Phanteks P300 tempered glass case for $40 AR

Great case unless you really need a lot of airflow. It is very restrictive in the front compared to other cases. I swapped mine out for a Meshify C.

For $40 a great deal though. Has about the same build quality as a $75-125 case.
 
probably going to buy one, for the Ryzen system I'm probably going to build, when my 1070 finally comes and probably bottlenecks my X58 system
 
Nice! I wasn't planning on doing another build any time soon but I did want to transplant the guts from my 2700x build to a nicer case. According to Newegg it's got some fan slots - not sure what you mean kirbyrj 2x 120s or 140s seems to be alright?

"Cooling 120mm fan 140mm fan
Front 2x 2x
Top 1x 1x
Rear 1x (included)
Liquid Cooling 120mm radiator 140mm radiator"
 
I got this case a while ago and it is pretty good. I hate the extra rear expansion slot bracket that goes over all the regular expansion brackets. I ended up removing it, which left a decent size opening for extra airflow I guess lol. That is my only real problem with it.

It has 2x120 or 140mm intakes on the front, but like all solid front cases the air can only come in the top or bottom of the front panel. I still get plenty of airflow, but a completely mesh front will be less restrictive.
 
Nice! I wasn't planning on doing another build any time soon but I did want to transplant the guts from my 2700x build to a nicer case. According to Newegg it's got some fan slots - not sure what you mean kirbyrj 2x 120s or 140s seems to be alright?

"Cooling 120mm fan 140mm fan
Front 2x 2x
Top 1x 1x
Rear 1x (included)
Liquid Cooling 120mm radiator 140mm radiator"

Look at the pics. The only places the air gets in are the two small openings on the top and bottom of the front panel. Sure you can put a radiator up there, but you're going to have to deal with the limited amount of airflow compared to something like the Meshify C. Some other solid front panel cases have openings all around the front panel so more air gets in. This only has it on the top and bottom. Not a deal breaker, more of a FYI.

I mean, I had one. It's a great case. I only went with the Meshify C because it's slightly smaller overall. I would build in the P300 again.
 
I wish more newer cases would include more than 2x 3.5" HD bays. I don't need a new case for my server but had this had more 3.5 bays, I probably would have impulse bought this one...
 
this was actually on my short list for the back up rig until i saw the single 120 on top. i need room for at least 2x240. so i picked up a cheapie deepcool matrexx 55 for $40 on sale. its actually a solid little case and it looks good. eatx and will take a 360 in front (pulling the hdd rack out) and a 240 up top. not the greatest airflow in front but itll do for this rig- evga x99 classified- eatx , evga 980ti, 500gb crucial ssd, 2x8gb cheapo gskill memory and a seasonic 620w psu.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811853064
 
this was actually on my short list for the back up rig until i saw the single 120 on top. i need room for at least 2x240. so i picked up a cheapie deepcool matrexx 55 for $40 on sale. its actually a solid little case and it looks good. eatx and will take a 360 in front (pulling the hdd rack out) and a 240 up top. not the greatest airflow in front but itll do for this rig- evga x99 classified- eatx , evga 980ti, 500gb crucial ssd, 2x8gb cheapo gskill memory and a seasonic 620w psu.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811853064

Phanteks P350 is a little deeper and has 2x120mm on the top. It is only $10 more. It also has more openings on the front for air intakes and digital RGB.
 
Yup. Only two 3.5 bays is ridiculous.

You guys have had cases with 6-8 drive bays for years that many of us hated. They just made cases larger, blocked airflow and were ugly. I love that there are cases now with just a few bays. I'd be fine with no 2.5/3.5" bays, M.2 is more convenient.
 
You guys have had cases with 6-8 drive bays for years that many of us hated. They just made cases larger, blocked airflow and were ugly. I love that there are cases now with just a few bays. I'd be fine with no 2.5/3.5" bays, M.2 is more convenient.

Sure it's convenient, but unless you have deep pockets large drives are still expensive (or more expensive than regular spinners or SATA3 drives). Plus with chipset limitations, using a 2nd M.2 varies from board to board as to where it pulls the resources from. Sometimes you lose SATA ports (no big deal), sometimes you lose bandwidth to your primary graphics card (big deal).

Personally, I like that P350. I'd build in that. I like it better than the Meshify I'm using now. The Meshify is shorter though which is why I keep it around. Probably build an ITX system next time around.
 
You guys have had cases with 6-8 drive bays for years that many of us hated. They just made cases larger, blocked airflow and were ugly. I love that there are cases now with just a few bays. I'd be fine with no 2.5/3.5" bays, M.2 is more convenient.

Make removable drive cages; problem solved. That way, people that want more drives keep the cages in and get the expansion. Then other people can remove them and have the airflow they desire. Not a huge cost addition to stamp out a drive cage and screw it in place. My two primary systems have cases configured like this. My gaming PC has all the cages removed for airflow and my server has most of the cages in for all the spinners I have in place. We can have the best of both worlds, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
 
I need lots of spinners for my media collection and realized a long time ago that good air flow and keeping them cool was paramount, especially in the summer. My solution was a Supermicro 836 chassis for the media collection and an Intel NUC for my media PC. this combo has worked well for me for years. I originally went with the Supermicro chassis because there weren't any consumer cases that had room for a larger number of drives. The first that I remember that did was the Fractal Design full tower. But I've stuck with the Supermicro because no consumer case comes close to providing the amount of air flow over the drives. Yea, it's a bit noisy but I have it in another room and keep the door closed.
 
Sure it's convenient, but unless you have deep pockets large drives are still expensive (or more expensive than regular spinners or SATA3 drives). Plus with chipset limitations, using a 2nd M.2 varies from board to board as to where it pulls the resources from. Sometimes you lose SATA ports (no big deal), sometimes you lose bandwidth to your primary graphics card (big deal).

Personally, I like that P350. I'd build in that. I like it better than the Meshify I'm using now. The Meshify is shorter though which is why I keep it around. Probably build an ITX system next time around.

It depends on your storage needs, but a lot of people can get buy with 1-2TB. I have 1.5TB of space and could easily get by with half that. Using multiple M.2 NVME drives could cause chipset limitation and increase the cost even more, but M.2 Sata is usually the same cost as a 2.5" SSD.

Make removable drive cages; problem solved. That way, people that want more drives keep the cages in and get the expansion. Then other people can remove them and have the airflow they desire. Not a huge cost addition to stamp out a drive cage and screw it in place. My two primary systems have cases configured like this. My gaming PC has all the cages removed for airflow and my server has most of the cages in for all the spinners I have in place. We can have the best of both worlds, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

That makes the case larger and cost more. I have my case on my smallish desk so I prefer it be small. The Phanteks P400 is pretty much the P300 with the feature you are talking about. You can get two extra 3.5" cages that each hold three drives giving you a total of eight 3.5" drives, plus three 2.5" drives but it is 4-6" deeper.
 
I like a lot of the new cases, but I need one that has room for a 5 1/4" drive. I still use (and need) an optical drive. But there are other reasons also (fan controllers, water reservoirs, etc).
 
I have a tempered glass case on my 2nd game machine and I love it. SO much better than the plastic ones. But you have to treat it like GOLD when you remove it so it doesnt get broke!!
 
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