Once you goes Open Frame, do you ever go back to a regular tower case?

Once you goes Open Frame, do you go back to a regular case?

  • Yes

    Votes: 28 68.3%
  • No

    Votes: 13 31.7%

  • Total voters
    41

Happy Hopping

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jul 1, 2004
Messages
7,826
with the design of a good open frame case, once you get used to having one for awhile, would you go back to regular tower case?
 
I thought about the dust issue. My current case is closed w/ filter, so some low amt. of dust. But because it's a closed case, I am too lazy to check the inside for dust. So I never clean the inside unless I have to do something at the inside of my PC. In other words, it should have clean more often.

w/ a open frame case, the glass on both side shows the dust, and it's easy to remove the glass, so it encourage me to clean it often

anyhoo, I bought an semi-open frame case. So presumably, some dust, not much, I'll find out eventually
 
I've switched from open air and back a bunch of times. I get bored with cases easily, main reason, I don't prefer one over the other.

I remember I bought the Antec skeleton years back and everyone was freaking out about dust and how I was going to spill stuff in my computer.
 
I got old and stopped caring about having the best of the best PC. You would be hard pressed to pry me away from my simple ITX rig. Dealing with full towers and open air cases was awful for LAN parties.
 
Closed-Frame Fractal Design Define R5 here- no dust inside, or inside the R3 that it replaced, running for six years (at least). Parts pulled for sale over the years looked brand new.

Won't be going 'open frame' for a performance workstation in the foreseeable future.
 
Perhaps if you go all liquid cooling you could do it more easily as you'd just have to worry about the rads/fans

I prefer air cooling and it's just too hard to keep those little fins clean if there is a lot of dust - it builds up and won't come off with just an air can.

They look cool, but I just don't see the upside.
 
I've got 2 bass amps eating up floor space.
I'm going to try a wall mounted P3.
 
Wall mount is impractical to me. As I need to insert Blu-ray on my PC and insert USB stick quite often. So wall mount becomes hard to reach for me
 
I had a benching station type case....after about 5 years I moved to a thermaltake P5....so it's kind of both, but I call it more open than close.
 
My favorite computer cases are the sleepers. My main case I purchased in the 90s and have tried to keep it current. The side of the case is mostly covered with the hardware badges acquired throughout the years. The case is an Antec Plus
 
I'm intrigued by open frame cases, but I still like my Corsair Air 540 case. It's worked very well for me. I'll definitely consider open frame for my next build, most likely in 2019.
 
what on earth is a sleeper?
It's a slang term for a thing that looks boring but is actually badass.

Like... SLI'd 1080tis and a Threadripper 1950x fully watercooled with dual loops and autonomous fan control... in a windowless beige Compaq case from the early 90s. That's be a sleeper.
 
I get so tired of seeing those older cases, after using PC for 20+ year, I just can't stand them anymore. I need to look at cases that I feel refreshing
 
it is dusty AF around here... and my cat likes to rub his cat face on my computer.. no open frame cases happening here..
 
Just bought a Thermaltake Core P7 - it's quite showy but it is so large if you don't have watercooling it looks barren.

Have to pick up some RGB fans and a RGB CPU cooler - my RAM is Ballistix Tracer so it already has lights. Otherwise the computer looks more like a junior high science fair project.

Also have to make space on my desk for it - darn thing is 1.35m wide and my desk is only 5m wide so I have to squeeze my monitors together to make room.

Open-air cases are great for show but from a performance perspective on air cooling it's meh - my Silverstone Raven RV02 absolutely murders the Core P7 in that department.
 
The tubing is in and the Sysprep is circulating. Hopefully tonight I'll finish the cable management and see how she sounds and cools.

IMG_20180228_233616486.jpg
 
my first PC was a Compaq 386 / 33MHz, at the time, it's about $15K, and my grand father bought it for me as a gift. Since then, all my PC is a rectangular box, and the word "appealing" never applies. So after all these years, I'm quite sure I'm getting tired of seeing a rectangular box.

Open frame or semi open frame is a really welcome change, it's a design rather than a rectangular metal box. I would say my next open frame box after the one I just bought would definitely be another open frame, as long as I can modified it to fit a 5.25" blu-ray
 
Yannow, there's little things that become problems when a case isn't setup for common parts today.

Take my Define C, that was like 2mm too short for a 280mm AIO and an EVGa 1080ti FTW3 hybrid.

I got a deal on a lightly used R5.
Totally forget that 280mm support was a pain.

Oh well, make do and buy a P3 when they're on sale again.

At least all my parts are in, minus a bottom row of screws.

IMG_20180305_141911.jpg


IMG_20180305_141919.jpg
 
no experience here, but ive always wanted one of them open air bench cases, something like the...praxxis wetbench...just cant justify the prices..

that said my friend just bought one of the core p5 or p7 cases, cant remember which, to build his ryzen setup in.... watercooled, but was having issues with vrm cooling cause no proper airflow...he ended up jerry-rigging a fan over the cpu area at the top of the case.....
 
no experience here, but ive always wanted one of them open air bench cases, something like the...praxxis wetbench...just cant justify the prices..

that said my friend just bought one of the core p5 or p7 cases, cant remember which, to build his ryzen setup in.... watercooled, but was having issues with vrm cooling cause no proper airflow...he ended up jerry-rigging a fan over the cpu area at the top of the case.....
Thus far, mine handles the same 4.8ghz overclock on a 7700K as it did in my old closed case. I can't say that means much though; I'm sure there are a lot of factors in play when it comes to VRM cooling in open air like that. My VRM heatsinks definitely get too hot to touch. I'm considering EK's monoblock for my mobo, at this point.
 
Thus far, mine handles the same 4.8ghz overclock on a 7700K as it did in my old closed case. I can't say that means much though; I'm sure there are a lot of factors in play when it comes to VRM cooling in open air like that. My VRM heatsinks definitely get too hot to touch. I'm considering EK's monoblock for my mobo, at this point.

ya he mentioned it was extremely hot to the touch when he kept crashing/rebooting, my first recommendation to him was "are you sure, theres not some sort of fancy plastic wrap on the heatsinks?" to which he verified there infact wasn't, so he just rigged a fan up to the top, seemed to resolve his issue.
 
Never, once you start botching your own and you get exactly what you want you will laugh at 3 digit case prices. Sometimes I tried to get away with cheapest 20$ case for a customer but often the metal is too thin and it's so narrow you will never be able to close the lid with modern hardware. The cheap 90's beige cases were much spacious and better quality.

http://i.imgur.com/iAOIvas.jpg
 
Once you goes ITX, you don't go back.

I went ITX and open frame. Never going back.
I've been open frame since I owned the S-Frame and now D-Frame Mini.

There's nothing to hold dust in, it pass right through the case. My S-frame was the cleanest case I've owned, next to the FT02.
All of my Lian Li cases were dust bins.
 
So you own both S Frame and D frame, or did you sell your S frame?

I have a "hybrid" s frame. I got the Jonsbo
 
So you own both S Frame and D frame, or did you sell your S frame?

I have a "hybrid" s frame. I got the Jonsbo

I sold it last year. Regretted it but I bought a Mac Pro for business so I didn’t look back long. I just built a new PC this week and got a good deal on the D-Frame. I like it a lot and will probably buy the other versions.

I know of the Jonsbo, cool case as well.
 
So you own that fancy SI-1065W tempered glass PSU then? How's it? I heard people complaining that PSU (I vaguely recall it's at In Win forum), and for the $ people paid, I am surprised there is problem. Usually the more $ you pay, the better it should be.

But that PSU reminds me of cars like Ferrari or Lambo, the more $ you pay, the more trouble you get.

======================

Does anyone knows who start the idea of Open Frame? Is it AeroCool? As there is no website that talks about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_case
 
So you own that fancy SI-1065W tempered glass PSU then? How's it? I heard people complaining that PSU (I vaguely recall it's at In Win forum), and for the $ people paid, I am surprised there is problem. Usually the more $ you pay, the better it should be.

But that PSU reminds me of cars like Ferrari or Lambo, the more $ you pay, the more trouble you get.

======================

Does anyone knows who start the idea of Open Frame? Is it AeroCool? As there is no website that talks about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_case

The D-Frame Mini doesn't come with that PSU, only the D-Frame 2.0.

Antec had a few open air cases back then, along with Lian Li. but they were advertised as test benches.
 
CF8DE9B4-5738-4792-BD82-C4DE6028E2CE.jpeg

E534B2A0-DCDF-4ADF-B7B6-0CA94A038E1F.jpeg D31BCE90-9775-4687-A6C0-9E0322F03ED5.jpeg

A8B07225-8251-4055-AFB7-60867ACC95FA.jpeg






Once you goes ITX, you don't go back.
No, I’ve tried them all. That’s too small limits your GPU, adds heat, limits hard drives/upgradibility IMO. Mid towers are probably the best. I have an open air thermaltake P3 now. Dust isn’t really that big a problem, but I’m not against the idea of going back to a more traditional case next time. I think my favorite case was a Thermaltake Cosmos 1010. My second favorite was probably a Deep Cool Captain Genome II. I go to LAN parties regularly. The Cosmos 1010 has those nice big handles. (Yes it’s stupid heavy though)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top