Case Design for Liquid Cooling

[3Z3VH]

If you don't wanna make any changes to the case, then why do you ask for our opinion? "I feel that the case is idealy suited for it's purpose". Nothing, listen, nothing is "Ideal". There are always changes/improvements to be made and as you have seen by this thread, people do have suggestions that I think you really should take in consideration (Not because I don't like your design, but because of the fact that you will be able to reach out and please more people). I almost get the feeling that you have been spending a lot of time on this case so at the present moment you don't wan't to change anything because you think it's ideal.

You need to separate your thoughts a bit from this case and let other have a bit of influense in the case if you really want to reach out to the market. It is one thing to design and build your own case. But when it comes down to mass producing a case, all the circumstances change a bit.

I'm not trying to offend you man. Just expressing my thoughts and opinions which in the end might help you a bit.

NysoO... he has actually been very open to ideas and suggestions. MANY changes have been made since he first posted the case, all based on the forum's collective input. By his reply, you can even see, he has thought it through, and determined that more hard drives are not conducive to the purpose of the case. You are right, nothing is ever ideal, but you get as close as you can to ideal for a target audience, and I feel he has done that well. The target audience is the enthusiast watercooling market. I can't think of a single person who has their watercooled machine, without having another computer of some sort available to them, and a network of some sort to hook both computers to (unless they live in a dorm with no room for anything, in which case they don't buy a large case like this). This means they would have the capability of keeping their storage in another computer, or a NAS, instead of the high-performance watercooled machine.

While I agree this is ideal for two loops, I think one of the biggest selling points of this case COULD also be that it will hold a quad rad inside. There's certainly nothing with finish like this that I'm aware of that comes pre-configured to fit a rad that big internally. Why limit your target audience? I'm not suggesting any modification to the case other than making the hard drive mounts more modular so that people have options. Making your product more widely marketable means more potential customers... That seems like a win/win to me.

The only thing keeping that from being win/win is that the case already comes quite close to the $300 budget everyone is giving this case (by at least a dozen posts in this thread alone). Not much profit margin already, means that adding a modular HDD rack will only cut more into what meager profits the case could garner as it is. If you are passionate about this case, and feel the hard drive cage is a deal-breaker, fight an easier battle, like suggesting it gets held down by screws, not rivets or welds... this way you can take it out, drill and tap new screw holes wherever you want, and screw it down anywhere in the case.

As it stands, I think it would be quite easy to purchase replacement removable HD cages from Lian-Li, CM, or even Antec, and simply drill holes and screw them down in the bottom radiator bay.