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Help Deciding on a Mid Tower
RCars2
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey all, I need a little guidance. I'm rebuilding my current lan box and I'm looking at finding a solid mid tower for around $100. I'm looking for something thats fairly small but is relatively durable. The other restriction is that it has to fit in a carry on as i plan to take it with me in such on the West Coast Train Trip up to PAX. I got 2 cases in mind thus far but i cant decide on which i like and im still open to other suggestions. Currently here are the two candidates.
Antec Solo
Likes: Sound deadening material, sleek design, durable construction (you should see how much punishment the display model at the local fry's has taken and its still in good shape), ITS FRIGGIN ANTEC!
Dislikes: Kinda plain looking, dont like the front panel (should be black not silver if ya ask me), concerned about airflow
Sigma Unicorn
Likes: Black and red is always good, more airflow, has fan just for video card that is adjustable, both case sides fold down, tooless install is a plus, hdd cage swivels out, side window is tinted
Dislikes: Really plasticky, front door looks weird and feels cheap, case is internally identical to a raidmax smilodon and i have an aversion to anything raidmax, review on toms hardware said the case is rather loud (though i can tolerate that to a degree so not a big thing).
Anyways those be my current two. Tell me what you think and make any suggestions if you know of a better case for my size requirements (and yes it has to be ATX, im not doing mATX again, bad times).
Antec Solo
Likes: Sound deadening material, sleek design, durable construction (you should see how much punishment the display model at the local fry's has taken and its still in good shape), ITS FRIGGIN ANTEC!
Dislikes: Kinda plain looking, dont like the front panel (should be black not silver if ya ask me), concerned about airflow
Sigma Unicorn
Likes: Black and red is always good, more airflow, has fan just for video card that is adjustable, both case sides fold down, tooless install is a plus, hdd cage swivels out, side window is tinted
Dislikes: Really plasticky, front door looks weird and feels cheap, case is internally identical to a raidmax smilodon and i have an aversion to anything raidmax, review on toms hardware said the case is rather loud (though i can tolerate that to a degree so not a big thing).
Anyways those be my current two. Tell me what you think and make any suggestions if you know of a better case for my size requirements (and yes it has to be ATX, im not doing mATX again, bad times).
RCars2 on
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Guess i picked a couple dud's for cases. Well in all actuality i actually decided to skip out on both of these cases and went a slightly different route.
I found that my mATX board still works just fine (turns out it was a burnt vid card that was giving me all my woes, not the board as i had originally suspected) so i took it and all its guts and transplanted it into a new mATX case. Granted this eliminates all chances at SLI support but this is my LAN box not my main PC so its all good. Now size, airflow, and noise were my big concerns. Being impulsive I ran over to the local Fry's and scoured over a couple cases and i think i found my winner, the Antec Mini P180.
Its quiet, that huge fan up top keeps everthing cool (even on low my AMD 6000x2 stays no hotter than 95F idle/115F load vs 115F idle/150F load in my old case) and best of all, its all black and gunmetal (FTW!!). The only thing it appears though is i gotta get a new carry on bag as my old one isnt quite big enough to fit this case. However, my old carry on is much smaller than the maximum size limit for amtrak so i should be AOK.
This week if i find a good suitcase i will take some pictures of how well it fits inside just in case anyone was curious.
Small price to pay; that P180 looks like a better layout though
Yep there are 2 vents door things with filters on them. However i removed one of them to put a fan in place of it. This way there is active flow on the hard drives. As a warning to anyone else who wants to do this, when you attach the fan you have to remove the vent completely as a standard 120mm fan wont fit in the space between the filter and case when closed. However, the front door over all the panels will close and the fan still will draw fresh air from the vent holes along both sides of the door (and it keeps things mostly silent still too).
1ddqd - The silverstone actually is not a bad little case. I've always liked the front of those. Its just the rest of that case kinda felt generic to me. Not to mention that cable management is one thing im OCD about so this would have been a little challenge to me (though not impossible by any means). Comparing the two cases though is unfair as they are 2 different price points for 2 different purposes. The silverstone is a great rock solid case with a very accomodating straigh forward design, p180 is more high end and has more bells and whistles to cater to those who want everything.
Though now that i think about it, I do have a complaint about the antec that everyone should be aware of if they considder this case, fitting video cards can be a bear. If you put hard drives in the lower cage they will get right in the way of a larger video card. Something like a 8800GT (single slot card, not something like the EVGA 1GB Akimbo) will fit with the cage in if you put a drive only in the lower slide out tray and even then its a little less than easy to do. If you use some huge card like a 9800GTX or most larger dual slot cards (like the Akimbo) you may need to pull the lower cage and only use the upper HDD cage (still gives ya plenty of space though for drives).
Agreed, though the miniP180 is about as close as you are going to get to a tower for an uber mATX setup. As i stands right now i got an AMD 6000x2, 4gb of OCZ platinum pc6400, 8800GT (soon to be replaced with a 9800GTX, yes it will fit though as i mentioned that one cage has to go), 2 500GB hdd's, and a 500w thermaltake PSU in this case and it fits with a good amount of space inside. Given a different motherboard you could easily run a quad core intel or amd in there with gobs of ram and a 9800GX2 no problem.