Compact Case, Quiet Cooling, AND High Performance - Can it be Done?
2 replies, posted
In the next few months, I'm going to be starting a new build - here's what I'm looking at so far
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1326989[/url]
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133492[/url]
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820721107[/url]
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149382[/url]
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181010[/url]
What's the smallest case that I could fit these parts in? Would it be possible to cool this quietly as well?
I'm going to be using it for games at the level of Metro: Last Light, and video production/editing.
The reference coolers are not quiet. You want non-reference cooling on your graphics cards. The ideal thing to do is to buy an aftermarket GPU cooler for the most quiet and most cooled setup. This is a good example: [url]http://www.arctic.ac/us_en/products/cooling/vga/accelero-xtreme-iii.html[/url]. I'm not sure which manufacturer makes the best cooling, as there are simply not enough benchmarks of ACX, DirectCUII, Windforce, Twin Frozr, etc. Out of the one legitimate benchmark I've seen, Twin Frozr cools the best, but I'm not sure if it's the most quite.
Get a Seagate or WD drive, Toshiba drives are junk.
This case can do a MicroATX motherboard with full height cards, and I think it can do up to a 12" card.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811144162[/url]
I have one of these as my router:
[thumb]http://imageshack.us/a/img19/5728/img0258de.jpg[/thumb]
I made a custom fan duct for the rear 120mm fan (it blows in) to help cool the 100W TDP CPU in it (A8-5600k):
[thumb]http://imageshack.us/a/img823/299/img0260xj.jpg[/thumb]
The little duct in the side is to direct some air on to the hard drive and cool it down more.
Pros:
- Lots of internal room.
- Easy motherboard and card installation (motherboard is mounted on a removable tray.)
- Takes full height PCI/PCIe cards.
- Three external drive bays (2 x 5.25 and 1 x 3.5) and room for two 3.5" drives internally
- Good airflow (if you use a different rear fan)
- Has two temperature probes that you can stick to your CPU/hard drive. Depending on where you place them, they're pretty accurate.
Cons:
- Case is on the flimsy side. It has a handle, but you aren't going to want to use it, or move the case around much once you have it fully built.
- PSU is an IED. You'll definitely want to use a more reputable PSU.
- The 120mm rear fan is terrible and barely moves any air. I use a CM Sickleflow, which works way better.
- After market CPU coolers will be a problem due to the hard drive bracket. Tall coolers definitely aren't going to fit without case modification, and larger flat coolers will be problematic as well due to limited height. You should be fine with one of those closed loop water coolers though.
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