need case advice

[Venge]

Hi all, I am in need of some help in choesing a new case for my gaming rig. I have a few special needs.

1. Must suport atleast 10 HDD's
2. Must have a window
3. Full tower prefered
4 Gota be silent!

So far I only found 1 case that meats my needs, but I am unshure about its silenceing abilities.. I have 2 raptors so I am very weary about this mesh like design...

Here she is in all her glory!








It has a optional window panel that I would buy... But how loud is this case gona be with 8 or so hard drives?

Whats your opinions?

[arthurleung]

10 HDDs is not a problem with most cases. You could look at the Coolermaster Stacker, or supertowers from Thermaltake. You can buy adapters to fit 4~5 HDDs into 3 5.25" slots.
Most cheapo cases can also support 10 hdds using this way.

There is always noise from harddrives, especially you want 10 of them. When the harddrives are new they produce little noise, but as you use them longer they produce more noise. You also need to consider how to cool the harddrives. With harddrivess stack together tightly, those ultra-quiet fan would not be sufficient to cool the harddrives.

In my experience you'll need 2 3000rpm 8cm fans to cool 10~12 hdds (or 4 slower fans). For side-mounting cases such as the lian-li case above the cooling efficiency is decreased for quite a large amount.

If you want it to be slient either take out the harddrives or add noise-dampening foams (but you would lose your windows panel view)

By any mean the harddrive and the fans cooling the hdd will most likely be the loudest thing in your system apart from stock GPU/Northbridge fans.

[Nox]

Lian Li also do a silent version of that case, without the mesh and has a door - doesn't look anywhere near as nice though...

Nox

[arthurleung]

Lian Li also do a silent version of that case, without the mesh and has a door - doesn't look anywhere near as nice though...

Nox

I heard that the slient design severely reduce cooling capability (case temperature increases by 5'C)

[icq3800846]

I have an Aerocool Gatewatch which controls my fans and has temperature sensors.

During a session of Far Cry, the temperature sensors report my two Raptors to he hitting 50 degrees C.

They are housed in two Coolermaster CoolDrive 3 enclosures.

If you're going to use Raptors, you will need to take cooling and airflow into consideration.

Unless you go watercooled, I think I would be happy to have the mesh design that would let the heat dissipate. If the noise is too much, stick the Raptors in their own enclosures but make sure they can cool them properly.