In the end I picked the Lian-Li PC-A77B. Mainly because:
-Holds 9 hard drives out of the box, with 6 5.25" drives still free!
-Build quality looked very good
-Fan controller looked useful
-The rubber anti-vibration grommets for the hard drives seemed adequate
-Lots of air-flow (At the very least, the potential for it)
-PSU can be put at the top or bottom
-Lots of room to fiddle about
-Removable motherboard tray
Feel like I should say a few things about my experience with the case, given its not been posted about too much on this site. Overall its a fantastic case, and well worth the ~£150 it cost. However, its main problems are:
-The power and reset buttons are too easy to press accidentally. In fact Ive been able to turn it off simply by pressing down around the side of the power button.... it is easily fixed by shaving half a millimeter off the switch, but it did prove annoying
-There is a hard drive module and the top where you would often find a hard drive. This module cannot be fitted above the two hard drive modules at the front, even though its exactly the same module... it lacks a supporting bracket that would have been incredibly easy to include.
-The fan controller. You dont actually have any real control over the fans, its all automatically done on temperature sensors that are supplied. However it doesnt really work, even if you put them all in a cold place, you dont see any of the fan speeds being reduced below the ~1200rpm mark. Also one of the temperature sensors went haywire in the middle of the night and the controller started making beeping noises until i turned the pc off. I no longer use any of the fan controller, its off.
-The front comes off a bit too easily. The clips could have been a bit more secure.
-The top is supposed to come off for 'easy access' However, to be able to take the top off, you need to take off both side panels, and the front, making the whole feature a bit pointless.
-That top hard drive module has screws in very arkward places. You need to take out the mobo tray in order to get at them.
But im very critical and really picking away at the case. I found more faults with the p182, thats for sure.
Onto my system....
mobo: Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R (you know the main difference between rev 1.0 and rev 2.0? its that the 2.0 has an spdif out header.... it annoying to find out yours doesnt have one when the digital coaxial out doesnt work)
CPU: E6750 (upped to 3.2ghz... just a small overclock but I notice the difference and dont feel its worth pushing further, although there is certainly room)
CPU cooler: scythe ninja (rev. B)
RAM: stupid ocz 800mhz ddr2 stuff. 4 1 gig sticks that like a ton of voltage and refuse to get down to CL4 despite them being listed as that.
Video card: 8800 GTS 512mb
Video card heatsink: Accelero S1 with an s-flex 1200rpm attached with some molex wire ;p (seriously, I cant imagine anyone wanting to use a stock heatsink again once youve tried something like the accelero out)
Hard drives: 4x 1TB samsung F1's, 3x 750GB samsung F1's, 2x 500GB samsung spinpoints. 3 of them are in external enclosures so you dont see them in the case.
Optical drive: Plextor PX-755A (ive been through a couple of other sata drives, both been awful. Always come straight back to my faithful plextor)
TV card: Hauppauge nova-t 500 (dual freeview tuner)
Mouse: Logitech G5
Keyboard: Cherry cymotion expert
Monitor: LG L226W
Some cheap pci-e double esata card
External sound card: EMU 0404 USB
Mods ive done: Front fans are voltmodded down to 7V, rear fans are voltmodded down to 5V. I know overall I have 7 fans, and its probably overkill. However the noise is now down to a level where other ambient noises are the problem (the 360, the fridge all the way downstairs, the building work next door
), and it seems like too much work to mess around with fans in various positions and voltages, plus my brother nicked my other s-flexs and i might as well get them back before trying to find an optimal solution.paxmate on the top and sides of the case. It has definitely helped reduce vibrations a fair bit, the side panels are very light and need something on them.
wait, this is a picture topic you say? sorry, here is the offending item:
those fans were spinning when i took that picture.
for a attempt at a silent gaming server music workstation HTPC, I think its tuned out pretty well
Im not sure what else I can do to it now, apart from chuck more hard drives in. For that i kinda need more sata ports however, so cue either a new mobo or raid controller.
