New PC Build Suggestions

[CreamSauce]

I wouldn't replace the stock fans, the Fortress FT01 uses sliverston square frame 180mm fans on the top and front, and thoes are only made by silverstone, ok they are probably made by someone else for silverstone, however there's no other source for that size so silverstone probably has exclusive license on them.
You could replace them with the newer silverstone Air penetrator 180mm version, basically the same fan but with a custom grill built into the back of the fan that focuses the air cone, to reduce turblance and keep the air coming out in a tighter and more focused over a greater distance.

I'd still add in a hard drive for additional drive space as well as the SSD, which is why I sugested the 60gb SSD, it's only an additional £35 for a 1000gb of additional capacity
You could partition it and use it to store multiple images of the ssd drive for backup and recovery and still have plenty of storage space left.

Actually thinking about it for the size of the case and what you're putting in it the antec 300
would probably be a better case.

If you go for a perbuild from scan 3xs then you might as well have the overclock as it's free.
If you'er just using it as a base for component sugestions, then the Asus board is a nice one for it's decent auto overclocking for thoes who don't want to try manual overclocking.
Both MSi and Gigabyte have some auto overclocking however they've not proved to be quite as good as the Asus one.

EDIT:Yes
xfx is still doing long warranties but only in the US

Also not all EVGA card carry the 10year warrany any long, so you have to becareful to pick the right one if you want it.
The SC cards are the ones that still carry the 10year waranty

I understand that, I just wanted to replace the fans to maybe get blue led lights on the front fan but I guess that is not possible.

If it is not possible to change the front fan with maybe a blue led fan than I will consider the air penatrator greatly thank you for the suggestion, the only thing is that I believe with the early model of the FT01 case there was a problem with the front fan vibrating or touching the front of the hdd bay I cannot remember exactly and they changed this with a more thinner fan, I would not want this to happen if I installed the air penetrator fans.

Regarding the 64GB SSD I am adamant that 64GB is more than enough for me! I was also wondering if it would be possible to remove both HDD Bays as I will only have a SSD which I believe is smaller than a HDD?

[Pob255]

Sliverstone do make the 180mm fan with blue led's
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/180mm...Quiet-Case-Fan
the 180mm Air penetrator only comes in non-led but is the same 180x180x32mm size

I've not heard of any vibration issues, the bracket that hold the front fan can be a little loose, however the fans are very slow running and produce little in the way of vibration.

There are two main issues with the TF01 that I know of:
1 getting to the filter of the top fan isn't easy and generally means removing the fan
2 Cooling, This is mainly down to the positive pressure design anf fan layout, it tends to lead to slightly higher cpu temps, however it also tend to lower gpu temps.
I say tends because it will depend on the coolers and how they are set up to work with or against the cooling, graphics card cooler that vent air out of the back of the case (like the evg gtx460 SC) will benefit from a positive pressure layout far more than a cooler that doesn't vent the air out of the case, a water cooling radiator (like the corsair h50) on the rear 120mm fan point with a fan set to extract air through the rad and out of the back of the case will likewise benefit from positive pressure.
The top fan can be remounted so it's extracting air, turning the case into negative pressure which generally improves the cpu cooling but reduces graphics card cooling slightly.

On the hard drive cages, I'd remove the top cage if you're not planning to have much in the way of hard drives (I think the bottom cage is actually rivited in) as that will open up the air flow path from the front fan, it's also worth removeing any unused drive trays to help open up the air flow path through the cages.
One thing to note is that there is no built in support for SSDs (SSDs are 2.5", laptop HDD sized, normal desktop HDD's are 3.5") so an adaptor or a bit of creativity will be needed to mount them.

I'd still say add in a Hard drive because the cost is so small, £27.29 for 500gb of storage is well worth it.

PS I'd also consider the Lian Li PC-60FNB if you are going with a 3XS system

[CreamSauce]

Sliverstone do make the 180mm fan with blue led's
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/180mm...Quiet-Case-Fan
the 180mm Air penetrator only comes in non-led but is the same 180x180x32mm size

I've not heard of any vibration issues, the bracket that hold the front fan can be a little loose, however the fans are very slow running and produce little in the way of vibration.

There are two main issues with the TF01 that I know of:
1 getting to the filter of the top fan isn't easy and generally means removing the fan
2 Cooling, This is mainly down to the positive pressure design anf fan layout, it tends to lead to slightly higher cpu temps, however it also tend to lower gpu temps.
I say tends because it will depend on the coolers and how they are set up to work with or against the cooling, graphics card cooler that vent air out of the back of the case (like the evg gtx460 SC) will benefit from a positive pressure layout far more than a cooler that doesn't vent the air out of the case, a water cooling radiator (like the corsair h50) on the rear 120mm fan point with a fan set to extract air through the rad and out of the back of the case will likewise benefit from positive pressure.
The top fan can be remounted so it's extracting air, turning the case into negative pressure which generally improves the cpu cooling but reduces graphics card cooling slightly.

On the hard drive cages, I'd remove the top cage if you're not planning to have much in the way of hard drives (I think the bottom cage is actually rivited in) as that will open up the air flow path from the front fan, it's also worth removeing any unused drive trays to help open up the air flow path through the cages.
One thing to note is that there is no built in support for SSDs (SSDs are 2.5", laptop HDD sized, normal desktop HDD's are 3.5") so an adaptor or a bit of creativity will be needed to mount them.

I'd still say add in a Hard drive because the cost is so small, £27.29 for 500gb of storage is well worth it.

PS I'd also consider the Lian Li PC-60FNB if you are going with a 3XS system

Here we go this is taken from bit-tech's review of the FT01

Both the front, roof, and base fan mounts come with removable dust filters, but sadly all three are of pretty poor quality, and the roof filter is rendered all but useless by some pretty terrible design oversights. The front fan’s dust filter was audibly rubbing against the fan blades under normal operation, and the PSU fan noisily rattled against its dust filter thanks to us having to cram it into the mount.

In fact, we had to actually prop the PSU clear of its dust filter with a few metal strips in order to complete our testing without making a god-awful racket. It’s all very disappointing, especially after our very favourable impressions from the FT01’s exterior.

Above quote from article was written in 2008.

Update - 07:45, 28th October 2008:
Silverstone has informed us that it has addressed some of our concerns with the Fortress FT01's build quality. The company says it replaced the fans and dust filters on all production models before they made it to retail - we've got some more information on the refinements in this news story.

This is the reason why I was asking if replacing the 180mm fan's would be a bad idea

[CreamSauce]

Edit: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...-ft01-issues/1

That shows the newly designed fans

[Pob255]

Ummm yes and I draw your attention to that 2nd artical.

You can see that the fan blades where sticking up above the frame slightly and was rappidly corrected in the retail release.

I can only conclude that bittech was sent a final pre production sample as none of the other reviews or reports from people who own them have had this issue.
All of the otherreviews I've seen have had the rubber strip on the psu filter, the bittech one is the only one that I've not seen it on.
The issue of trying to get to the top filter remains however.

While it is a nice case and does look amazing there are plenty of other cases out there, have a look at the corsair 600t, personally I think it's a bit expensive but it is a very nice case with very high build quality.

[CreamSauce]

Ummm yes and I draw your attention to that 2nd artical.

You can see that the fan blades where sticking up above the frame slightly and was rappidly corrected in the retail release.

I can only conclude that bittech was sent a final pre production sample as none of the other reviews or reports from people who own them have had this issue.
All of the otherreviews I've seen have had the rubber strip on the psu filter, the bittech one is the only one that I've not seen it on.
The issue of trying to get to the top filter remains however.

While it is a nice case and does look amazing there are plenty of other cases out there, have a look at the corsair 600t, personally I think it's a bit expensive but it is a very nice case with very high build quality.

Yes that is exactly the point I am trying to get accross, the original fan had blades which stuck above the frame slightly this is a final pre prdocution sample as you concluded correctly.

However, if I replace the fan with one with blue leds ie a different fan there is a chance the fan will have fan blades which slightly stick above the frame, I am sure if this is a issue with the install the Scan 3XS team will take action appropriately, the reason I am taking action to find a defenitive answer before going with the build is that I have seen no one who has changed the front fan on the Silverstone Fortress FT01.

Yes I am ranting on... but aesthetics is a very important factor for me, and I want to get it spot on !