Large case search!

[DeathWalking]

I'm looking for a case, with oodles of room up top, something around 10cm of room above the MB? Actual minimum would be 9.4cm, but who cares.
Basically, if you couldn't already figure this out from the fact that it's in the WC section, I'm looking for a place to stick a PA + 35mm thick fans. I'd rather not do external mounting on the rad, though I will if no case matches my parameters.

[evil-98]

why above? theres plenty of cases with room below, the TJ07 for example

[Movieman]

Lian Li PC70,PC76

[DeathWalking]

why above? theres plenty of cases with room below, the TJ07 for example

If they're above, then I can have them on exhaust, and I'm going to WC everything 'cept the SB on my rebuild, so I really don't want to have dedicated fans cooling the case. There's so little case heat that the rad is getting temps so close to ambient that it makes no difference, and the mobo + various sinks get great cooling, on the order of ~200 cfm, ala undervolted San Aces.

[BreeSpree]

But the TJ-07 uses fresh air, and if you use the rad as an exhaust you will be reusing hot air that has passed over the mainboard and GPU's which give off heat. Your temperatures will be hotter because the rad will only be cooled to the interior temperature of the case.. According to what you are looking for though, I'd say a Rocketfish is a cheap, effective solution.

[dopestuff]

ehm every case has minimal of 10 cm above the mb??? not above the whole mobo tray but... (because almost all mobo tray's have 120mm fan mounting place so that always makes for more than 10 cm... )
and maybe you could say what your budget is for the case

[DeathWalking]

But the TJ-07 uses fresh air, and if you use the rad as an exhaust you will be reusing hot air that has passed over the mainboard and GPU's which give off heat. Your temperatures will be hotter because the rad will only be cooled to the interior temperature of the case.. According to what you are looking for though, I'd say a Rocketfish is a cheap, effective solution.

GPU will be watercooled. I'd say I have maybe 30W of heat being produced by the motherboard, maybe, including the SB, though possibly more during heavy I/O.

Using the rad as an exhaust is an excellent compromise between noise and performance, since I'm moving ~200cfm of air, and a watt is a joule per second, lets convert cfm into cfs, which gives you 3.3cfs. Taking a semi-random estimate, let's say that the case is .75' wide by 2' high, by 2' deep. Air at sea level has a density of 33.980216 g/ft^3, and our hypothetical case has a volume of 3 cubic feet. The air in our case weighs 101.940648 g. "Normal" air has a specific heat of 1.012 J/gK. Thus, the temperature increases 29.6442 K (or C, it's the same thing) per gram of air in our case...and we have 101.940648 of those. Thus, we have a .29 C increase in case temperatures over ambient. Theoretically. There are a whole truckload of reasons why the calculations I just made aren't true for real life, like the air doesn't stay still over the 1 second time period to allow the heat to evenly permeate throughout. Also, the 30W heat load was a good estimate, but not anything like as accurate as any of the constants I was using. But it's good enough to show that the "hot air" is not really that much hotter than ambient.

[DeathWalking]

ehm every case has minimal of 10 cm above the mb??? not above the whole mobo tray but... (because almost all mobo tray's have 120mm fan mounting place so that always makes for more than 10 cm... )

When I say above, I don't mean room from the motherboard to the side of the of case, but from the top of the motherboard to the top of the case.

maybe you could say what your budget is for the case

The word budget has no meaning to me.

Seriously, though. I don't want to waste money, but if something works, I'll buy it.

[Jimmer411]

A Ufo. Check mountainmods.com.

[Eddie3dfx]

V2000.

[BreeSpree]

GPU will be watercooled. I'd say I have maybe 30W of heat being produced by the motherboard, maybe, including the SB, though possibly more during heavy I/O.

Using the rad as an exhaust is an excellent compromise between noise and performance, since I'm moving ~200cfm of air, and a watt is a joule per second, lets convert cfm into cfs, which gives you 3.3cfs. Taking a semi-random estimate, let's say that the case is .75' wide by 2' high, by 2' deep. Air at sea level has a density of 33.980216 g/ft^3, and our hypothetical case has a volume of 3 cubic feet. The air in our case weighs 101.940648 g. "Normal" air has a specific heat of 1.012 J/gK. Thus, the temperature increases 29.6442 J (or C, it's the same thing) per gram of air in our case...and we have 101.940648 of those. Thus, we have a .29 C increase in case temperatures over ambient. Theoretically. There are a whole truckload of reasons why the calculations I just made aren't true for real life, like the air doesn't stay still over the 1 second time period to allow the heat to evenly permeate throughout. Also, the 30W heat load was a good estimate, but not anything like as accurate as any of the constants I was using. But it's good enough to show that the "hot air" is not really that much hotter than ambient.

Did you really solve all that, so that you can justify your reasoning behind using the rad as an exhaust.

Well alright if you really want the rad to exhaust you can use a Cosmos S. It may not have the space between the top of the case and motherboard you want, but you can put 3x25mm fans in the top area, behind the chassis, but under the top cover thing.

[DeathWalking]

Did you really solve all that, so that you can justify your reasoning behind using the rad as an exhaust.

Yes, I did.
Without math proving it, it's just my opinion, and I tire easily of "A is right" "No, A sucks, B is right," back and forth with not a single shred of evidence. I've seen that a lot recently, and I just scroll right past it, don't even bother reading most of the thread if it devolves into that.

Well alright if you really want the rad to exhaust you can use a Cosmos S. It may not have the space between the top of the case and motherboard you want, but you can put 3x25mm fans in the top area, behind the chassis, but under the top cover thing.

I'm actually kinda annoyed with CoolerMaster for not making that spacing 38mm. I have some San Aces, I'm not going to not use them. Aside from that spacing, it's a dream case. Ah, well. I'm leaning towards the PC-A77, and cutting a big swath out of the top panel.

[naokaji]

lian li a77 is your best bet, or go for a mountainmods as they have more than enough room for wc.

[DeathWalking]

Does anyone know of a bracket for mounting 120mm fans in drive bays, behind the drive bay covers? I know lots of HDD cages have them, including the ones in the A77, and I could just chop off the HDD cage portion of them...but I'm hoping there's a better option than permanently destroying the cages.

[septim]

some DIY aluminum flat bars sound good for those. measure twice, bend and drill once, screw in place...

lian li a77 series sounds good, those armor 8* series also good. but most of their internals are alike though...