Neshi

I was thinking about a new PC case, as I can't fit the x1950xt in the Antec 900 I got now.
Now I am not very sure what case I have to choose.
Apperantly it has to be bigger then the 900, and I plan to keep the case for a very long time. Somewhere in the future I might switch to watercooling, so that has to be possible as well.

Now I was thinking about the Stacker 832 or 830.
I have browsed a little on the internet but didn't really find something better.

In the 'show-your-rig-off'-thread I saw a sweet case, the Tagan Black Pearl, although modded for water cooling.. but it was big and lots of room. That would be a contender too...

What would you guys advise. It's a pretty big purchase and I want to stick a couple of years with a case for a change..

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

OldBuzzard

If you want to stay with a mid-tower:

Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 RC-590-KKN1-GP Black SECC / ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases
or
Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER RC-690-KKN1-GP Black SECC/ ABS ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Computer Cases

Both will handle your X1950 with ease. Shucks, I have the 690, and my 3870 X2 fits with room to spare.

There have also been some folks that have added internal WC to them, since the fan provisions on the top of the case make it fairly easy.

I use a Koolance EXOS, and I'm routing my tubing thru the stock holes in the case instead of using the Koolance PCI bracket.

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

cozumel

Also love Coolermaster.

I have the Cosmos case. Great cooling and simply loads of space in which you can work. Is absolutely gigantic though and expensive. Looks great too. If you want this monster make sure you have the space though. See the glowing DH reviews (there are two seperate reviews for each version) and is also reviewed elsewhere. There are two versions; the Cosmos RC-1000 and the Cosmos S RC-1100. The Cosmos S RC-1100 has improved cooling with a 200cm fan cooling the graphics area while the standard Cosmos RC-1000 only has an air cooling tunnel for GFX area.

The RC-690 linked above by OldBuzzard is a spacious mid-tower that has enough room to fit full length graphics. Also good cooling and overall design. Another reviewed at DH.

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Judas

all my new towers are still being built with the coolermaster 690 case.... they are simply excellent

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OldBuzzard

Yeah, the 690 is dang near perfect. The only place I see it falling short, is if you still have EIDE HDDs. I have 1 EIDE and 2 SATA HDDs, and I ended up getting a 5.23 --> 3.5 adapter for the EIDE drive because there just isn't enough room in the 690 for the power plug if you use the 3.5 bays.

But, if you have all EIDE drives, then the 590 has that covered, as the drives mount in the traditional orientation.

My "Perfect" case would be the 690's internals, and the 590's externals. Since I have my EXOS sitting on top of the 690, the USB and sound outputs are not usuable.

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

Lowfat

If you are willing to spend the funds. The Black Pearl is a great case. It is almost exactly the same as a Lian Li V2000 but generally with a lower price and a few added bells and whistles.

EDIT: Since you are thinking about a Stacker 832... I own/have owned both an 830/832. They are the same case, and are generally great cases. I have very little complaints with it. I can tell you the Black Pearl is a more organized case, and has more usable space. The fact that the PSU is on the bottom and the inverted mobo tray is a big plus on the Black Pearl. Although I haven't had a system in the black pearl yet, I am confident it will be a cooler, quieter case. But I do not think the difference is going to be huge. So go with whatever style you enjoy more. As really that is the only thing that matters. You'll be the one looking at it for hours a day.

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Callandor

What he said, they look a little jarring to the eye (imo) but are extremely good value, using a Cooler Master Cavalier 3 for my current, modest set up right now, the one with the blue strip in the front, with the door turned around the other way so the blue strip starts from the one side then stops and starts again from the other side, pretty much built this rig for my little sister (it's actually her computer ) hence the modest power and still figuring out whether I should blow a gazillion dollars and buy a killer rig or just wait and get one later.

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Judas

most of my customers actually like the looks of the 690.... it's sleek imo.... some people keep looking for a bit of the norm.


so far i've come across 3 or 4 revisions of the 690 cases.

the first ones were questionable at best.. good design.. just the connectors and a few other dodads were "not right"

one of which i had a discussion with V3 about when he did the review of the case.. which was fixed in the 2nd revision... which would be that the PLED was orginally a single solid connector, and NOW is a split connector allowing one with either a 2 pin or 3 pin motherboard pled connection..

another changing being the top side ports being slightly adjusted.

some other things as well.


but generally, it's a unique case that is working excellently for all applications. And with the number of people that are using thier computers closer to that of the ground rather then on the desk.... the top side ports are nice.

i'm still a fan of my cosmos...

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Callandor

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as we all know but as to whether or not the beholder of that eye is beautiful him or herself is left to the whims of chance and chance alone....."

What Jeff would have said in reply to that.

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Neshi

the CoolerMaster Cosmos S RC-1100 looks very, very nice.
Alot of space, good options for cable management and room enough to get a whole watercooling set in it.
I think I'm getting that one.
Black, and I will paint the inside black too. Did the same with the Antec 900 and it just looks very cool. I think it's odd they don't manufacture it already painted, because that white/silver inside of black cases is just ugly.

It's just a bit pricy.. 170 euro's around here, while the 690 is just 80 euro's..

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

cozumel

The Cosmos is the best case I've ever had for the combination of build quality, internal work-space, cable management and cooling. Oh yeah, and sexy good looks. It's money well spent I reckon. Same as you, I wanted something I would be happy with for at least 2 years and I'm thinking it may well turn out that way. It cost me an additional £4,000 knocking a wall through and extending my home office work area to accommodate its massive footprint.

Will you post some pics of it built after you have done the internal paintwork please?


(I made it up about the reconstruction of my office space,)

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Neshi

I just ordered it. I hope I can do a good job painting it..

And of course I will post pictures!

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

Callandor

Okay, now the Cosmos is WAY better looking than the 690 imho, and it does just as brilliant a job too. Wtg Neshi and congrats on that new case, btw, I am an epic Coolermaster fan myself.

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Judas

i've submitted a few design changes to coolermaster for thier next cosmos design

hopefully they consider it


one change provides a little bit more space behind the motherboard mounting plate so that cabling can be run behind. Actually widen the case by no more then a inch.. this would provide enough space behind the motherboard mounting plate as well as less stress on the sata/power cables the run to the hardrives.

I had at one point made the suggestion for a quick access to the HD sata/power cables so that you didn't have to remove the whole damn thing.. but that was kinda sloft off as seeing as it's already easy as hell to remove the whole thing already.

also a suggestion to create a 6 hd bay with 30-45 degree angled and overlapping hd drive bays mounts similare to that of the cosmos 1000.... but angled up at the back of them

before they are like this
| | |
| | |

i suggested something like this
\ \ \
\ \ \

only far flat so more airflow would pass under and over... less restriction.


top it off, i also asked for 120mm and 140mm mounts to be placed behind the front cover for a fan... 2 of them actually.. one infront of the hardrives and on just below the top 5 and 1/2 inch drive bay. (so one optical drive can be put in and then the remainder used for 140mm fan OR 2 drives and only 120mm fan.)

lastly, the ports at the top where the power button is..... to remain.. but another set of them down at the bottom sticking out the front just behind a 2ndary cover plate that matches the front plate of the case. removeable as well to match.

i beleive those were the only things i suggested.

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cozumel

I suggested that they do a cashback deal. I'm still waiting for a reply...

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Callandor

Nice man I'd give you rep but I gotta spread it around first it seems.

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Neshi

I got the case today and damn is the case sexy!

I said I would paint the inside black, but on second thought.. now I've seen the case in person, I don't think it's really neccesary.
I painted the 900 black because it had a window and the silver/white of the inside was really easy noticable..
This case has this black mesh at the side, and you can't look inside, so painting it black has no real use, only when you take the side off...

So, I will post pictures as soon as I'm assambling the case, because it will look pretty good I reckon. But don't count on it being painted

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

cozumel

Were you not shocked by its sheer size?

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procupine14

Hooray!!! another Cosmos user! I really like my Cosmos 1000 and thinking about upgrading to either the Black Pearl or the Cosmos R

which reminds me.....I need to get some pics up of my rig back together with the liquid cooling system and the accelero cooler on my 8600

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mkk

Sexy pictures are always nice, so we're waiting.
One of the few cases I could see as a replacement over my Stacker 810.

Neshi

I'm actually considering watercooling... but is it worth it, I guess only if you overclock right?
I'm also thinking about getting additional case fans... Or replacing the current fans, as I heard the mounted fans are pretty loud. There is so much choice of fans, I don't really know what to choose..
Can you enlighten me as to what I have to look for in a fan?

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

mkk

With a case such as that one and todays heatpipe coolers I'd call watercooling becoming more and more of a gimmick except for some extreme systems.

Cooler Master tend to ship really noisy fans so I'd certainly expect to have to replace the regular 120mm ones. There are a lot of places to add fans and the more you put in the slower each fan can run and still give a great result. Without any fan controller I'd say look for fans that run at 1000rpm at the most, or less if possible. Silent PC Review recently did a huge fan roundup test and they are a premium source for anti-noise activism Fan Roundup #5: Attack of the 120 Scythes | silentpcreview.com

If you can't find the highly praised Scythe Slip Stream or Nexus RealSilent fans at a nice price then basically look for slowly rotating fans because after all the speed is what makes the major difference between most fans. With some basic speed adjustment like a Zalman FanMate most fans can be made to run pretty silent and still move enough air in an open case such as yours. Right now I'm using two 1000rpm ADDA ball bearing fans for my exhaust and they need to be dialed down to about 600rpm to fit my noise target. A top fan like a Slip Stream could be set to blow a little more air for the same "cost" of noise but I'm running a fairly low power system so I don't need to replace them right away. I happened to get a Slip Stream 1200rpm fan before I knew they were so good and am currently using it on my CPU cooler and running at just 5V for providing just a breeze through the fins. Its noise signature is quite something special even at full speed, though moving so much air makes for wind turbulense alone to be noisy enough. I'd either get the 800rpm model or more of this 1200rpm and dial down the voltage a lot for exhaust use. Not all fans can start up at just 5V but these have no problems with that at all.

Neshi

I've looked into it too.. and I've come across the Scythe S-Flex fans which have these specs:

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

mkk

Sure, those would be nice too. S-Flex is Scythe's older model, possibly being replaced by the Slip Stream series eventually as production ramps up and availability gets better.

Neshi

yea.. just looked into the specs of the slipstream models you mentioned and those seem just a little bit better and almost half the price..

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

OldBuzzard

Not necessarily. Makes for a nice quiet system, and keeping your CPU and GPU cooler extends their lifetime.

I'm using an EXOS2 and cooling my 4800+, and 3870 X2 with it. The 4800+ is OC'd just a wee bit, 2.625 as opposed to the 2.50 stock. GPU is running stock.

GPU idles at about 42c and the highest I've seen it go is 71, and that was after hours of FSX. I'm only running 1/4" tubing, as that's all my CPU block could use. I'll be getting a new block for the CPU, and I'll increase the tubing size to 3/8", which should lower the temps a bit more, as the EXOS2 has a higher flow rate than the original EXOX that I replaced.

Downside to watercooling is that it's a bit costly, and there is the possibility of leaks, altho, I started WC when I had my Athlon 1.2 and have never had a problem with leakage.

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

Neshi

just ordered some of those slipstream fans to replace the stock fans and to put additional fans in the case... Cant wait to put everything together!

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

Life is just too damn short for if's and maybe's

procupine14

As a general rule for myself, the first thing I do with a new case is replace all of the stock fans that I can. The reason for this is that I have noticed that some companies don't even use their own fans (or super cheap ones of their own that they don't even sell retail) in the cases when they ship them. When I had my Logysis clear case the stock fans that were shipped with it were all from a company called STAR and they were LOUD. The cosmos fans that are stock are ok at best....once i installed my WC system I had to replace them all because the stock fans were barely able to push air through the rad.

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HTPC/file server: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Phenom x4 9850 - 4GB OCZ DDR2 800 (2x2GB) - 1TB WD Black - 4 x 1TB Hitachi DeskStar in RAID 5 - ATi TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner - HIS Raedon 4850 512MB - ASRock N68C-S UCC mobo - OCZ ModExtreme Pro 500W PSU

GF's Gaming PC: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Phenom 9850 - 4GB OCZ DDR2 1066 - 500GB Western Digital GP - HIS Raedon 5770 1GB - ASUS M3A78-EM - Zalman 650W PSU

Media Streamer: Win 7 Pro 64-bit - AMD Athlon x2 3200+ - 4GB SuperTalent DDR2 800 - 250GB SeaGate Barracuda - MSI K9N6PGM2-V2 - ASUS Raedon 5450 SILENT - FSP group 250W PSU

Judas

when it comes to water cooling.. while the idea and advantages are clear... the maintenence time/costs are considerably higher as well as the danger of something going horribly wrong.

and it's been shown over and over, when something goes wrong, they tend to REALLY go wrong (aka, completely dead computer)

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cozumel

That's why I have shelf in my cupboard with a ton of fans from a variety of manufacturers, all of different sizes and specs

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