USB 3.0 Cases

[time]

We're finally starting to see cases with USB 3.0 connectors on the front panel. Here are some really interesting microATX ones.

Lian-Li PC-V352
31 liter Shoebox. 280mm depth when turned sideways as designed, 3x 3.5" HDD, slide out m/b tray. Like all Lian-Li it's expensive.



Silverstone ML03
16 liter Slimline HTPC, 340mm depth, 2x 3.5"/2.5" + 1x 2.5" HDD. Impressive cooling with 4x 80mm fans lining an entire side. Very cheap, good business solution.



Silverstone GD06
22 liter HTPC, 340mm depth, 3-4x 3.5" + 1-2x 2.5" HDD, 120mm fans. Note the two hot-swap bays in the front panel! One of the best designed cases I've ever seen.



Silverstone FT03
33 liter Mini-tower, 284mm depth, 3x 3.5" + 1x 2.5" HDD. Insanely small footprint of just 235x284mm (about the same as a mouse pad). Everything comes out the top: front and back connectors, a hotswap bay, and exhaust air. Wipes the floor with a P180 Mini, check out the picture gallery here. Quite brilliant.


Click on the images to see product details. For reference, an Antec P180 is 56 liters and has a depth of 505mm.

 

[CougTek]

Silverstone FT03
[...]
Wipes the floor with a P180 Mini, check out the picture gallery here. Quite brilliant.

From the review you linked :

To load the system, we used a combination of the Canyon Flight benchmark in 3DMark06 and the smallfft test in Prime 95.

3D Mark06 to load a graphic in 2011??? Are you serious? Other than that, it's obvious that the FT03 performs well. An Antec Mini P180 cost me around 110$ here. I hope the FT03 won't be much more expensive.

I've used the Silverstone GD04B in a HTPC build in the past and liked it. I would have prefered if Silverstone didn't use a front door on the GD06. It would have been a better design IMO.

 

[CougTek]

I was planning to use a Scythe Mugen-2 with two fans (one Scythe SY1225SL12LM-P, plus the one that comes with the heatsink) for my next build. I'm not sure the Mugen-2 would fit in the FT03. It might knock on the oblique 120mm above the PSU chamber.

The only µATX LGA1366 motherboards I can get are the Asus Rampage II GENE and the MSI X58M, but only the former would be worth it as the second one doesn't have USB 3.0 ports. Too bad because I have one spare X58M and none Rampage II GENE at the shop.

 

[time]

The specs claim it will take a cooler up to 167mm; the Atomic MPC article I linked says: "inside its mATX-compatible frame lies enough room for a 160mm-tall heatsink".

Scythe lists the height of the Mugen-2 as 158mm.

 

[CougTek]

It's not the height that I'm worried of, but the depth. The Mugen is not that wide, but it's deep. I don't know if it will knock on the 120mm above the PSU chamber because the 120mm is inclined.

After verification, the FT03 cost 150$ here. For what it offers, it's reasonable.

So :

• Intel Core i7 970, 6 cores at 3.2GHz
• Asus Rampage III GENE
• Scythe Mugen-2 rev. B with an additional Scythe SY1225SL12LM-P
• Kingston HyperX 6GB (3x2GB) 1600MHz kit
• Kingwin LZP-550 550W 80Plus Platinum
• OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB SSD PCI-E 4X
• 3x WD20EARS 2TB (or Seagate, but I prefer bad sectors to a bricked head)
• Silverstone SOD02 slim SATA DVD slot load
• Asus GeForce GTX 560Ti 1GB
• Silverstone FT03B

Would cost me 1897$, including shipping but excluding taxes. Now that's a workstation even SSDrueding would be proud of, occupying the surface of a mouse pad. You could fit at least six in a small closet.

 

[ddrueding]

That is indeed an awesome build. Funny you should post that, I was configuring something similar at the same time

I'm still allergic to ASUS, though.

 

[CougTek]

Well, you don't have the choice if you want a 6-Core i7 on a µATX motherboard with USB 3.0 (there's the MSI X58M if you don't mind about USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps).

And I made a mistake regarding the price. I forgot to increase the price of the CPU (I was trying with an i7 960 previously). It would cost me 2162$ instead of 1897$.

 

[CougTek]

And putting six of the above computers in a closet would give me a more expensive closet than any woman I've ever met :mrgrn:

 

[LunarMist]

And putting six of the above computers in a closet would give me a more expensive closet than any woman I've ever met :mrgrn:

You should meet a higher class of women. Or maybe not. :-D

 

[CougTek]

When they are more expensive to maintain than my car, I say "no thanks".

 

[time]

I'm still allergic to ASUS, though.

Funny you should mention that, I'm trying to overcome my own allergy. Anything recent to reinforce that?

 

[CougTek]

Are you trying to hijack your own thread?

 

[LunarMist]

Do those USB 3.0 connectors supply enough juice to the front panels?

 

[time]

Interesting point, Lunar. USB 3.0 only officially increases current by 50% to 150mA, so it should be fine. Even Gigabyte's presumed 300mA or more should be okay.

CougTek: Yeah, I worried about that, but it's hard to get Ddrueding's attention.

 

[LunarMist]

The USB 3.0 low-power device current is 150mA, but the high-power device current is 900mA. The high-power mode is needed for external devices such as 2.5" hard drives.

 

[Stereodude]

USB 2.0 was only rated for 500mA and generally had no issues with 2.5" external hard drives (if you use a short heavier gauge USB cable).

 

[ddrueding]

Funny you should mention that, I'm trying to overcome my own allergy. Anything recent to reinforce that?

Sorry for the late response; been out for the day.

Nothing in a year. Mainly stupid BIOS defaults and a board that wouldn't support the latest CPU without a BIOS update that required installing a functioning CPU...just a pain.

 

[snowhiker]

[*]Kingwin LZP-550 550W 80Plus Platinum

That power supply received a very good review from HardOCP.com but it costs a bundle. Will the efficiency make up for the price?

 

[CougTek]

Will the efficiency make up for the price?

Of course not. The highest efficiency power supplies that are reasonably affordable are 80Plus Bronze. There's been OCZ Z550 and Z650 that were 80Plus Silver and were selling for 60$-80$ last summer, but I haven't heard of such a good deal in a while. Besides efficiency, the reason why I picked the LZP-550 was for the silence of its operation and for some people that has no price. The Seasonic X-560 is cheaper and almost as quiet, if you are looking to save 30$. It's ~2% less efficient too.

 

[time]

The USB 3.0 low-power device current is 150mA, but the high-power device current is 900mA. The high-power mode is needed for external devices such as 2.5" hard drives.

Sorry, I looked it up and misread it - it seemed wrong but I was tired.

Even at 900mA, the load is still more than 5 ohms. I'd be confident that even little wires have considerably less than 1 ohm resistance with such small lengths, so still nothing to worry about.

 

[CougTek]

Silent PC Review tested the Silverstone FT03.

 

[ddrueding]

Silent PC Review tested the Silverstone FT03.

Interesting design. Seems the botched it by making it just too small for 120mm fans in a normal configuration. It wouldn't have taken much.

Also, SPCR screwed up by taking a case designed for upward convective flow and not using a GPU or CPU cooler that was conducive to that design.

 

[CougTek]

Also, SPCR screwed up by taking a case designed for upward convective flow and not using a GPU or CPU cooler that was conducive to that design.

Nanandtech made the same mistake too. They were even more evil : they used a miniITX motherboard instead of a µATX motherboard. Why review a computer case that accepts µATX with a miniITX motherboard? Then, he complains that there wasn't enough fan connectors on a board of this size. Moron.

If it's true that many budget µATX boards have few case fan connectors, you don't typically put a budget board inside a 150-160$ computer case. There should be enough fan connectors on +140$ µATX motherboard to accomodate all the fans inside this case.

 

[CougTek]

SPCR revisited the FT03, this time with a tower cooler and the results improved substantially. It's still no really better than the Lian Li PC V354, but at least we have an accurate picture of its possibility now. And my plan to use it with a Scythe Mugen-2 fell apart. The slimmer Noctua NH-U12P is the the deepest tower cooler that fits, thanks to the problematic center fan.

 

[Stereodude]

So, I finally pulled my Lian-Li case out (that has USB3.0 ports). I was disappointed to see it has does not have the proper ends on the cables to plug them into the headers on the motherboard. Instead they've got the standard USB A male plug. And, they only include 1 adapter with the case to go from motherboard header to USB A female plug.

Basically I need another of these. Though I should point out the one they included with the case was a bit different.

 

[Stereodude]

After looking at it closer I realize they didn't include a USB3.0 adapter with the case, but a USB2.0 adapter.

 

[ddrueding]

In order to get USB3 on the front of a case, I ended up sticking the USBA plug out the back and jacking it directly into the USB3 header.

 

[Stereodude]

In order to get USB3 on the front of a case, I ended up sticking the USBA plug out the back and jacking it directly into the USB3 header.

I have 4 USB 3.0 plugs on the top panel of the case. The mobo only supports 2 from the header inside. So, either the other 2 on the top will need to be USB2.0 or I'll have to do that too.

 

[time]

Pitfalls for the unwary:

With current Lian-Li cases, the cable from each front USB 3.0 port ends in a USB plug. They include a Y adapter that allows two of these to be connected to a USB 3.0 header on a motherboard. So they can accommodate any motherboard with some kind of USB 3.0 port.

Silverstone is terminating their front USB 3.0 port cables with a single 20-pin connector to plug directly into a USB 3.0 header on a motherboard. They include an adapter that allows it to plug into a legacy USB 2.0 header instead. But there is no way to connect them to USB 3.0 ports on the back panel.

In other words, there is no point buying a Silverstone USB 3.0 case unless you specifically have a motherboard with the 20-pin USB 3.0 header - there is no transition arrangement for the majority of USB 3.0 motherboards that only have ports on the back panel.

AFAICS, you can almost count on one hand the number of Asus and Gigabyte motherboards with a USB 3.0 header. WTF?

 

[Stereodude]

With current Lian-Li cases, the cable from each front USB 3.0 port ends in a USB plug. They include a Y adapter that allows two of these to be connected to a USB 3.0 header on a motherboard. So they can accommodate any motherboard with some kind of USB 3.0 port.

Are you sure about that? I thought that at first too, but when I looked at the y adapter closer I saw it was for USB 2.0, since it doesn't have the 20 pin header on the end.

 

[Mercutio]

The 20 pin header will become more common over time. I'm not fond of the alternative arrangement, which seems to involve putting a hole in the back of a chassis someplace so that a USB3 cable can be passed from the inside of the enclosure to a rear USB3 port. That just looks idiotic, even if I'm the only person who knows it's there.

 

[time]

Nope, I'm definitely not sure. Chalk that up to yet another pitfall.

 

[time]

Reverse that, I was right the fist time (or LianLi has changed the part):

 

[Stereodude]

Reverse that, I was right the fist time (or LianLi has changed the part):

I didn't get one of those with my USB 3.0 Lian-Li case. I got a Y cable with the USB2.0 header on one end and two female A connectors.

 

[time]

Are you going to request a replacement from LianLi?

 

[Stereodude]

Are you going to request a replacement from LianLi?

Per the part list on the documentation it's not supposed to come with one of those. It lists a USB2.0 to USB3.0 adapter which is the Y cable thing that was included.

 

[CougTek]

While it is not as small as most of the cases Time showed in the original post, the latest NZXT enclosure beats them all on price :

NZXT Source 210 Elite - only 49.99$.
Top 140mm fan, space for routing cables, bottom space for the PSU, front USB 3.0 port with a USB motherboard header and tool-less design (except for the motherboard).

 

[Mercutio]

That is shockingly not-hideous.

 

[ddrueding]

Actually looks good in black.

 

[time]

Yeah, at 43 liters it's still too bulky for what I believe most people want (who outside of StorageForum needs 8 3.5" drive bays? ), but the styling is clean and doesn't look dated, which is more than I can say for most of the Antec range these days. When you can't even keep up with Dell's budget range, you've got a big problem with relevance.

I'd really like to see Antec release a similar size to the NSK3480 with USB 3.0 and WITHOUT the silver plastic front. I know a wholesaler with more than 100 of the old model in stock, but good luck on moving them.