Which case for me?

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yuannan
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Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:10 pm

Which case for me?

Post by yuannan » Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:32 pm

Hello,
I'm a new member here and currently run:

6600k @ 4.6ghz 1.3V
Dark Rock Pro 3
Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X
In a H440, stock fans
Controlled by a "ASUS ROG VIII HERO"'s on board fan control PWM or DC so that's pretty neat.

I recently decided to sell my GPU so I pulled it out along with all the fans in my PC just to test my iGPU and noise.

So currently as I'm typing this I have a overclocked 6600k sitting at 25C-30C and the dark rock pro 3 at 25% until it hits 70C (which it doesn't, burn test on max hits 65C) then the fans ramp up to max as it tries to cool my poor chip.
It is very very quiet and I love it, I love it so much that it ignited my love for silent PC again. After I sell my GPU or not, I want to get a new case.

I don't mind about pricing as long as it's not stupidly high for not much features (*cough* Lian Li *cough*).

The 2 cases I'm looking at are the Silent Bases 800/600 and the Define R5, both unwindowed for max silence.
I looked at reviews all over the internet and the R5 is very well reputed, despite the silent bases are named "silent" it's said to be louder and hotter than the R5.

I might look into Crossfire if I don't manage to sell off my GPU and require more GPU horsepower in the future.

Overall looks does not matter much as long as it's not "gamer" looking like some of the corsair ones with massive grills at the front. Black, white or a neutral colour over all will be nice.

Any recommendation?

SebRad
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by SebRad » Tue Apr 12, 2016 6:04 am

Hi, I think the H440 you have is rather restrictive in terms of air flow and this is going to be (very) bad news for you power hungry R9 390X. You can test this by running with the side panel off and should be able to reduce the fan speeds with out excessive temps
I believe your Tri-x version should be quite reasonable noise wise, in a well ventilated case anyway.

Yes the R5 is by all accounts a very good case for quiet PCs. For their 4k quiet gaming rig SPCR choose a Corsair 600 series case, the 400 looks good for air flow to me too.
When I was looking a while back I though the Phanteks ENTHOO PRO M should be good, large grill area for intake and space for 2x 140mm fans behind it. It's relatively affordable but only comes with one fan, for a powerful gaming PC I'd suggest 1-3 more fans to be beneficial, adding to the cost.

Personally if I were building myself a new PC from scratch now I'd probably go looking for a Fortress FT-02 as I like the look and the triple 180mm fans have potential for huge cooling at low noise.

For any quiet PC control of the fan speeds is key, I like variable fan speeds for very quiet at idle (most of the time) with more cooling/noise when needed. Some people like fixed fan speeds that are high enough to cool whatever the conditions, this can work very well on lower power PCs where the variation in power and peak power are much lower.
Variable fan speeds can be done with BIOS or software controls, you can also use software to alter the GPU fan speeds too.

Regards, Seb

quest_for_silence
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Apr 12, 2016 7:38 am

yuannan wrote:Any recommendation?

Watercool the GPU and then pick a case with a 360/420mm radiator support.

yuannan
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:10 pm

Re: Which case for me?

Post by yuannan » Tue Apr 12, 2016 8:34 am

quest_for_silence wrote:
yuannan wrote:Any recommendation?

Watercool the GPU and then pick a case with a 360/420mm radiator support.
Can't afford water and don't really want to.

Any air cooled cases?

yuannan
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:10 pm

Re: Which case for me?

Post by yuannan » Tue Apr 12, 2016 8:43 am

SebRad wrote: -snip-
thanks for the detailed and unbiased recommendation.

But the ft02 is not "neutral" enough for me, the case is also about £200 for me and I can't see myself buying that. I prefer cases that are simple and elegant in a way like my h440.

Simple look and design. I'm sure everyone here has a reason for wanting a silent PC I personally do it because of how easily I get distracted.

Everything from noise to flashing lights can leave me restless. :lol:

Abula
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by Abula » Tue Apr 12, 2016 10:01 am

Single GPU, i would recommend the Fractal Design Define R5, you can see more into the SPCR Quiet ATX Gamer, R5 Version. My gaming setup was on a R4 and was great, just not enough cooling imo for a SLI setup, personally i didnt like the fans but tons of options to chose from if you dont like them.

If you want more cooling or dual GPU, then the Silvertone FT05 would be my recommendation, read SPCR Quiet SLI Gaming PC Build Guide and if you want also check my build on my signature, you can see the full build there.

Im pretty happy how the FT05 turn out, ill probably will stick with it for a long time, unless water comes to my world or FT06 is released, the case is (imo) as good as it gets on air, easy on the PCI slots because of the 90 degree rotation, somewhat compact and laid back visuals nothing flashy, and to me not much can be better on it, maybe a little more room on the back for easier cable management and my only other wish is to come with PWM AP181/182s, i think it would be great move to release a PWM version of their 180mm fans, this would allow me to use almost any motherboard in the market with bios fan control.

Im waiting on the GTX1080 to move back into a single gpu, but ill continue on the FT05 + adding MK26 =P

CA_Steve
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by CA_Steve » Tue Apr 12, 2016 10:21 am

The big uncertainty is whether or not you add a second 275W TDP gfx card. You can see the limits of the H440 with the single R9 390X - it may look great, but it lacks in low impedance airflow.

For single gfx card, the Define R5 is a great case. It'll run quieter than the FT02/05 and the Silent Bases.

For Crossfire, the Define R5 will work. But, with the added heat load, it'll run warmer and louder than the FT05.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by quest_for_silence » Tue Apr 12, 2016 1:10 pm

yuannan wrote:Can't afford water and don't really want to.

Any air cooled cases?
Given stock coolers, you can't have the same quietness you have now with the IGP system, if you increase your power draw by 200-250w (or 4-500w for 2 cards), with any aircooled case.

Then, to lower the noise floor, you should either decrease the power footprint, or use huge radiators with 6-800rpm fans (liquid cooling).

As you know, these are about the best figures you may get on air with two (not so hot) cards: they should be 10-14dB more than your current scenario, 5-6dB more over a moderate power single GPU (like a GTX-980). With a 390X-like card you shouldn't be able to do much better than the SPCR 970 SLI pair (maybe a couple of dB? And you'd deserve a similar case). With two Radeons IMHO there's no way to tame the heat/noise by air: I'd expect 30 or more dB even with the recommended FT05, and I don't agree with Steve about a damped case as a good enough option.

As said by others, you may improve those SPL figures a tad using one (or two) aftermarket cooler (mk.26 anyone?) and two (four) high quality PWM fans, but for a good chunk of money (though quite a few less than the amount needed for watercooling). With aftermarket coolers you will probably loose some significant VRM cooling.

About recommendations, these strictly depends of the GPU of choice: with GTX-980 like cards the Define S/R5 are the only proven option among closed cases, the FT/RV series very good options among more ventilated enclosures.
With a hotter card personally I'd rather open, spacious cases like either the Fractal Arc R2 or the Phanteks Enthoo Pro (over the R5), but any other untested (by SPCR) option is... well, untested: YMMV.

Abula
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by Abula » Tue Apr 12, 2016 1:19 pm

quest_for_silence wrote: With aftermarket coolers you will probably loose some significant VRM cooling.
This really depends on each GPU, for example on MSI latest GTX980Ti (i believe also 980/970/960) have frontal plate that cools the memory and VRMs, i seen people keeping it moving to after market like the MK26, so you keep the stock heatsinks, and in coolers like MK26 with bigger fans my guess is it will work even better, specially with fans like Vortex Ultra Slim that dont stop on 0% pwm, so at the end they will spin very low..... but this is something that i want to try soon.

Image

Fire-Flare
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by Fire-Flare » Tue Apr 12, 2016 3:25 pm

yuannan wrote:
quest_for_silence wrote:
yuannan wrote:Any recommendation?

Watercool the GPU and then pick a case with a 360/420mm radiator support.
Can't afford water and don't really want to.

Any air cooled cases?
How about a test bench case? No case fans to generate noise and no clearance restrictions for large coolers.

Load it with an SSD and you're good to go!

yuannan
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:10 pm

Re: Which case for me?

Post by yuannan » Wed Apr 13, 2016 7:48 am

Fire-Flare wrote: -snip-
That would make a nice addition to my desk, I'm just worried about dust and my carelessness.

The air flow will be amazing but there will also be no noise dampening for my GPU ext.

Anyhow, any recommendations? With some cover at least you I don't spill something over it and waste £1000+

yuannan
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Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:10 pm

Re: Which case for me?

Post by yuannan » Wed Apr 13, 2016 7:55 am

CA_Steve wrote:The big uncertainty is whether or not you add a second 275W TDP gfx card. You can see the limits of the H440 with the single R9 390X - it may look great, but it lacks in low impedance airflow.

For single gfx card, the Define R5 is a great case. It'll run quieter than the FT02/05 and the Silent Bases.

For Crossfire, the Define R5 will work. But, with the added heat load, it'll run warmer and louder than the FT05.
Yeah, the h440 is a case very much to my style.

Clean and silent. But it does suck the air quite abit. When debugging my PC or overclocking I leave the side panel off so I can use the clear cmos and memok button on my mobo the temps drop about 3-7C.

Air flow isn't great but it gets the job done.

So for a single GPU system you reckon a R5 is the best choice for a quiet system yes?
If not what would you pick?

CA_Steve
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by CA_Steve » Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:05 am

I really enjoyed building in the R4. The R5 improved a few things (better airflow, better fans). If you don't need the ODD slot, get the Define S.

Fire-Flare
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Location: Seattle

Re: Which case for me?

Post by Fire-Flare » Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:09 am

yuannan wrote:
Fire-Flare wrote: -snip-
That would make a nice addition to my desk, I'm just worried about dust and my carelessness.

The air flow will be amazing but there will also be no noise dampening for my GPU ext.

Anyhow, any recommendations? With some cover at least you I don't spill something over it and waste £1000+
How about one of the wall-mounted cases like a Thermaltake Core P5? Can't knock that off the desk. ;)

I've never had a problem with dust in my Lian-Li T60, (I don't live in a dusty environment either) but if it ever should accumulate it would be super easy to blow out since there are no case walls to work around.

As for GPU noise, there are aftermarket coolers such as Prolimatech's MK-13 that can accommodate a pair of 120mm fans. I believe your R9 uses an Arctic Cooling design that has 90mm fans. It's okay, but 120s can push the same air at lower RPMs.

I once had an all-air test bench system on my desk and with the proper coolers, noise wasn't an issue.

Irrelevant
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by Irrelevant » Wed Apr 13, 2016 9:41 pm

Depending on your components, fan control, and workspace, open-air cases can actually be pretty quiet and low on dust because less airflow is needed to keep things cool.

Also, using an aftermarket cooler may or may not worsen VRM cooling, but likely not. Barring manufacturer stupidity, you can usually use the stock VRM-cooling solution just fine, and many aftermarket coolers come with secondary heatsinks that may actually be superior to the stock. The Mk.26's VRM-heatsinks, for example, are actually pretty impressive and will work with most cards.

OTOH, I've finally run across a GPU that simply won't work with an aftermarket cooler without some serious DIY: MSI's R9 390. If I didn't know better, I'd swear it was designed to be incompatible, because it's absolutely ridiculous how many silly choices they had to make in order to do so. :evil:

yuannan
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by yuannan » Sat Apr 16, 2016 4:33 am

Off topic, but does anyone know how much the 490x will cost?
The 290x and 390x both costs about £350, so same can be expected of the 490X?

If AMD is not lying and it does do alot better fps/watt then I would not even need a new case but some new fans will be fine.

Abula
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by Abula » Sat Apr 16, 2016 5:50 am

yuannan wrote:Off topic, but does anyone know how much the 490x will cost?
The 290x and 390x both costs about £350, so same can be expected of the 490X?

If AMD is not lying and it does do alot better fps/watt then I would not even need a new case but some new fans will be fine.
No one knows yet, but my guess is it will be close as past gens. That said with AMD you dont know, they have done so much rebranding.... that idk if the 490X will be like their Fury or a rebrand of an 390X or a totally new card.

laststop
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by laststop » Sat May 21, 2016 7:41 pm

Abula wrote:
yuannan wrote:Off topic, but does anyone know how much the 490x will cost?
The 290x and 390x both costs about £350, so same can be expected of the 490X?

If AMD is not lying and it does do alot better fps/watt then I would not even need a new case but some new fans will be fine.
No one knows yet, but my guess is it will be close as past gens. That said with AMD you dont know, they have done so much rebranding.... that idk if the 490X will be like their Fury or a rebrand of an 390X or a totally new card.
I've read up a lot on the new amd cards. The polaris 10 the bigger polaris is going to be the radeon 480x/480. It is supposed to have performance very similar to the 390x/390. The msrp is supposed to be 300 dollars. So for 300 dollars we are getting performance equal to the 390x. The power usage will also be much much lower than the 390x while having the same performance. This also means that a simple rebrand of the 390x into the 490x doesn't make much sense since the 480x will be too close in performance level if they just rebranded the 390x to the 490x. The smaller Polaris the Polaris 11 will be the radeon 470x/470 but I don't have any pricing or performance rumors for that. This leaves the new fury and 490x as complete unknowns at this point other than the codename of Vega. The most expensive card AMD is releasing so far is the 300 dollar radeon 480x aka polaris 10. They are not releasing any card to compete with the 600 dollar GTX 1080 at first. We have to wait for Vega to get the fury and 390x tier replacements which may not be until 2017. So basically Nvidia will literally have no competition against the gtx 1080 for the entire rest of the year. This is why we see mega high prices of 599/699 for what is really a mid size gp104 card not the full size gp100.

If you are an AMD fan and are thinking of getting a 490x when AMD releases their polaris cards you are going to be disappointed. If you are looking for the 490x tier performance and want a graphics card this year you will have to go team green and get a GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 both cards are going to be faster than AMD's fastest Polaris card and polaris 10 and polaris 11 are the only cards AMD is releasing at this time.

Abula
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by Abula » Sat May 21, 2016 10:12 pm

laststop wrote:I've read up a lot on the new amd cards. The polaris 10 the bigger polaris is going to be the radeon 480x/480. It is supposed to have performance very similar to the 390x/390. The msrp is supposed to be 300 dollars. So for 300 dollars we are getting performance equal to the 390x. The power usage will also be much much lower than the 390x while having the same performance. This also means that a simple rebrand of the 390x into the 490x doesn't make much sense since the 480x will be too close in performance level if they just rebranded the 390x to the 490x. The smaller Polaris the Polaris 11 will be the radeon 470x/470 but I don't have any pricing or performance rumors for that. This leaves the new fury and 490x as complete unknowns at this point other than the codename of Vega. The most expensive card AMD is releasing so far is the 300 dollar radeon 480x aka polaris 10. They are not releasing any card to compete with the 600 dollar GTX 1080 at first. We have to wait for Vega to get the fury and 390x tier replacements which may not be until 2017. So basically Nvidia will literally have no competition against the gtx 1080 for the entire rest of the year. This is why we see mega high prices of 599/699 for what is really a mid size gp104 card not the full size gp100.

If you are an AMD fan and are thinking of getting a 490x when AMD releases their polaris cards you are going to be disappointed. If you are looking for the 490x tier performance and want a graphics card this year you will have to go team green and get a GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 both cards are going to be faster than AMD's fastest Polaris card and polaris 10 and polaris 11 are the only cards AMD is releasing at this time.
If what you are saying is accurate, i think AMD is trying to release what will compete with the GTX1060, like trying to beat nvidia into the real selling market, and seems like feasible strategy, given that they are not competing on the high market. Either way, consumer will benefit a lot, as nvidia should react by trying to release their GTX1060 as close as they can to compete.

Im intrigue by your theory that there will be a fury replacement in this gen, and that it will 2017, i guess they will try to be close to the GTX1080Ti.

laststop
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by laststop » Sat May 21, 2016 10:32 pm

Abula wrote:
laststop wrote:I've read up a lot on the new amd cards. The polaris 10 the bigger polaris is going to be the radeon 480x/480. It is supposed to have performance very similar to the 390x/390. The msrp is supposed to be 300 dollars. So for 300 dollars we are getting performance equal to the 390x. The power usage will also be much much lower than the 390x while having the same performance. This also means that a simple rebrand of the 390x into the 490x doesn't make much sense since the 480x will be too close in performance level if they just rebranded the 390x to the 490x. The smaller Polaris the Polaris 11 will be the radeon 470x/470 but I don't have any pricing or performance rumors for that. This leaves the new fury and 490x as complete unknowns at this point other than the codename of Vega. The most expensive card AMD is releasing so far is the 300 dollar radeon 480x aka polaris 10. They are not releasing any card to compete with the 600 dollar GTX 1080 at first. We have to wait for Vega to get the fury and 390x tier replacements which may not be until 2017. So basically Nvidia will literally have no competition against the gtx 1080 for the entire rest of the year. This is why we see mega high prices of 599/699 for what is really a mid size gp104 card not the full size gp100.

If you are an AMD fan and are thinking of getting a 490x when AMD releases their polaris cards you are going to be disappointed. If you are looking for the 490x tier performance and want a graphics card this year you will have to go team green and get a GTX 1080 or GTX 1070 both cards are going to be faster than AMD's fastest Polaris card and polaris 10 and polaris 11 are the only cards AMD is releasing at this time.
If what you are saying is accurate, i think AMD is trying to release what will compete with the GTX1060, like trying to beat nvidia into the real selling market, and seems like feasible strategy, given that they are not competing on the high market. Either way, consumer will benefit a lot, as nvidia should react by trying to release their GTX1060 as close as they can to compete.

Im intrigue by your theory that there will be a fury replacement in this gen, and that it will 2017, i guess they will try to be close to the GTX1080Ti.
Well I am not 100% sure. There will either be 2 Vegas like there was 2 polaris's and if there are 2 Vegas 1 will be the fury x/ fury replacement and 1 will be the 390x/390 replacement. If there is only 1 Vega it will most likely just be the 490x/490. I do believe the Vega chip(s) will be HBM 2 tho. And yes AMD is initially concentrating their efforts on the largest volume sellers. the 480x/470x tier GPU's are their biggest sellers and make them the most money and it is what the majority of gamers can afford and buy so AMD concentrated their research on the most profitable sector. Which is actually pretty smart.

Nvidia is going to reap the rewards of having the only Higher Mid end card though. If you want that big jump in performance compared to last years 980ti or fury x you literally only have 1 option the GTX 1080. So nvidia will get every single one of those customers. This is why the card is so hideously overpriced. Nvidia knows it has a monopoly on that part of the market until 2017. 700 dollars for the founders edition and for the good custom cards is just crazzzzyyyy overpriced. That is almost the price of what the BIG GP100 chip should be and they are charging that for a small medium sized GP104 chip!

Also I think AMD GPU's will end up having a better price/performance ratio than nvidia GTX 1060.

laststop
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by laststop » Mon May 23, 2016 11:38 am

AMD will soon be announcing their first Polaris graphics cards followed by a launch in mid-2016. We know little about Polaris GPUs but information from Videocardz suggests that AMD’s upcoming product series will be part of the Radeon R9 480 and Radeon R9 470 series family.

http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-r9-480-polaris-10-july/

Told ya bro's.

The Polaris 10 GPU will deliver vastly improved performance per watt by delivering gaming performance better than both Radeon R9 390 series cards at half the TDP (sub-200W). This means that the 390 series will soon be obsolete after these cards which will deliver better performance at lower price and with low power demand.

CA_Steve
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by CA_Steve » Mon May 23, 2016 11:48 am

Suggest the AMD discussion start it's own thread...really off the rails for the OP's case questions.

laststop
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by laststop » Mon May 23, 2016 12:52 pm

my fault steve please forgive me

CA_Steve
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by CA_Steve » Mon May 23, 2016 2:27 pm

I don't mind the discussion - I just mind it here :) If the OP subscribed to the thread, then he's getting all these "new reply" emails that don't help him out in the least.

quest_for_silence
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Re: Which case for me?

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon May 23, 2016 10:59 pm

CA_Steve wrote:I don't mind the discussion - I just mind it here :) If the OP subscribed to the thread, then he's getting all these "new reply" emails that don't help him out in the least.

What about just splitting this thread since yuannan's post on last 16th April: can't you do that?

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