micro ATX towers with 120mm fans

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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Chris Chan
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Location: Michigan

micro ATX towers with 120mm fans

Post by Chris Chan » Fri Jan 08, 2010 12:22 pm

I'm going to build a Micro ATX system for college in about six months. I've specced it out already (obviously, when I go to build, specs may change based on what's up to date) except for the case. Here are the specs:

Athlon X4 630 with retail HS/F
Radeon HD4350
8GB DDR3
2x500GB 3.5" drives in RAID 1
Windows 7 Pro + VMWare Server + a bunch of VMs

I'd like a pretty attractive MicroATX or ATX tower (no larger than Antec Solo) with 120mm or 140mm fan slots. These cases/PSUs have made my short list so far:

Antec Mini P180 + Seasonic SS-350ET
Antec NSK3480 (I'd switch to 2x500GB laptop drives)
Antec Solo + SS-350ET

so I'd like something about that big, or a bit smaller, sturdy, no stupid bling, power supply inclusion irrelevant (if the PSU is okay, I'm using it; else, SS-350ET). I'm trying to keep the entire build around the $800 range, of which $100-$120 for case/PSU.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, especially non-Antec :P

Thanks.

boost
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Location: de_DE

Post by boost » Fri Jan 08, 2010 1:28 pm

Here's a list of small towers with 120mm fans:
Silverstone TJ08 http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/ ... p?pno=tj08
Lian Li PC-A05 http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/pr ... s_index=63
Aerocool Qs-200 http://www.aerocool.com.tw/pgs/pgs-q/qs200.htm
Thermaltake WingMA http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.a ... 82&ID=1784
I think only the Lian Li and Silverstone are sturdy. The Silverstone is very compact but installing the hard drive can be difficult. The Lian Li is very deep but fits an ATX board.

Chris Chan
Posts: 436
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Post by Chris Chan » Fri Jan 08, 2010 4:07 pm

The Aerocool looks like a really innovative case - I'd like to try it out and would be willing to report back here. But it doesn't seem to be available in the US yet.
The Thermaltake looks ugly imo. And the down-to-the-floor HDD cage leaves no soft mounting options except in the CD drive bays. Meh.
LL is really pretty but too deep. I do like the hard drive mounting though.
SST is middlingly pretty. It doesn't look like it has very good hard drive mounting though.

Hmm... the perfect case doesn't exist, but thanks for giving me a few options!

JamieG
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Post by JamieG » Fri Jan 08, 2010 5:31 pm

Don't know how sturdy it is, but the Coolermaster Elite 341 is a cheap option.

You might need to do a few mods to it - cut out the fan grills and cover over the fan mounts in the side panel, but I quite like the internal lay-out of that case. The plastic front isn't all that great either though.

Just thought I'd add it as another option.

seemingly.random
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Post by seemingly.random » Fri Jan 08, 2010 7:53 pm

I've used the Centurion 541 with almost good results. It's a sturdy case with a spot for two 80mm rear fans and one 120mm front fan. The downside is the limited airflow over the drives. There have various mods to solve this. Laptop drives might eliminate the need for a mod.

The NSK3480 is also fine but you'll need both 92mm front fans with that GPU.

The Mini P180 is a beast. It's capable of handling the cooling for any video card. The problem is is that is will never be close to silent.

Solo is capable of many things including good hd cooling. The Antec 200 has provision for two 120mm front fans but is not as refined.

A cheap alternative is an OEM case that several case companies rebadge. This is one of them. Someone here ~ a year used another version to build a nice box with an asus m2npv-vm mb.

Chris Chan
Posts: 436
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:15 pm
Location: Michigan

Post by Chris Chan » Fri Jan 08, 2010 9:07 pm

seemingly.random wrote:The NSK3480 is also fine but you'll need both 92mm front fans with that GPU.
Are you sure? It doesn't seem like a half height passively cooled card would output that much heat. Were you thinking of a higher end card?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

seemingly.random
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Post by seemingly.random » Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:22 pm

Chris Chan wrote:
seemingly.random wrote:The NSK3480 is also fine but you'll need both 92mm front fans with that GPU.
Are you sure? It doesn't seem like a half height passively cooled card would output that much heat. Were you thinking of a higher end card?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product
I had an abit nfm2 + amd 4800 + wd 320gb + nv 8600gt fanless in one and it needed it. The ambient temp at the time was occasionally reaching 80+F in the summer though. These two GPUs consume about the same amount of power at idle. The rear fan was a 120mm Nexus and the front fans were 92mm 5-volted 2100rpm Minebas which resulted in ~650rpm (just below the aural threshold). It required a lot of tuning. At one point, I had to lower the speed of the front fans to get things balanced. It's a very nice case but not one to swap stuff in and out of a lot as a result of the fairly cramped space. I started with the NSK3300 which was, in a couple of ways, a superior version. I did find that the sides could be swapped - effectively eliminating the vent which really only vented noise.

One of the features of the newer Gigabyte mb's is good fan control. I've been able to chain several fans, front and rear, on the sys fan header. You need to be careful about the total current draw though. I've found that Scythe Slipstreams work well with their very low startable voltage. Unfortunately, the Nexus and most other desirable 3-pin fans won't start if the ambient temp is too low.

It seems that you're considering cases of quite different sizes. In case you haven't seen one in the flesh, I was surprised at the relatively large size of the Solo. The mini p180 is pretty damn big too for a uATX.

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