too.
And yeah, I know it's a bit of a mess, but it looks worse than it is. Most things are tucked aside so it shouldn't restrict airflow, and I can poke around in there without much trouble. I'm not good enough to be able to tie things together out of the way. :P
And yeah, I know it's a bit of a mess, but it looks worse than it is. Most things are tucked aside so it shouldn't restrict airflow, and I can poke around in there without much trouble. I'm not good enough to be able to tie things together out of the way. :P
Its a Cooler Master, you can see that on the front of the case. I looked at that Antec P180 before buying my case (Cooler Master RC534+), and didn't like the location of the PSU, knowing that not all PSU's have cables long enough to reach the ATX connector on the motherboard. I'll post a picture of my case (after I get home from work), with lots of leftover space in it.
BTW My current specs
CPU: AMD Althon X2 3800+ 2GHz
RAM: Patriot eXtreme Performance Low Latency 2GB DDR2 800MHz
Graphics: 7950GT KO
HDD: 1x250 GB Seagate SATA-300 drive
DVD-Drives: Lite-On DVD-ROM and Lite-On DVD+/-RW Multi Drive with lightscribe
Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy SE
PSU: Antec 620W HX-620W PSU
Enclosure: Cooler Master Centurian RC534+ case with 1 intake fans, 2 exhaust fans (120mm)
BTW My current specs
CPU: AMD Althon X2 3800+ 2GHz
RAM: Patriot eXtreme Performance Low Latency 2GB DDR2 800MHz
Graphics: 7950GT KO
HDD: 1x250 GB Seagate SATA-300 drive
DVD-Drives: Lite-On DVD-ROM and Lite-On DVD+/-RW Multi Drive with lightscribe
Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy SE
PSU: Antec 620W HX-620W PSU
Enclosure: Cooler Master Centurian RC534+ case with 1 intake fans, 2 exhaust fans (120mm)
Oh, by the way, might try to tidy the cabling up when I get around to putting water cooling in. :D
Note to self: Contact Stelard if you ever feel the urge to make your own rig and get in over your head XP
I'll advise you right on everything except cable management :D
Yet it still runs some games a little slowly on Vista! < >_<;>
Mine is lower spec than yours and runs anything I throw at it like a soft peach. Is nummy. I'm begining to think it's motherboard choice which really hangs up Vista users. And of course, as most people don't upgrade their mobo 'cept for every five years+, they hate vista :P
That was mostly a joke, actually. It runs most games fine. There is a little slowdown compared to XP but you'd expect that when DirectX is used to draw everything and you have 2 monitors.
Wow...your computer reminds me of the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey.
i've got the thermaltake armorer, completely loaded, can't see my cables^^ ill post a pic of my pc when i get a hold of a digital camera
If you're looking for a different case, try Antec's Sonata series. I've got a Sonata II and they recently created the Sonata III, which didn't look too different internally. It had some wierd plastic aparatus that was apparently supposed to vent air from the case in special ways. It definitely got IN the way, so that was removed. Apart from a bar running across the upper part of the case to help provide a rigid frame (and mount that cowling from), it's fairly open. It simply holds the power supply by four screws at the back, just like the standards lay out. Best part is that it's a plastic front bezel and steel case, all black. I'm not one for decorative computer cases, so it worked out nicely for me.
I'm happy with my new Cosmos for now, but thanks for the suggestion anyway. < ^.^ >
Wow! And I thought my case was stuffed... Nice rig!
What's your CPU running at temperature-wise? One downside of water cooling is that your computer begins to smell like an overheated car engine. When I was using a rig with a Pentium D CPU, I had to install a water cooling system, but that CPU cruised at 70 C... even with the water cooling! There was the constant worry of springing a leak, having the little peristaltic pump crap out, popping a tube or spilling some of the coolant (which I was always refilling) on some vital bit of hardware... I finally threw that CPU and MB into the "Spare Parts Bin of Doom" and went Core2 Duo and later Core2 Quad. Now, 50 C is about as hot as the CPU gets, even with a stock heatsink... Hope your experience with water cooling is better than mine!
Cap
What's your CPU running at temperature-wise? One downside of water cooling is that your computer begins to smell like an overheated car engine. When I was using a rig with a Pentium D CPU, I had to install a water cooling system, but that CPU cruised at 70 C... even with the water cooling! There was the constant worry of springing a leak, having the little peristaltic pump crap out, popping a tube or spilling some of the coolant (which I was always refilling) on some vital bit of hardware... I finally threw that CPU and MB into the "Spare Parts Bin of Doom" and went Core2 Duo and later Core2 Quad. Now, 50 C is about as hot as the CPU gets, even with a stock heatsink... Hope your experience with water cooling is better than mine!
Cap
CPU is pretty fine, aside from the fact I think the thermistor is inaccurate. :P I refuse to believe it runs at around 30 degrees centigrade, particularly when the ambient sensors say the inside of the case is hotter than that. :P
No, what I'm worried about is the graphics card, which gets up around 85 degrees when I'm playing a game and idles around 75.
If I go with water cooling, I'll be getting it from a shop that just makes water cooling equipment and rigs. That's all they do, and they seem good at it, and helpful. So yeah, hopefully it won't be bad.
By the way, your avatar is adorable! :D
No, what I'm worried about is the graphics card, which gets up around 85 degrees when I'm playing a game and idles around 75.
If I go with water cooling, I'll be getting it from a shop that just makes water cooling equipment and rigs. That's all they do, and they seem good at it, and helpful. So yeah, hopefully it won't be bad.
By the way, your avatar is adorable! :D
Thanx!!! shizuki did it for me... When it comes to gifs, I don't have the foggiest clue how to do 'em, but I think she did a great job.
Cap
Cap
I quite like how the most of recently designed computer cases now places the psu at the bottom. Shoulda done this earlier.
It's nifty, but I'm not sure if I'm sold on it or not. I mean, the cord position is convenient, but cords come from the top of the case anyway, and hot air rises.
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