Looking for a new case

It really chaps my sphincter that CaseLabs went out of business or I'd already have a new case.

I have mixed feelings about that.

I always liked their cases, but found their pricing rather ridiculous.

I think there is an argument to be made that a company that can't turn a profit selling $15 worth of painted sheet metal for $600+, maybe shouldn't have been in business in the first place.
 
This weekend, I'm going to install the case expansion to the Core P100 making it a WP100. I'm also going to install the first of two loops. The other one will come later when I water cool the GPU.
Pics or I will feel like I am missing out.
 
A lot of room in this case. But mounting a res is a pita. Why they didn't include more ways to mount things doesn't make sense to me. I want to move the res over to the left and up just a little but there's nothing to secure the right side of the pump brackets to if I do that. It's either where it is now, or up so far that I can't use the top G1/4" holes for anything. I'm planning a top return and the other top port will be for filling.

Also need to just take my old system down so I can transfer the PSU and GPU, get the water block on the GPU. Then I can start bending the PETG.


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That is really nice so far.
I am likewise a minimalist.....I don't like all the lighting junk....black and white are my favorite colors for this stuff.
I like your clear tubing, it's rigid, correct?

I have an old Corsair 800D that I find no reason to stop using.
 
That is really nice so far.
I am likewise a minimalist.....I don't like all the lighting junk....black and white are my favorite colors for this stuff.
I like your clear tubing, it's rigid, correct?

I have an old Corsair 800D that I find no reason to stop using.

Yes, rigid 16/12. First time bending too.
 
Not sure why the coolant is orange. Was red in the bottle.....

Having some weird issues with this build. System is stock, stable as far as I can tell. But pubg crashes after a couple minutes. I even dropped ram speed. Nothing is over heating.

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Not sure why the coolant is orange. Was red in the bottle.....

Having some weird issues with this build. System is stock, stable as far as I can tell. But pubg crashes after a couple minutes. I even dropped ram speed. Nothing is over heating.

View attachment 80
Equation basics are clockspeed, temp and voltage.
Low temp can be unstable if voltage is too low and/or clocks are too high.

If adjusting ram doesnt help, the problem isnt your ram.
Recommend testing your system for stability with the water loop warmed up.
 
That is really nice so far.
I am likewise a minimalist.....I don't like all the lighting junk....black and white are my favorite colors for this stuff.
I like your clear tubing, it's rigid, correct?

I have an old Corsair 800D that I find no reason to stop using.

I found it lacking with air cooling, but on water, they are great.

Not sure why the coolant is orange. Was red in the bottle.....

Having some weird issues with this build. System is stock, stable as far as I can tell. But pubg crashes after a couple minutes. I even dropped ram speed. Nothing is over heating.

View attachment 80

Yeah, that happens sometimes. I had some ****ty Thermaltake coolant, which I would never use again that looked flesh colored. It was nasty looking.
 
Pics or I will feel like I am missing out.

Here you are.

Old setup.
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New setup.
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So clean and well done, kudos on the water cooling job.

Thank you. I'm still going to add a GPU water block and a radiator to handle that. I may switch to hard tubing one of these days, but the soft tubing allows me some flexibility given that I change hardware so often.
 
Thank you. I'm still going to add a GPU water block and a radiator to handle that. I may switch to hard tubing one of these days, but the soft tubing allows me some flexibility given that I change hardware so often.
That's what I've come to terms with as I plan a new system. Hard tubing would be nice looking and the situation ends there really.
 
What's crazy, is the pedestal part at the bottom can be added to the top as well. I can actually expand that case and make it larger if I wish. There are spots for radiators behind the motherboard tray. There are three spots for radiators in the pedestal and of course the usual top and front positions. It will do 140mm wide radiators in most of these locations as well.

I've thought about doing a second res and dedicated loop just to fill the extra space.
 
Dan, you're really ****ing with my willpower to not spend any money right now. I wandered into this thread, saw homeys talking about cases and rad configurations and such, I'm like cool, let's see what we got here. Then Dan started talking about that freakin' WP100, and showing pics and whatnot. Now I'm all weak in the knees and ****. I spent enough money this year already dangit. That's the kind of case where even if I didn't always have builds planned, I would make a build just to use that case. That case is trying to reel me in like a supermodel with the "come hither" eyes. You know the look I'm talking about. She's got something on her mind, got some plans for yah. That WP100 is giving me those eyes.
 
Recently brought my 2600K rig back from the grave again. Figured since I'm mostly working from home I'd rather be on a desktop than a laptop even if said laptop was plugged into two monitors. That being said the one crucial item I didn't have on hand was a case. After nearly ten years of using Coolermaster HAF's I didn't really want to branch out since they've served me so well. Problem is that they don't make them anymore and ones on eBay are ridiculously priced. I had a few other needs for a new case as well.

1. Be able to 'comfortably' fit a Strix 1080 Ti. These cards are over 300 mm in length.
2. Be priced in the $50-$100 range
3. Provide exceptional cooling. I still use air and overclock both CPU an GPU.
4. Fit an ATX board-granted most cases can do this but it I also have a hyper 212 cooler so that too can be a size issue.
5. Fit in a side desk slot of a old computer desk I got back when I had a Pentium IV-nuff said about that. This also meant side panel cooling would be useless.

After a few days of research and reading many 'best of 2019 - 2020' reviews I came across this which wasn't listed in any of them.
MUSETEX Phantom Black ATX Mid-Tower Desktop Computer Gaming Case USB 3.0 Ports Tempered Glass Windows with 6pcs 120mm LED RGB Fans Pre-Installed(903-S6)

After tax it cost me around $120. Obviously went a little over budget but very happy with it. I do recommend for an older build as it only has one USB 3.0 port and no other modern ports but I was already getting what I needed from my motherboard anyways.

Pro's:

Six fans-Well placed. Three up front, two top, one rear. Quiet as well. All are RGB and plug into a controller in the case and that has a SATA power connector to connect to the PSU. Case has a button on the front top to control the RGB. About a dozen settings. Can't turn off from there(there is a switch attached to the internal controller but I'm not sure if that would turn them off) but a nice selection colors and color rotations. When you factor in buying six fans and then purchasing a cheaper case it can become a wash or more expensive plus the labor of installing them all. It was nice to see them all ready to go right out of the box. The controller, and of course fan wires, were all pre-routed to where the HHD cage was but you can easily choose where to put them. Anyone who has had a case with 6, or more, fans knows that there are a number of wires to manage though. The controller also has two-sided tape already installed on it so you can affix it where liked. All fans use the same RGB setting.

Fit the board and card and cooler with ease. Internal space is listed at over 400 mm and you can tell. No problem fitting these. Hyper 212 cleared the side panel by around 1/4 inch, maybe less. Still plenty of room though.

It fit in the older desk I mentioned with about a 1/2 inch to spare on the side. The top of the case is about 4+ inches from the top of the space in the desk. Still plenty of room for the exhaust coming from the top of the case.

Nice glass panels on the side and front of case. There's a con to the front panel I'll go into.

Removable magnetic top dust mesh. This sits on top of the two top fans.

Most cable management is about normal with other cases.

FIT large PSU. Most people would not use what I did with this build. It just happened to be a spare I've had sitting around for my other rigs and decided to put it to use with this. I was able to fit a 1200w Corsair Platinum in it. A tight fit and that did lead to a con I'll list below.

Con's:

Front glass panel. This panel essentially seals the front of the case preventing maximum airflow. There are roughly 1" spaces on either side of the front panel with mesh that allows some airflow. During testing, using afterburner, I saw temps drop by around 10c when I removed the front glass and magnetic mesh. I plan to go to the hardware store at one point to get some rubber grommets, and longer screws to make a roughly 1/4" offset for the panel to allow more air intake.

The instructions list installing the PSU last. Yep that's pretty much true. I admit I've gotten spoiled by my HAF's as you more or less always have complete access to everything. The section the PSU goes into is a mostly solid metal encasement that's riveted into the case. Once installed there's not much access to the PSU ports/cables so you need to have that all figured out before screwing it in. The hard drive cage is adjacent to this as well so that needs to be taken into consideration when screwing in the drives to their mounts. The mounting holes on the back of the case seemed slightly off but I was still able to screw the PSU in. Could just be because of the size of the PSU though.

SSD mounting. Pictures show them being mounted backside panel where most people do cable management. For some this could work. I like to make sure things can breathe and not much cooling happens there. Not to mention that with most cables back there it can get pretty crowded even if you're only using two of them. I mentioned this to David and he reminded how many manufacturers are considering SSD's, other drive placements as an afterthought now with the advancements of NVMe's. I agree since many of those are now on the MOBO. I ended up mounting my two Samsung 850 EVO's on the front side of the panel via two screw holes on the same side of the drives. A bit unorthodox but worked great since there's not much weight to worry about. I may try something else later but I didn't want to put too much time into something that's really going to be out of sight once this case was put into the desk.

All fans run at one speed. Not really an issue since they get the job done but controlling from the MOBO, CPU, or controller is not an option or at least not that I've been able to discern at any rate.


Well that's pretty much it. Overall incredibly happy with the case. Does everything I needed it for and looks great doing it. Quiet too. As mid-towers go this one gets you close to the feeling of a full tower option. Build quality felt over-all pretty nice. Nearly all metal. The real test will be the fans because they're obviously not up to the same level of what I normally purchase but the do the job and were preinstalled. It feels good to see this old rig running again even if age has caught up to it for really demanding gaming. For office work it's still more than enough.
 
Alright,

Since we are dropping our personal experiences with cases, I'll drop my recent experience here as well.

As some of you may know, I used to rock a mildly modified Corsair 750D with some large radiators shoehorned in. In late January my Threadripper build I'd only had going for a month and a half stopped working, paperweight style. Press button, no power. Pulled out everything that can be pulled out and still post, still nothing when trying to power it on.

Troubleshooting was difficult because I didn't have spares for many of these things, No Spare DDR4, no Spare TRX40 Motherboard, no spare TRX40 CPU. Anyway to make a long story short, a month of troubleshooting and waiting for incorrectly suspected RMA's to return later, I found I had accidentally damaged my Corsair 750D during troubleshooting. I also found to my surprise that the component that had failed was not the PSU, not the RAM, not the Motherboard, but the CPU! (This was a first for me). AMD's RMA process was perfect, but it took some time to get there.

Anyway, so my case was damaged, and I'd been wanting to expand my loop anyway, so I figured it was time to go for an even larger case, and throw some total overkill radiator capacity in there.

I poked around for a while. I knew I wanted something BIG. I was considering the Thermaltake Core case Dan used above. I was also considering trying to find old stock CaseLabs but that proved impossible.

In the end I went with the Corsair 1000D. It wasn't the RGB or glass that drew me in. It was the fact that it reportedly can fit two 480 radiators in the front and two up top. Since my goal was overkill radiator capacity, this appealed to me. I had originally not considered this case, as I thought of it as too flashy, and too expensive, but as I was researching a discount on an "Amazon Renewed" open box version popped to the top of my searches, and I decided to do it.

Don't get me wrong. I knew I was going with something slightly ludicrous and huge, but no matter how much you read or measure or how many pictures you look at, absolutely nothing prepares you for the sheer size of this thing when it arrives. It is a bit like the opposite of accidentally buying doll house furniture on Amazon.

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That last one on the left are my old case (Corsair 750D) next to my new case (Corsair 1000D). Keep in mind that the 750D is a full tower, and not tiny either. That last picture is the best one I have when it comes to communicating the sheer size of the thing.

This is where I should state that this build took me abnormally long to complete. In part because it was a large and complex build, in part because I ran into a surprising number of incompatibilities and further RMA's along the way (some of which are still not resolved) and in part because in a world grinding to a halt because of the virus pandemic, needing to get absolutely anything slows you down to a crawl. Short one fitting? Well, it's a "non-essential item" on Amazon, so maybe you'll get it in 3-4 weeks if you are lucky.

So, this was my most frustrating build I've ever worked on, and I only just got it up and running in my office two nights ago, meaning I was without my desktop for 3 months. If anyone is curious about my build, I documented it here. The rest of this post will be focused on my take on the case.

This case has many positive features.

1.) The fan/radiator mounts slide out on arms making for easier installation of fans and radiators. The only downside to this is that once you are done with assembly and attach all of your tubing, unless you used really long tubing or QDC fittings, you have to break into and drain the loop if you need to gain access to the fans or radiators again.

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2.) Everything about this case is huge. While cable routing can be a little difficult because of the cable length requirement, you'll never run out of space for tucking cables away out of sight for good cable management.

3.) You can fit lots of fans and a lot of radiator.

4.) If you want to, you can even mount two PC's in this case, one EATX and one mini ITX


I'd also be amiss if I did not mention some pretty stupid design flaws.

1.) The marketing material for this case states that out of the box you can fit a 420mm (3x140) radiator up top, and two 480mm (4x 120) in the front. They also claim you can buy a 2 x480mm bracket for the top of the case, making it able to fit 4 480mm radiators. There are a few problems with that. Firstly, in the 3 months I've been doing this, I've never see any accessories what so ever, including the optional top 480mm top radiator bracket in stock anywhere, not even on Corsairs site.

More seriously, they didn't think through the radiator mount locations particularly well. Sure all the holes are there, but if you attach a 420mm radiator up top, and two 480mm radiators in the front, they will interfere with eachother, unless you use very thin radiators. Push pull becomes even more impossible.

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The part that makes this a stupid design flaw is that there is extra space. The top bracket could have moved the fan holes backwards a little bit and it would have fit just fine. I take this as a clear sign that whomever designed this never built a water cooling loop into a case. So I did what any self respecting modder would. I made my own mounting bracket. Again, if interested you can check the link to my build log above.

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2.) The marketing material USED to claim that you could fit two 140mm exhaust fans in the back. It no longer does, because you can't. (Well, you can, but it involves taking a Dremel to your fans, and drilling extra fan screw holes, which I did.

3.) One of the awesome aspects of my previous case, the 750D was how everything was moddable and stackable. It came with brackets with 3.5" drive bays you could stack up the bottom of the case, or take out if you didn't need or want them to make space for something else. Naturally I assumed the 1000D would do the same. It doesn't. If you want 3.5" drives in your case, it has a 5 bay box in the bottom. This box is riveted to the rest of the case, so unless you want to mod stuff, it is there to stay. (I drilled the rivets out and took it out, because that's where I wanted my pumps)

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4.) This is a heavy case. Corsair specs it as 65lb when empty. Add heavy blocks, radiators motherboards, drives, etc. and 3L of coolant, and I swear this thing weighs more than 100LB. Also, it has no handles. There are no good places to get a firm grip anywhere.

Now this is where I mention, I am a large guy. I haven't in a while, but I used to go to the gym and bench my own body weight, and do several long sets of unassisted pull-ups. I'm 6'3" and probably 240lb at this point. I'm not as strong as I once was, but I am also no wimp. Moving it up the narrow stairs from my basement to my office when I was done building almost resulted in disaster. I **** near fell down the stairs with it in my arms. Yes, Corsair lists this as being a two man lift in their documentation, but even with two people, there are no good places to grip it. The glass gets in the way, and I don't want to lift it by glass.

Once I got it up the stairs, I put a blanket on the hardwood floors and just dragged it the rest of the way. When I got to my office and placed it down on the rug under my desk it would not budge. Putting all of my weight behind it, it just wouldn't slide on the rug. There is also less than an inch clearance between the top of the case and the bottom of my desk, so I couldn't just lift it in. The combination of the weight and the very sturdy high quality rubber feet were the problem. In a stroke of genius (if I may claim so myself), I put some old health insurance cards (you know the thick laminated paper kind), one under each foot. That made it slippery enough that I could slowly slide it under my desk.

The weight is obviously not Corsairs fault, but knowing they were designing a case that would be heavy assembled, having somewhere to grip it in order to move it would probably be a good idea.

Two days after bringing the case up, my back is still a little sore. That is on me. Stupid of me to not wait until I could have someone help me move it, but I was just so damned over this build and wanted to finish it once and for all.


Here is a pic of the completed build before moving it upstairs, and a pic of the final location of the case under my desk:

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Everything about this case throws off your sense of perspective. So just for reference, that motherboard is a large EATX board.

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So, with everything said and done, I wound up with an awesome build, with great cooling capacity.

That said, I'm not convinced I would actually recommend this case to anyone.
 
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