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Looking for a good full ATX case

C

charlesshoults

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 18, 2008
Messages
125
I currently use a Thermaltake Mozart TX for my primary computer. At a point in time, the size of the case made sense, as I had a water cooling loop, four internal hard drives, a DVD drive and three drives in swappable bays. I've now set up a Windows Home Server system, so my daily computer now only has one hard drive and I've gone with an eSATA blu ray drive so no internal optical and my water cooling was swapped out with a Cooler Master V8. The case is now much larger than I need and the thin aluminum internal parts have developed an annoying buzzing sound.

I've looked at a number of cases, but I seem to find something wrong with all of them. My only real requirement is that it must be of adequate size to accommodate an ATX motherboard. I would also like to keep the final cost to $200 or less.

I first looked at the Silverstone Raven RV02. I like the rotated motherboard, although after reading reviews, I find two drawbacks. First, all four fans use 3-pin connectors, which normally would be a good thing, except that there are four of them, which means that in order to connect all of them to the motherboard, said motherboard would need five, fans plus CPU cooler. Second, if a DVI to D-sub adapter is needed for a monitor, which my second monitor does, the top cover does not fit.

Second, I looked at the Silverstone Kublai Series KL01-BW. This case is much more compact, yet still holds a full-size ATX board and the front-entry drive bays and quick-change front fan are nice touches, but one review showed that if a motherboard with edge-mounted SATA ports is used, the hard drive cage can interfere with the ports. And if the cage is moved higher in the case, it can interfere with the ATX power connector if said connector is along the front edge of the board.

Next, I looked at the Zalman GS1000-TT. This is an attractive case, with six front-mounted hard drives and three intake fans along the bottom of the chassis, but a review showed that of the three intake fans, one is directly below the power supply, which if the PSU does not have a side-mounted fan, becomes entirely useless. The fan toward the front is directly below the hard drives, and if in place, causes the bottom-most hard drive bay to be unusable, leaving only one good intake fan position and no air intakes anywhere else in the case. And no fan filters.

I want a good quality case, so I generally rule out anything below $70, anything with steel or aluminum thinner that 0.7mm, anything with sharp edges, anything with painted plastic, anything with bright lights or LED fans and anything with non-standard-sized fans. You can call me picky, but I call myself a realist. If a fan makes too much noise or develops a rattle, I want to be able to replace the fan with one of my choosing, rather than with the only fan available of a given size. A removable motherboard tray is nice but unnecessary, but an opening to be able to get to the CPU backplate is a definite plus. Swappable bays are good, as long as they work and side-facing hard drive cables are cool, as long as they can be point either left or right, so that cables can be hidden. Toolless designs are nice but I still want the ability to affix drives with screws. I learned that lesson with my old Antec 635 and now my Mozart TX. Oh, yeah, and I hate doors. If I have to get down on the floor to work on my computer, I want to be able to quickly and easily remove the entire panel instead of having to work around a door attached with hinges.

Any case suggestions?
 
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Doing some looking, I'm thinking that the Cooler Master Storm Sniper might be the case I go with, as long as my V8 will fit.

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Like the Mozart TX, that thing is really tall. I don't quite like the red theme, although I see that they make one that is all black and one in silver/black. The two drive bays at the bottom are interesting. The case design is very angular and seems to flow fairly well, except for the control panel, which looks like they grafted the hood of a car onto the case. I'm not sure what I think about that.
 
That Storm Sniper looks really cool.

I have an Antec 902 (nine hundred two - damn these guys need to hire someone new for their naming), which is fairly compact and offers lots of airflow. It is limiting a bit on the GPU size however. Mine only fits 2x 5870s or 5970s (3 would not work without sacrificing a Hard Drive cage). My top HD cage holds nothing and acts as a wind tunnel for 2x 120mm case fans that direct air directly through the memory and the VREG/exhaust..
 
The Antec 902 is a good looking case too. I started looking at that one and then found the Cooler Master Storm Scout, finding the exterior of the two to be somewhat similar. I like the triple-cage system used for the drives in the 902, but I like the lateral-facing drives of the Scout more. In a review of the Storm Scout, the author kept referring to the Storm Sniper, which lead me to look at it.

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I also did a lot of looking around for a full tower case, and I decided to go with Cooler Master ATCS 840 and couldn't be any happier. However, I have to admit that Lian Li cases are the best that comparing many to eachother, but a bit more on the expensive side. I would have gone with a Lian Li if it was withing my budget.
 
I'm not sure why all the fuss about the ATCS-840. Sure, it has a nice brushed aluminum finish, but it's exterior still looks rather plain and the opening/closing top ports panel seems to beg to be attacked by dust. Internally, it seems to be a layout very similar to the Storm Scout and Sniper, as well as many other Cooler Master cases, but a little taller.

On mother makes, Silverstone and Lian-Li make some good stuff, but can get expensive quick. For Silverstone, there is really nothing full-sized ATX between the KL01 and the KL03. I don't like the KL03 because I don't want a case with a door and it's fan bridge over the expansion slots looks very annoying. I like the FT01 and FT02, but $230 and $250 is more than I'm willing to spend. A lot of what Lian-Li makes are very square aluminum boxes. More recently, they have begun mixing plastic and clipping corners so that cases look less brickish. The top of my price target is the PC-9, which is kind of interesting. It has a backplane with a side-mounted fan, but there are few fans and it still seems rather plain. I do like the PC-B25F, but it's just beyond what I want to pay.
 
You said you wanted something without flashy bullshit and LED fans, then come back with a bunch of "gamer" cases like the Antec 902, the CM Storm Sniper and Scout (which are the epitome of flashy bullshit and LED fans, barring some kind of horrible Raidmax case), all the while dismissing the Lian-Li offerings in your price range as boring and boxy.

You clearly already know what you want, so my question is, why did you bother making a thread and asking for something entirely different?
 
I bought a PC that was in a Cooler Master Scout Sniper case, and it was too much for me. Now I am 40 years, so that may have something to do with it. I like classy, not flashy, so I moved the guts of my rig into an Antec 300. I love my Antec 300 case! It has great cooling, and if you install some Scythe fans in the front and exhaust (and on my heatsink), it is whisper quiet. And it is such a good price for the quality. I paid $40 with free delivery after a $20 rebate from Newegg. Microcenter sells them for $50 as well.
 
The Lian Li looks pretty good, the top mounted fans appear to be outside the metal frame, which is also nice, and for a good price. Being black inside and out is good. Three 140 and one 120mm. All for $120 shipped.

I have to say that I do like the look of the Gigabyte cases. The way they shape the front panel is interesting. PSU at top isn't ideal, but not bad. I'm going to have to look for a review of the thing to get a few things explained, like the gray accessory box placed in the bottom of the hard drive cage.
 
charlesshoults said:
The Lian Li looks pretty good, the top mounted fans appear to be outside the metal frame, which is also nice, and for a good price. Being black inside and out is good. Three 140 and one 120mm. All for $120 shipped.

I have to say that I do like the look of the Gigabyte cases. The way they shape the front panel is interesting. PSU at top isn't ideal, but not bad. I'm going to have to look for a review of the thing to get a few things explained, like the gray accessory box placed in the bottom of the hard drive cage.
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its just a plastic box that holds the accessories. its only for shipping, and comes right out. this case used to be called the "3d aurora" and was re-released under a different name, reasons unknow. it is absolutely huge, no sharo edges, and 100% thick, thick aluminum. why these cases never got very poular is beyond me.
 
The Thermaltake Level 10 is crazy expensive. I wonder if they actually sell very many. I look at the guts of the thing and wonder how difficult it would be to make a hacked-together equivalent. For the motherboard, a Mountain Mods motherboard tray could be mounted to a vertical panel with a cover made from acrylic or aluminum and a bracket for the PSU would be easy enough to make. The hard drive bays look very much like Vantec Nexstar's, although shorter, with the drives turned sideways. A person could duplicate the look with SAS/SATA backplanes for individual drives, attached to either acrylic or aluminum structure, then use metal brackets to hold the drives in place, in the simplest form, expansion slot cover brackets. All of the wires route through the material used for the vertical structure. But even cheaply done, the cost of construction would probably be $300+.

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