Seeing that my current PC is on its last legs as far as keeping up with all the latest and greatest, I've decided to sink some time and money into a new rig. I have a pretty good idea about the general hardware I want to go with but am clueless about case choices. I'm guessing it will have to be somewhat "big" since I plan to eventually go with 2 GeForce 9800 GX2 cards on a XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI Motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Processor. I want to keep the system air cooled since I really don't like the hassle of water cooling. What cases should I be looking into? What cooling solutions should I invest in? Any general comments or concerns? I've been out of the game a long time all help is appreciated!
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Air cooling...
- Thread starter Maxis3
- Start date
silent-circuit
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2005
- Messages
- 16,132
The 790i and DDR3 are a huge waste right now. Look to the 750i FTW (and a SATA controller card if you need more ports) instead. DDR3 is immature and offers no performance benefit over DDR2 while costing 2x-8x as much.
What size / resolution monitor will you be running? If it's anything 1920x1200 and below, I'd forget about quad SLI. Also, with new cards coming out in mid June the 9800GX2 is going to be old tech soon enough.
The Lian-Li V1xxx series are very nice, as are the V2xxx series, but the 2s are out of your price range. You might also look at the PC series of Lian-Lis.
The Coolermaster RC-590 and 690 are nice for air cooling as well with lots of fan mounts, and much less expensive. The Stacker series are also an option.
Silverstone also makes very nice, solid cases.
Antec's 900 and 1200 are... kind of junky (at least for their price) honestly, and too riced out for my taste, but if you're in to that they do cool reasonably well.
Cases are 9/10ths personal preference regardless. Look for something with all 120mm fans and get what you like.
What size / resolution monitor will you be running? If it's anything 1920x1200 and below, I'd forget about quad SLI. Also, with new cards coming out in mid June the 9800GX2 is going to be old tech soon enough.
The Lian-Li V1xxx series are very nice, as are the V2xxx series, but the 2s are out of your price range. You might also look at the PC series of Lian-Lis.
The Coolermaster RC-590 and 690 are nice for air cooling as well with lots of fan mounts, and much less expensive. The Stacker series are also an option.
Silverstone also makes very nice, solid cases.
Antec's 900 and 1200 are... kind of junky (at least for their price) honestly, and too riced out for my taste, but if you're in to that they do cool reasonably well.
Cases are 9/10ths personal preference regardless. Look for something with all 120mm fans and get what you like.