Hi, I soon will l be building a new machine , in fact two identical machines but I'm having a hard time finding a case that ticks the required boxes.
The closest I've found is the H500 (the cooler mater one) and post improvements it is a well regarded case overall but has a few problems for me that make me wonder if there are other options I've yet to find or be guided towards.
The previous machines where built using InWin Mana 136 cases. These where hands down my favorite cases thus but the design is about a decade old and lacks a few features I'd like such as a PSU half-shroud and has things I no longer need such as a pair of disk drive mounts. They also have a stupidly high fan capacity at a serious budget price.
2x 120mm front
2x 120mm roof
2x 120mm side (or 1x 200mm iirc)
1x 120mm extraction
I had modified this to go up to 9 fans total as apposed to 7 by installing a 3rd front 120mm fan atop the existing two where disk drives would be; and another 120mm behind the bottom intake fan I then ran those bottom two at a very high rpm compared the the mounted three above. Using high RPM on the roof fans and the side fans at low speeds to circulate air I had something, with some improvising that could create a fast intake of air at the bottom of the case which would skim over the PSU then into the GPU but created a negative pressure air vacuum above the card forcing most of the GPU heat out the back of the case.
Anyway I digress, the point being is I'm willing to modify / improvise to get what I need.
Due to limitations on the physical space we can only support mid-towers. We can't get full sized cases in.
The H500, with the mesh front gives me the intake I'll need and the ability to mount two 120mm fans on the roof will provide extraction to an acceptable level with the rear 120mm slot reserved for the single fan closed loop CPU radiator. From an air/flow cooling perspective this is the best I've managed to find so far. Potent air cooling is important as only the CPU will have liquid cooling via a closed loop thus I'm relying on standard air cooling for the rest. The units will also be in locations with fairly poor ventilation in general so some strong intake is important. I'll also have to add some dust filters to them which further impedes performance on the air cooling. I do appreciate we'd probably be better using open loop liquid cooling considering these factors but I haven't the time, knowledge or funds to bụgger about with that.
The problem with the H500 for me is the lack of storage mountings. The chassis has two drive bays which I assume can take a pair of 2.5" OR a single 3.5" in each and then space to affix two 2.5" elsewhere. These units need excessive storage and at a minimum need to accommodate four 3.5" drives so we can get all 20TB of storage migrated from the old machines to the new and we may need some head room on that later down the road. Two bays just isn't enough. Really I need 4 with a preference on 5.
I'm wondering if either there are existing cases I'm not aware of that allow for the same/similar fan counts and configurations or modifications / aftermarket drive caddies I can use in the h500 to resolve this dilemma for us. As I said earlier I'm quite happy to improvise as required too but I just don't see a way to do it within the h500.
As a price point I'd ideally stay around the £100 mark at the most but there's some wiggle room there is needed. (That's about $130USD for our colonial cousins)
The good news though is I'm not too fussed what it looks like, although I do have an optional fetish for white cases.
I know these sort of threads are common place so I just want to say thanks in advance for everyone's patience. It's just sometimes easier and more effective to tap existing knowledge than compare dozens of product specifications.
The closest I've found is the H500 (the cooler mater one) and post improvements it is a well regarded case overall but has a few problems for me that make me wonder if there are other options I've yet to find or be guided towards.
The previous machines where built using InWin Mana 136 cases. These where hands down my favorite cases thus but the design is about a decade old and lacks a few features I'd like such as a PSU half-shroud and has things I no longer need such as a pair of disk drive mounts. They also have a stupidly high fan capacity at a serious budget price.
2x 120mm front
2x 120mm roof
2x 120mm side (or 1x 200mm iirc)
1x 120mm extraction
I had modified this to go up to 9 fans total as apposed to 7 by installing a 3rd front 120mm fan atop the existing two where disk drives would be; and another 120mm behind the bottom intake fan I then ran those bottom two at a very high rpm compared the the mounted three above. Using high RPM on the roof fans and the side fans at low speeds to circulate air I had something, with some improvising that could create a fast intake of air at the bottom of the case which would skim over the PSU then into the GPU but created a negative pressure air vacuum above the card forcing most of the GPU heat out the back of the case.
Anyway I digress, the point being is I'm willing to modify / improvise to get what I need.
Due to limitations on the physical space we can only support mid-towers. We can't get full sized cases in.
The H500, with the mesh front gives me the intake I'll need and the ability to mount two 120mm fans on the roof will provide extraction to an acceptable level with the rear 120mm slot reserved for the single fan closed loop CPU radiator. From an air/flow cooling perspective this is the best I've managed to find so far. Potent air cooling is important as only the CPU will have liquid cooling via a closed loop thus I'm relying on standard air cooling for the rest. The units will also be in locations with fairly poor ventilation in general so some strong intake is important. I'll also have to add some dust filters to them which further impedes performance on the air cooling. I do appreciate we'd probably be better using open loop liquid cooling considering these factors but I haven't the time, knowledge or funds to bụgger about with that.
The problem with the H500 for me is the lack of storage mountings. The chassis has two drive bays which I assume can take a pair of 2.5" OR a single 3.5" in each and then space to affix two 2.5" elsewhere. These units need excessive storage and at a minimum need to accommodate four 3.5" drives so we can get all 20TB of storage migrated from the old machines to the new and we may need some head room on that later down the road. Two bays just isn't enough. Really I need 4 with a preference on 5.
I'm wondering if either there are existing cases I'm not aware of that allow for the same/similar fan counts and configurations or modifications / aftermarket drive caddies I can use in the h500 to resolve this dilemma for us. As I said earlier I'm quite happy to improvise as required too but I just don't see a way to do it within the h500.
As a price point I'd ideally stay around the £100 mark at the most but there's some wiggle room there is needed. (That's about $130USD for our colonial cousins)
The good news though is I'm not too fussed what it looks like, although I do have an optional fetish for white cases.
I know these sort of threads are common place so I just want to say thanks in advance for everyone's patience. It's just sometimes easier and more effective to tap existing knowledge than compare dozens of product specifications.
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