Question 1

does it come with the plastic transparent, see through top ot the mesh top?

Accepted Answer

It comes with the mesh top. The lexan clear top is available for purchase separately through the CM Store. Newegg prohibits me from linking you directly but you can find it quite easily by Googling "CM Store".

V/R CB

Question 2

Would I be able to fit 2 PNY Geforce GTX 660's in this case? I think they were 10"x4.38".

Accepted Answer

Oh Yea you shouldn't have any issues i have 1 and im sure i could add another. my only issue was that i needed to drill a small notch in the support bar so i could get the power supply cable past the bar but that had nothing to do with the card it was the 1600 watt power cables beasty! on a side note this case is pretty amazing. im very happy with it

Question 3

Would using this case be more difficult, or easier, for a first-time builder than a more standard tower case? I like the look of this case, but I'm buying as a first-time builder and don't want to make things harder for myself.

Accepted Answer

I think for a first time builder it would make it a bit more complicated as you really have to know what you are doing with cable routing and even simple stuff like organizing the hardware installation.  You will end up putting in the drives and then the motherboard and then uninstalling the motherboard because your hand isn't small enough to route the cables properly.  That is what happened with me and I have built about 20 PCs from the ground up.  Its a great case though, so on that front it is outstanding hardware, just takes some planning.

Question 4

I plan on using water cooling when I get this case, and I see the place for the radiator is where the 2 fans are located in the front. For those of you with this setup, are you blowing the air out the front? It seems odd to me, but less so than having the warm air forced back over the mobo/ video cards.

Accepted Answer

My setup has two fans under the black mesh drawing in cool air, then my radiator, then two more fans pushing air from the radiator into the case. From there, I have a huge 200mm exhaust fan on the top. Love this case to be quite frank, one of my most advanced builds, and everything has been quite and cool since I first powered it up. May need to clean the front grills soon though.

Question 5

Is there a spot for mechanical drives other than the two hot swap bays in the front?

Accepted Answer

This is a ssd friendly case, but in case you need more room for your hdds you can utilize the dvd rom bays in the  front as well. In my case I have 2 hdds as hot swappable and my ssd as boot drive with win 8.1. This is a very spacious and nice case for gamers.

Question 6

Is this case rack mountable ?

Accepted Answer

No, it would defeat the whole principle of the case having high positive air flow - not just front to back but drawing cool air up from the bottom cut outs to cool the top half and the top fan pushing air down on the PCIe slots and out the sides of the top half.

If you need a rack mountable case, there are specific cases for that.

Question 7

Should the top 200mm fan blow in or out of the case?

Accepted Answer

Out. But if you have a good rad on front flowing in and a fan on back out...its not needed at all.

Question 8

Might update two of my builds with this. Would this case fit a CM Hyper 212+ or a Noctua NH-D14? Seems like it might be tight, just wanted some real world experience.

Accepted Answer

Carl,

When i built my Rig, i had the intention of using the CM Hyper 212 with a 200 mm Red Led Fan above it. The numbers were spot on but when it came to build time they both fit but the Cooper pins that stick up on the top were right in the fan blades. Not by much but not a big deal the fan was used in a separate build so no issue.

My rig runs smooth and stays cool with the Hyper 212 and has clearance, the top is open and if you have no intention of Putting a fan in you should have no issues. I love my case and recommend it.

Question 9

I know this might be a stupid question but, does this take optical drives? and if it does what drives would fit.

Accepted Answer

By optical drives if you are referring to DVDs, etc, - yes.  You have two front slots that can be used for this purpose.

I purchased this case almost a year ago and really like it.  If you decide to go with just cooling fans and its going to be local to where you work, make sure get ones with low decibel rating.  Quiet is better.

Question 10

I am shopping for a HTPC/Steam case. I am not impressed with the mini-ITX cases for a variety of reasons typically revolving around quality. Space is not a concern for me. I cannot fit UNIVAC in my living room, but I have plenty of space.

This case appears to have a lot of mesh/open areas: is it noisy?

Has anyone else used this for an HTPC/Steam application? I am thinking PS, mobo/ram/cpu, video, SSD, BD-R. Looks like like it should all fit. How is airflow? Noise? Heat? Is it noisy when playing games? Not Skyrim or whatever, just some mid-range Steam 3D games.

Accepted Answer

I bought this case for the exact same reason.  I liked it so much I ditched my Nine Hundred case for my gaming machine upstairs and bought another of these.  I modified the case for my gaming machine slightly for water cooling.  For the HTPC I used an MSI Z87-GD65Mobo with i7-4770k, 16 gb RAM, 256G SSD, Corsair H80i cooler, and WD 4TB for movies.  At start up you can hear the fans which throttle back to pretty quiet.  With any other noise in the room such as the TV I don't hear the fans at all.  I would absolutely recommend this case.

I also added the Hauppage dual tuner and record all the Over the air broadcasts.

For ripping movies I use PAVTUBE. I ended up buying ANYDVD last weekend when I ran into a couple of movies PAVTUBE couldn't rip.

Questions & Answers