I Want To Buy This Case

[agsnowdon]

Im in process of building my first PC and have seen a great case I want to order but want to check what these features mean. It states the following feature among other which I Understand.

USB2.0/Audio

Does this mean I can connect the mainboard to the front of the case to have USB ports and headphone sockts?

Motherboard:ATX/Micro ATX

Will this be fit my mainboard - ASUS K8N5X Socket 939

Drive bays:4/2/5

What does this feature mean? - I would like to put 2 hard drives and 1 cd writer, but would love to know exactly what Drive bays:4/2/5 means.

Thanks for your help guys

Ash

[Tywais]

Im in process of building my first PC and have seen a great case I want to order but want to check what these features mean. It states the following feature among other which I Understand.

USB2.0/Audio

Does this mean I can connect the mainboard to the front of the case to have USB ports and headphone sockts?

Motherboard:ATX/Micro ATX

Will this be fit my mainboard - ASUS K8N5X Socket 939

Drive bays:4/2/5

What does this feature mean? - I would like to put 2 hard drives and 1 cd writer, but would love to know exactly what Drive bays:4/2/5 means.

Thanks for your help guys

Ash

USB2.0/Audio means front panel connectors available to connect to the main board. So, yes.

Mainboard fit? Yes.

Drive bays: Either 4 -3.5" and 5 -5.25" (CD/DVD writers) or the other way around. The 2 - perhaps a side mounted 3.5" bay.

Sounds like a large case. Be sure there are sufficient fans. Minimal one front intake, one rear exhaust and one side fan.

You can see the construction steps when I built my new computer: Construction

You can see in the first picture I have 5 - 5.25" (CD/DVD) bays, 2 - 3.5" forward mounted (for floppies) and 2 - 3.5" side mounted disk drive bays.

Edited June 1, 2006 by tywais

[francois]

hi'

what's the brand name of the back fan(white) is it a 120mm, how many cfm?

francois

[Tywais]

hi'

what's the brand name of the back fan(white) is it a 120mm, how many cfm?

francois

It's a Thermaltake Silent Cat 120 mm and runs at 2000 rpm, thus the Silent part of the name.

[lomatopo]

You can see the construction steps when I built my new computer:

Are you happy with that CPU cooler (Intel P4/775/640)? It looks like a Thermaltake Blue Orb II? I think it draws air from above the CPU/heat sink? Does the fan at the back bring air into the case or exhaust air from the case? I need a CPU cooler but am trying to figure out airflow, and am also worried about the weight of these coolers, essentially hanging down when the case it positioned vertically. Maybe the bracket on the back provides suitable support?

[Tywais]

Are you happy with that CPU cooler (Intel P4/775/640)? It looks like a Thermaltake Blue Orb II? I think it draws air from above the CPU/heat sink? Does the fan at the back bring air into the case or exhaust air from the case? I need a CPU cooler but am trying to figure out airflow, and am also worried about the weight of these coolers, essentially hanging down when the case it positioned vertically. Maybe the bracket on the back provides suitable support?

It's mounted on top of a 939 (AMD 3800+) CPU but has adapters for the P4 series. Yes it is a Thermaltake Blue ORB II and the air (fan) pulls it in and over the heatsink. It is also large enough to help with the MB chip and memory since they are nearly directly under it.

Reviewers indicated concerns about the weight and concluded that it wasn't an issue, just don't bounce the computer around. The bottom brace and brackets hold it very strongly so not a problem.

The odd thing about my system is that the packaged manufacturer heat sink (AMD) was no where sufficient enough. Remounted it three times with carefull cleaning between and applying a good heatsink compound applied appropriately. Still would run too hot. I built another system for work with the same CPU and used the supplied heatsink and it had no problems at all, ran quite cool. The only difference were the mainboards. Both ASUS but one (home) was the A8N32-SLI-Deluxe and the one at the office was just the vanilla A8N-SLI board. Possibly sensor problems but the BIOS is the latest.

Normally the rear fan is exhaust and front the intake. I reversed the rear fan to be intake also and use a side fan as exhaust plus the power supply has exhaust fan also (will probably get comments about this, but if it works...). The front fan airflow wasn't sufficient and is blowing directly across the hard drives, the drives are happy though. This was to try and reduce the temperature, which may just be an incorrect reading.

Some experimenting may be necessary to find the optimum cooling for your system. A lot depends on the organization of the box and what interference there is to the air flow.

Edited June 2, 2006 by tywais

[mouse]

How much not counting the obvious loving labour that went into the construction of this machine?

[Tywais]

How much not counting the obvious loving labour that went into the construction of this machine?

Probably will get comments on this but a little over 50k. I haven't upgraded in a long time and probably will not for a long time again. I've thrown every thing at it I could to find a performance problem and haven't yet. This includes MS Flight Sim 2004 (full res, all features high), Quake 4 (again everything set to max, GTA San Andreas, Unreal tournament 2004, Far Cry, F.E.A.R., Battle Field 2 and Half Life 2 - again everything set to maxium resolution and maximum features.

Plus I do a lot of electronic design and simulation including PCB layout and the speed is awesome. Things like MS Word are up before you can count to 1.

So I'm quite satisfied with my new toy.

[Guest endure]

Drive bays:4/2/5

What does this feature mean? - I would like to put 2 hard drives and 1 cd writer, but would love to know exactly what Drive bays:4/2/5 means.

Probably 4 external 5.25" bays, 2 external 3.5" bays and 5 internal bays (probably 3.5" but maybe 5.25")