Coolermaster HAF 700 Evo

It's a pretty dumb case in my opinion, when I first saw it (I was looking for cases with 6+ 3.5" mounts). I think it's even dumber, after watching that Linus video. Nothing about it makes much sense, and it's just expensive without much to show for it. Although I don't know why he thought that using that CPU cooler along with a vertically mounted GPU would be a good idea (I guess he got rid of it for a more standard one, but it's a small one). Then again, his fans voted for it, not him, so I guess it's just that at work. I think the absolute dumbest thing about that case is that they decided to have 6 fan slots... on the top. Why the top? You really don't have many choices as to what top orientation fans are going to do. Most of the options lead to exhaust, since warm air rises. But if you put them in exhaust configuration, you're sucking the air out of the case faster than the parts can actually use it. As a result, the CPU cooler is getting more of the air that has already gone through the GPU. And having the GPU mounted vertically, where its exhaust is pointed basically right at the CPU cooler (an 800W GPU at that). They thought that was a good idea?

(the rest of this post is kind of an unhinged rant about contemporary case design since I've been meaning to let this out)
I'm not sure why anyone is sticking to the "standard tower" form factor these days, outside of anything that's just made to be budget. Lian Li has released cases like the Lancool Mesh 2 (which I'm daily driving at the moment) which probably beats the shit out of this case for meaningful performance (3.5" bays aside), while being cheaper (hell I got mine open box for like 70 bucks?), too. Although it has some dumb design decisions, as is Lian Li's standard modus operandi ("it's almost perfect, but then they decided to do something stupid": the standard Lian Li experience). Then, you have their more recent O11 line. The O11 line suffers from "yeah gotta have glass panels fucking everywhere". But... they have a Mini Mesh variant which is much more interesting:
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This, for $99-105, is basically one of the more min-maxed cases I have seen to date. I used it to put my 5950x into after replacing it with this 7800X3D. They still made some fucking stupid decisions with it, like how they have the 3.5" bays set up (and the fact that there's no airflow there means I had to go with some "slavic" mounting solutions to get airflow back there). But at the end of the day I was able to stuff 4 3.5" HDDs and 2 SSDs and a full size ATX motherboard and PSU into it, and it's got very good airflow at the front.

Unfortunately, the O11 at standard size is a much stupider case since it gets rid of the front mesh intake for more glass panel cancer.
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I wish they would take the O11 Mini (mainly, just the front mesh intake is all that's really different) and just scale it up to the size of this case, and then get rid of those stupid side fan bays and replace them with like 8+ recessed 3.5" HDD bays (recessed so they still get some airflow from the case, but don't actually get in the way of the GPU airflow). The case could be a little longer or a little wider to compensate, depending on the 3.5" bay orientation. Like that would literally be the perfect case for me. I would buy it in a heartbeat. Too bad it doesn't exist. And knowing Lian Li, it will probably never exist. Meanwhile Corsair is just over there doing random shit like occasionally making overpriced boxes, and then otherwise trying to somehow perfect the stupidly tall tower form factor. Thermaltake is all over the place, none of the places particularly useful except some outstanding ones.
 
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Lian-Li PC-A76W, the last case I will own. Bought in 2013, plan to keep until I die.
 

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Yeah what happens if the Power Switch goes out paperweight you got unless you can fix it somehow. Back when I had my trusty Coolermaster Enforcer case
Coolermaster had a switchable USB ports and power switch so I had a extra but gave it all to my brothers kids last year.

I mean I wouldn't mind a case like this but at 50lbs it might fall though the floor you gotta figure it would be around 60lbs with all the stuff tucked inside.
 
Power switch died in my Corsair 800d from 2013 in August so I replaced it with a 7000d airflow and except for the front panel USB ports being on the top and combo audio instead of two I like it. Much better airflow I have it sucking in via 3 front 140mm fans and 3 120 on the top, exhausting with a 140. This extremely positive pressure keeps it plenty cool and violently rejects all cat and dog hair from the region around the computer.

It weighs 41 pounds empty and to me this is a pro.
 
I remember being interested in the HAF 700 EVO when it was first announced, then the more reviews I saw on it the less I liked it. Doesn't seem like it really took off.

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Niner21 said:
I remember being interested in the HAF 700 EVO when it was first announced, then the more reviews I saw on it the less I liked it. Doesn't seem like it really took off.

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That's about how it went for me as well. The more I looked at the front grill the more I disliked IT and the Lian Li v3000 grew on me. Still, at 5 bills it can wait.
 
Comixbooks said:
Yeah what happens if the Power Switch goes out paperweight you got unless you can fix it somehow. Back when I had my trusty Coolermaster Enforcer case
Coolermaster had a switchable USB ports and power switch so I had a extra but gave it all to my brothers kids last year.

I mean I wouldn't mind a case like this but at 50lbs it might fall though the floor you gotta figure it would be around 60lbs with all the stuff tucked inside.
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Lol at one point I think my rig was 100 pounds with all the rads and liquid and drives and blocks etc. I dreaded picking it up. Borderline a 2 man job if I didn't have experience in power lifting 😁 ditched one of the 360 rads cause it was overkill for simplicity and lighter weight. Water-cooled rigs can get heavy.

I like the case that can fit two 360s on the top side by side. Is this the one? That way I can have both rads exhausting upwards for ultra efficient cooling.
 
Zepher said:
I liked the HAF series of cases, I had a HAF-932 and a couple of HAF-X's, an EVO and non-EVO
View attachment 605851

And a couple of months ago I found this HAF-932 case on the side of the road,
View attachment 605850

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Hell yes, the entire lineup was sweet. I love my Haf-X, sadly it's been sitting in the basement waiting for me to figure out what's going to go in it for the last 5 or 6 years :( By far one of the best all around air cooled cases ever built. I converted mine to house dual rads, imagine your last pic minus all of the cages from top to bottom. Replaced by a fatass Thermochill pa 120.3. Still ran the 200/230mm fans tho, soo quiet after years and years of leafblowers. It kept my q6700, 780i, sli 8800gtx rig icy. Everyone at EVGA forums boohooed about the 780i chipset and how it was no good with quadcores. Said 500fsb was all it could do, waah. Hahaha. I hit 560 with my q6700 and some badass 2x2gb Gskill Reapers (Promos ics). Those were the days. When cases were juuust starting to get thick, LEDs couldn't change colors -gasp- 😂 and ocing was fun.

Sorry for the tangent.
 
hititnquitit said:
Hell yes, the entire lineup was sweet. I love my Haf-X, sadly it's been sitting in the basement waiting for me to figure out what's going to go in it for the last 5 or 6 years :( By far one of the best all around air cooled cases ever built. I converted mine to house dual rads, imagine your last pic minus all of the cages from top to bottom. Replaced by a fatass Thermochill pa 120.3. Still ran the 200/230mm fans tho, soo quiet after years and years of leafblowers. It kept my q6700, 780i, sli 8800gtx rig icy. Everyone at EVGA forums boohooed about the 780i chipset and how it was no good with quadcores. Said 500fsb was all it could do, waah. Hahaha. I hit 560 with my q6700 and some badass 2x2gb Gskill Reapers (Promos ics). Those were the days. When cases were juuust starting to get thick, LEDs couldn't change colors -gasp- 😂 and ocing was fun.

Sorry for the tangent.
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I went with the 932 when I bought my first AIO. There was no real way to use the AIO in my YY-0221 Cube case, so I got the 932.
Had an i7 870K, then a 2600K, and finally a 3770K.
haf-932.jpg haf-inside-1.jpg

i7-2600k-01.jpg 3770k.jpg
 
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