What Features would make your ideal watercooling case?

[warriorpoet]

1. Design the case so that the radiators are in logical intake locations (bottom of case, front panel of case). See Silverstone Fortress for bottom location, several Lian-Lis for front locations. Bonus points for 4x120mm mount-ability without modification.

2. Design simple, logical air paths to cool components that need it most (GPU, chipset, CPU).

3. Solid panels up top, sides, front as much as possible (see ATCS 840 for a perfect example at the front) to reduce noise leakage and minimize direct paths to the user.

4. Provide effective and simple HDD decoupling (bonus points if you figure out how to do optical drives). Antec currently does this better than anyone.

5. Provide the option to softmount case fans. Again, see Lian-Li.

6. Provide case fans that are accurately rated in both CFM and DBa. There is no such thing as a 12 Db, 60 CFM 120mm case fan.

7. CPU tray cutout.

8. Adequate and logical cable hidey-holes and tray grommets. Corsair does this better than anyone.

9. Make it look like something Ikea would design, only in Aluminium.

It is not difficult to design a thermally superior case. It is also not difficult to design an acoustically superior case. The difficulty comes in marrying the two. If you design a case with 3x ~1000 RPM 120mm in the floor and 1x ~1000 RPM 140mm at the rear with the PSU up top (above the CPU), you'll go a long way toward getting both.

Oh yeah...

10. 4x 5.25" external bays is nearly too many. Do something more creative with your internals; removing a few of those expansion bays can open up a lot of possibilities inside. Maybe 2x removable HDD cages with optional mount locations for those of us who want to go nuts with a 4x 120 in the floor and a 2x 120 at the front.