Computer Cases

LunarMist

LunarMist

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A few years ago I was rather disgusted that most of the cases had glass side panels, preventing use of fans on the side.
Now I'm seeing that it's more grim now. Most cases either have no front panel (glass) or just mesh and no place to put 3.5" drive bays or optoicale drives.
What can I still buy in the way of a smallish ATX mid-tower case that will accept two 3.5" drive bays? I don't care about 3.5' internal drives, but I need to be able to use the Nocturnal D15 heatsink in there along with the drive bays. Thanks.
 
Handruin

Handruin

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Would the Fractal Design North case work for your needs? It has two 3.5" internal bays and it does have a mesh side panel but there is a cage that mounts behind it to accept fans or a radiator.
 
sedrosken

sedrosken

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I've actually been stockpiling older cases when I come across them in good shape. I too find the current situation rather disgusting.

Handy, Lunar was asking about two external 3.5" bays I think. Now that is a rare bird indeed, but if you're okay with using 5.25" to 3.5" bay adapters the case I'm using, the Phanteks Enthoo Pro (first version) is still available as NOS I believe. That's a lot more than just a smallish mid-tower, though I can confirm it'll mount an NH-D15 just fine, as that's what I used back when I ran a 3700X. These days, I'm being a little less ostentatious, using a bequiet! Pure Rock Slim, but that's because the system's TDP permits that and I sent the D15 I was using to my friend along with the 3700X. Mine was the solid side-panel variant, but the more common one has a case window.

The CoolerMaster N400 also accepts some external drives, and fits the bill of a small mid-tower, but I don't believe that will mount the NH-D15.

Fractal still makes some really good stuff, particularly before I got the Phanteks case I was looking at a Define R5. Given the R6 is out now, I think they're winding down sales of the R5, but it still mentions it on their website. The R6 drops a front-accessible drive bay. I really like the Define line aesthetically, they're very understated but well-built, the Fractal Core 1100 I used for my XP build shows that even their budget cases are made well. The pricing just wasn't near what I wanted to pay for it at the time. I don't have one to test mount for sure, but the specs for the R5 say that it'll fit a D15, given it's got 180mm of clearance to the cooler's 165mm height.
 
LunarMist

LunarMist

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OOps. :eek: I mean two 5.25" drives. I will use them for swappable 3.5 and 2.5' drives.
 
LunarMist

LunarMist

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I actually had the older version 100R with metal panel. It was dirty and somewhat bent out of shape so I threw it out in 2021 when disposing of a lot of old stuff. :( It is long discontinued for the US.

That N400 looks OK, but why doesn't it work with the D15? Is something blocking it?
I did a build in the N200, which is a smaller version for mATX. I don't recall that the CPU had a heatsink fan and there was no GPU, so space was not an issue.
 
LunarMist

LunarMist

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Thanks. I didn't get the point that you had test fitted it.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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I don't think Cooler Master cases are appropriate for people who like mechanical disk drives. Most of those N400/N600 chassis will only have two or four places they can mount a 3.5" drive, plus 2 - 3 places to hang a 2.5" drive on the back side of the case. They're fantastic as general purpose desktop cases though.
 
sedrosken

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Literally, they could probably sell it as a SOHO server chassis if they just put a couple more 3.5" internal bays in it! I don't feel like I'm asking for that much. Alas.
 
LunarMist

LunarMist

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I think it best to just give up at this point and trash the original system. I might swap motherboards, but it would be easier to put the 5950x on the cheaper motherboard that has the 3950x than switch them. They are both x570 anyway and the fancier stuff is not needed.

Ironically my only good case left is an older Colermaster that fits a bunch of internal 3.5' drives and 3 external 5.25' bays. It has a huge, but quiet fan on the left side. Unfortunately it has no USB after 3.0.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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I've been looking at Computex coverage of new chassis designs and dear god I hate everything I see.

Seems like 90% of new designs are clear on at least two sides and either overblown full tower height or ITX only. Zero room for mechanical drives. I do like the trend of adding wood accents (I've had a chassis built into an Ikea-grade wooden cabinet that I've been re-using since about 1999), but it seems like all the innovations are just coming up with different ways to put RGB lights on things. No one seems to be making anything new for chambered airflow or noise reduction. It's all fishbowls now.
 
J

jtr1962

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Realistically though how many people use mechanical drives these days? SSDs are under $50/TB and few people need more than 2TB of storage. Even 4TB is affordable now. With NVME on nearly all motherboards, and USB drives for portable storage, you don't even need drive bays any more.

That said, I'm not a fan of clear cases or RGB nonsense myself. If nothing else, the glass is another thing to potentially break. I can imagine Cougtek kicking one of the new cases when his machine has problems.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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I put a 3.5" drive in every bigger-than-ITX desktop I assemble. Usually it's just a little guy. It's easy enough to add $35 to the cost of a system for a 2TB spinny drive, just to keep backups on hand for an end user. Some people do have bulk storage needs aside from giant media collections; my now-departed-for-Florida partner has a pair of RAID1'd 16TB drives in her desktop simply because none of her other computers (Macbook Pro, M4 Mini and the e-waste M1 iMac she didn't even bother to take with her), have anyplace for her to leave video editing projects.
 
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jtr1962

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Color me surprised. It's been 14 or 15 years I think since I last bought a spinning drive. Their fragility is a show stopper. Kick the case accidentally while the drive is spinning and all that data may be gone. Plus the cost difference per TB isn't that large any more. Maybe $20/TB for HDD versus $50/TB for SSD (and dropping in price faster than HDD is dropping). I'd rather spend the 100 bucks for 2TB of SSD than a spinning disk. At current electrical rates that spinning disk will use about $20 more worth of electricity in a year if it's on 24/7. So in three years and change I reach break-even point with the SSD.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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I appreciate having the differing failure models. Every once in a while I see an SSD switch over to read-only mode but most of the drives that die just stop being drives. At least hard drives usually give some warning before they completely crap out.
 
sedrosken

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The MSRP on that is $220 if I'm not mistaken so you're not far off at all. I almost want it for the 7-segment displays alone but that clear side panel ruins it for me. Plus, I have far more important things to spend $220 on.
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

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I did actually go digging around on the Silverstone web site, where I found this monster. I have a pair of Norco 3U 24 bay chassis and when I bought those, they were under $400 apiece. $1100 is a bit much.

I do actually like the RM45-360 as a general purpose case, but 4U is a lot of chassis. It's like a parrot, something you're going to be stuck with for life. As much fun as I might have with it, it's not the middle of the road general purpose item I'd like to find.
 
J

jtr1962

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Mercutio said:
You know they're going to want $250 for that thing. There were some great looking beige cases back in the day but no, they went deliberately hideous.
Click to expand...
It reminds me of the case my old 386 is in. Beige cases were almost always disgusting. I never understood the point of picking a color that looks like a faded white case that's been outside in the sun for decades. Either make it white, or make it black. Or even some shade of gray.
 
Chewy509

Chewy509

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Yeah, I agree, the fish bowl design is uninspired.

At least we still have companies like Chenbro making modernised 20 year old designs...

Chenbro - Products

Chenbro is a leading company in design and manufacturing of Rackmount server and storage chassis for hyperscale datacenter, enterprise, IOT, education, and surveillance applications.
www.chenbro.com www.chenbro.com
https://www.chenbro.com/en-global/products/RackmountChassis/4U_Chassis/RM41736_Plus

And Antec are still making some of the ISK, NXK and VSK series for that P4 era retro feel.

Macase are still around making some interesting stuff: https://szmacase.en.alibaba.com/
 
Mercutio

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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The Fractal Define and Cooler Master Nwhatever have been my go-to options for modest builds, but it's hard for me to justify $150 for a case on a $700 PC. Mesh cases are alright for gamers, but they also make for computers that are louder than I'd care to deal with.
 
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