Advice, please, on a full tower case
Ron Knights
Posts: 1,805
in The Commons
I really want a good full tower case that has room for at least 3 hard drives (2, if the "boot drive" is an SSD). My "organization system" calls for a DAZ3D hard drive, and a "Data" hard drive that includes photos and my genealogy work. I might even want another internal hard drive for Media. Oh, and it would be nice if I could install a BluRay burner if I ever wanted one. Any suggestions?!
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I'm just waiting for somebody to say you should build your own case because buying a pre-built case costs more than sheet metal and a hacksaw.
For my larger workstations, with 12 x 13 dual-cpu server boards, I have used the Phanteks Enthoo Pro, and the Raidmax Vampire. The Vampire is no longer available. Both have room for large MB, long graphics cards, 3x5.25" drive bays, and 6x3.5" drive bays, as well as a separate SSD mount. It has removable air filters. I have five fans and one GPU radiator/fan mounted at the moment. 2 SSD's and 4 sata drives.
I also like the Rosewill Rise Glow case. It will take motherboards up to 12 x 13, and the same number of drives as the Enthoo. Also has dual power supply mounts, and a vertical GPU mount.
NewEgg has both cases, and the RIse Glow is on sale.
These cases may actually be TOO big for what you need.
Almost all mid-tower cases can fit at least three 3.5" HDD plus more 2.5". Keep in mind that new systems will use NVMe drives so your primary drive and possibly the main data drive will be NVMe SSD attached to MB that won't need HDD cages. A full tower might be overkill.
I've been looking at cases as well. Fractal Design seems to have displaced Lian Li as THE premium brand nowadays. Antec appears to be still the value brand to beat. NZXT is slotted between Fractal Design and Antec. There are many brands positioned similar to NXZT and the only one among them I wouldn't go with is Thermaltake.
Since you're designing your system from scratch, think about what your didsaster recovery strategy is going to be.
Just a PSA, courtesy of Gamer's Nexus
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3566-e-atx-is-a-lie-vs-xl-atx-eeb-ceb
There's a video in the link if you want to watch Steve go off on the case manufacturers about the e-ATX myth...
Short form, if you are looking for a case that can support an extended ATX motherboard, read the specifications to see how large of a motherboard the case can support.
That aside, I'd suggest picking a case that provides sufficient room at the bottom for say a double width card in the bottom PCI-E slot, just in case you want to do something crazy like a quad GPU setup at some point.
The other advantage to sufficiently roomy full tower cases is more places to tuck those radiators into, if you can find the right case. Mid-towers are probably sufficent for most people, but sometimes you just want to impress people with the size of your... case!
There are several full tower roundups showing on Google right now (I searched for Full Tower Case Roundup 2020). Here's Steve's take on the best & worst cases for 2020 so far, well at leas as of when he made the video...
I'm sure others here have favorite cases that they may want to share. The full tower that I have is very old at this point, with a bunch of 5 1/4 bays at the front, and cooling oriented design has advanced a lot since then.
One thing I would be looking for if getting a new case, would be a motherboard tray, where you could install your motherboard and cards before sliding the package in to the case. With the effects of aging, I hate having to screw around inside cramped interiors of the case.
The number of harddrive bays is no longer that important, since most of the drives are now 2.5" and with a bit of imagination you can fit a lot of them in the space reserved for 3.5" and 5.25" bays
OK, thanks for the info. I'll just need to look more closely at the insides of each case.
Yeah, but carving your own screws sucks.
Have you tried twisting them to shape?
Can't you just use nails?
Probably the absolute best, in terms of build quality and ease of building in is this:
https://www.newegg.com/black-lian-li-o11-dynamic-e-atx-full-tower-case/p/2AM-000Z-00048?item=2AM-000Z-00048&source=region&nm_mc=knc-googleadwords-pc&cm_mmc=knc-googleadwords-pc-_-pla-_-cases+%28computer+cases+-+atx+form%29-_-2AM-000Z-00048&gclid=EAIaIQobChMItfTe7fqY6wIVBL7ACh1FIQP6EAQYAiABEgIArfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
I dislike having drive bays that interfere with fan intake in the case, the enthoo pro and most cases more than about 5 years old. You can just get an external DVD drive and not affect the cases performance instead.
https://www.thermaltakeusa.com/level-20-xt.html
I have two an older model which I stacked to make one huge case
kenshaw011267 that is one nice looking case. I don't really want the lights...but guess I would keep them. I don't want liquid cooling... I guess that isn't included?!
Robert Freise, that case looks great also. Thanks, friends for your info, and humor.
I'm no expert but I've been gradually adopting the opinion that liquid cooled systems are for Masochistic Digital Gearheads(MDGs). Why? 1) leaks 2) mold in the liquid 3) cleaning regimes, 4) price 5) convoluted routing of pipes. Great fun for MDGs who absolutely need to tweak their CPU & Memory & GPU to just this side of failure just so that they can run 1% faster than the guy in the other game chair. Me? I'd rather run at 85% of capacity and not be able to roast marshmallows in my computer's fan exhaust.
But I do like the look of air cooled systems with a CPU heatsink cooler/fan assembly the size of large grapefruit.
LeatherGryphon, I agree. A few years ago a bunch of my online friends were saying water cooling was the best. Then I saw several YouTube videos about leaking cooling systems, etc. Forget that!
It isn't liquid cooled. It is meant for liquid cooling, but that just means it has lots of room for stuff. The case itself just has one LED strip on the front that is actually pretty tasteful. The maker just shows it full of gaudy stuff.
But if you really want a full tower this is the best one on the market that I'm sure you'll be able to find right now that isn't $400+
Custom watercooling is basically just for hobbyists at this point. Modern systems gain so little from manual overclocking it just isn't worth the time, money and effort. They can look spectacular though. I'm thinking about building one just to have one so when someone comes here to consult on my building them a system they can see it. Doesn't really matter how it performs just as long as it lights up and has all the bells and whistles.
But the AIO solutions are not a terrible choice for small cases or ones with bad airflow, and there are lots of those cases out there.
I dont see how anyone can place 3 to 4 nvidia GPU's on a single motherboard and run them at full throttle without hitting temperature issues without liquid cooling. If you are running a single CPU, and perhaps up to two nvidia gpu's then you can probably get by with fans, albeit noisy, fans will do. But if you're going to drop the cash for 2,3, or 4 2080ti's then it makes sense to liquid cool them. There's so little space between these double thickness cards these days for them to breathe, liquid cooling seems the only option. If my new 10-900k ever arrives I'll tell you how the liquidcooling rig works out. Naturally the i9 10-900k wants to be overlcocked, so liquid cooling is the plan for this system eventually.
kenshaw011267, thanks for the clarification.
I will only be using one GPU. Cooling fans will do.
Well, there you go.
A suitable situation for water cooling.
Cavemen had the same problem. One fire in the cave could be adequately air-cooled, but those with three or four bonfires in the cave needed that river running through the cave too.
I run 2 GPU's and cannot hear them from 3 feet. I do hear my PSU fan start up when I start a render but even that goes silent after a few seconds. If you build a a rig for airflow 2 GPU's isn't an issue.
I'm confident that if I wanted to build a rig with 4 I'd still have no issues with either noise or temps. First you don't OC a CPU that makes no sense for a render system when better alternatives exist and you still don't OC it. Second you start the design of the rig around a case with enough airflow for the job. I've seen so many people complaining "my system overheats. I had to WC." With these cases with all glass and no air intakes. Of course they overheated.
It's been a long time but I sold a Primo to someone. I don't remember it being unusual. Which power connector was weird?
I am currently running a system with 2 Titan Black Gpus. They are cooled by fans only. And they always go above 83C, which is the point in which performance starts to downthrottle. Never under full load since the day I installed them have they run below 83C. It isnt a case air flow shortfall, because I have removed the side panels, so there couldnt be any more air flow than there currently is now. The two cards are so snugly fit... The new MB that I have will include 4 GPus all lined up together....with heat rising and all, I KNOW i will have serious temperature issues. So I see that I will be required to liquid cool that system.
Titan Blacks were, to be nice about this, screaming hot dumpster fires. Kepler was not exactly the coolest micrarchitecture Nvidia ever came up with and those were the worst of that lot. The K6000 (same card but undervolted) still ran very hot.
Also simply removing the side panel by itself will not change the airflow unless you also put a fan to draw air in or push air out that way. If the fans are straight through then simply having the side panel off will just reduce the static pressure which will change, a little, how much fresh air comes in if the case is very restricted and how quickly the components cool once the system shuts down.
But if you're putting 4GPU's into a case from that era or older then yes you should WC. The case will have no airflow and you'll need the cooling.
Sorry about that, I misspoke!
It's the motherboard I set up with it that has a connector in an unusual place, and the case's PSU area made it worse:
https://www.newegg.com/asus-rog-zenith-ii-extreme/p/N82E16813119220?Item=N82E16813119220
If you look at the last pic, where it says "Addressable Gen 2 header?" Just to the left of that you can see the black housing of the power connector, which faces straight down. It intersects directly with the PSU casing area of the Phantek case, requiring a painful finger-crunching to get the connector in there even with the casing removed (there's still a metal flange intended to hold the PSU casing on in exactly the wrong place).
So really, it was a perfect storm of "quirky case setup" and "very large mobo."
SickleYield, that case is out of stock. But at least it is something to look at. I don't plan to overclock anything either. I'd be happy just getting together something that would allow me to render iRay without waiting for hours for the render to finish.
That looks like a Molex to provide supplemental power for something on the mobo. I hate those things. What a crappy place to put and what a crappy orientation. I guess it is meant to not get in the way of the bottom slot card. Does the mobo manual say what its even needed for?
Did you also have the 3 up the top plugged in? The 2 x 8pin and the 6pin?
I say that as I'm just building one on the same motherboard and it posts, but I don't have any real GPU's in there at the mo..