About that old Rocketfish/Lian Li tower case...

R

Redshirt #24

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 29, 2006
Messages
3,461
...exactly how much room does it have for a video card, length-wise? Due to its age I can't find anything on how it looks with any of the last generation or so of 10-12" cards in it, and my HAF X is actually cramped with an R6990 in it. (On the other hand, I imagine cable management would be a pain...)
 
Which one specifically? I have an old PC-60 and a new gen 10-12" card doesn't fit without removing the drive cage at the bottom. After doing that, it fits fine.
 
There's roughly 15.5" from the back of the inside of the PCIe slots in the rocketfish to the rear of the 5.25" cage. If you drop down to the 4th PCIe slot, you're below the 5.25" cage and you have roughly 16.75" to the 3.5" cage.

It's a huge case, you can put a HPTX board in it if you really wanted to.
 
Okay, so there'd be 3-4" of free space for an R6990 (or, thinking ahead, an R7990) in this thing--but since it blows hot air out both ends you'd still have to get all that air out of there. And that might be the rub...without modifying it, I wonder how its fan setup would handle a blast furnace like the R6990.
 
...so I lost my mind and bought one of these off a guy (BNIB, at least). Between the existing fan placement and its width of 8.25" I'm just now realizing that, if I wanted to simply migrate my existing rig to this case, I'd need a new HSF (this TT Frio Advanced is huge) and/or I'd need to find somebody to modify this thing for upper fan placement. If I proceed with my original plan of consolidation, though, then an i7/2600K with its stock HSF goes in here along with the 6990...and that'll probably be bad enough heatwise.
 
It shouldn't, at least; the HAF X is 3/4" wider than the RF case, and the TT Frio Advanced HSF the 3930K's using is 160mm tall. If it does fit, it's going to be extremely close to if not banging against the side of the case.
 
You can't compare the exterior dimensions of the HAF-X and the Rocketfish and then expect the interior dimensions to be the same. One is thin aluminum and the other is thick steel and plastic. You have 7.25" or over 180mm from the top of the motherboard to the side panel, just went and measured.
 
As you said it might be a tight fit, but you can find tons of people using 6990's in HAF X's. It's max limit is about 20mm longer than reference 6990's which I think are pretty much the longest consumer graphics card, even longer then the insane 590.

Air should mostly brought from the side, the closeness to the HDD mounts will actually help with it getting air sooner from, the front fan, the power connectors are on the side away from the HDD's. So why replace something with better cable management, better air flow, can fit all your hardware, for an older case with no cable management, will require a new HSF for your CPU, and no real air flow direction, just for a little more wiggle room for 1 card.
 
The RF case wouldn't have any issues holding everything apart from perhaps the X79's HSF now that I've poked around in the one I ended up with (a Z68 motherboard in there now is dwarfed by it), but the cable management aspect is admittedly a concern. Though that may be derailed a bit by the particular power supply I'm using (a Thermaltake 1000W with a main power cable long enough to get to where it needs to go, but not really long enough to be fed around or through anything to get there).

It might be better suited as a server case, though it probably would still make a serviceable but not great workstation case by modern standards; I'd have to stick a big-ass video card in it (ah, for want of a cheap R7990--two birds, one stone) and let it rip to be sure.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top