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Richard A.

Richard A.

Joined on 10/21/11

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 5
Most Favorable Review

Lighting makes it look not quite so red.

LIAN LI PC-V600FR Red Aluminum Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case
LIAN LI PC-V600FR Red Aluminum Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case

Pros: Looks like a Mac Pro case minus the handles (and huge size). Tons of drive bays. Lightweight. Included fans are actually pretty decent. Plenty of room behind the motherboard tray to conceal wiring for a clean case look. Enough room to install my 5850s without removing the bottom drive bay. All aluminum makes for easy modification, as I'm planning to mount a Corsair H100 to the side panel with Lian Li's spider grills before the build is completely finished. Also being all aluminum assists with cooling as it transfers heat better than steel and plastic does.

Cons: Under CFL lighting, especially with the 6500K "daylight" bulbs, the red does have a tendacy to appear more pinkish than red. However, under most other lighting, the red is prevalent. While not a huge con, the hot swap bays do not work with the newer Velociraptor drives that do not have the external SATA connectors. Not a huge deal as Im looking to replace my current 300GB drive with some 600GB ones soon which do have the correct connectors.

Overall Review: Would have liked the red to be a bit more prevalent in the case so that it doesnt appear light red in bright lighting. Other than that, if you take your time and put some thought into building a PC around this case, you can put together a very clean build. I'll admit, this build took about twice the time I'd normally spend on building a PC due to the smaller case size, but I was rewarded with a very cool case/cpu/gpu temperatures because of it. Amazingly, cpu temperatures are down from the Silverstone Raven this case replaced. +1 for all aluminum. System specs (current/planned) Asus Gene II motherboard Core i7-930 @ 4.02 GHz Corsiar H50/Corsair H100 planned Patriot 64GB SSD + 300GB Velociraptor/2x600GB Velociraptors planned 2xRadeon 5850/Looking for single slot 68xx cards

10/27/2011

Excellent Mining Rig Case

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 (CC-9011030-WW) Black Steel High Airflow ATX Cube Case Support ATX Power Supply
Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 (CC-9011030-WW) Black Steel High Airflow ATX Cube Case Support ATX Power Supply

Pros: With the ability to use a 3x120 radiator in the front and a 2x120 radiator on the top of this case, this makes for a fantastic case for a 4x290x mining rig. This alone allowed me to bring my cards up to speed, from the air cooled 950/1250 880 kh/s each to 1025/1500 985 kh/s. Nothing like hauling around a near 4MH/s mint! Can't say about stock fan airflow, as I replaced the front fans with fans with higher static pressure for the radiator and added two more to the top.

Cons: I wish someone would create a case with a modular SATA hot bay. I have a pair of the old velociraptor drives with the SATA connection in the middle of the drive instead of the standard SATA location, and this case, like every other that has built in ports, does not work. The front and top grill being made of plastic comes off as cheap as this price level. Should have been steel at least. Lack of fan filter for the PSU opening should have been included.

Overall Review: All told, I'm quite pleased with the case. Having the ability to have a dual rad setup with ten 120 mm fans made for a very nice liquid cooled mining build. Cards went from inferno (80+ degrees with fans running 75% and a 20" box fan running on them in a HAF XB) to very chill (64 degrees with rad fans running at 1800 rpm and no box fan). Digging the white case lights, it's a different touch than the standard red/blue/green you see every day.

Great Reference Card

DIAMOND Radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 7970PE53G
DIAMOND Radeon HD 7970 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 CrossFireX Support Graphics Card 7970PE53G

Pros: Voltage unlocked, lots of headroom for overclocking. Running it currently at 1015/1750 for Litecoin mining 24/7 with a few breaks to game with it. Stock cooler keeps the card under 70C, even at these settings. Plays everything I throw at it at 1080p with max settings without a problem. In all reality, way more video card than I needed for gaming, but makes for a great LTC miner (running 710kh/s most of the time), picking up a second one to double my output. Easily replaced a pair of 5850s with this single card and reduced my power footprint by a couple hundred watts easily.

Cons: Fan, like all radial fan based coolers, is loud. Unstable above 1750 MHz memory/1075 clock without a ton of voltage, causing the card to get crazy hot. But that's a minor con given that I'm pushing a 150/400 MHz OC already with a very minimal voltage increase.

HTPC chip

Intel Celeron G1620 - Celeron Ivy Bridge Dual-Core 2.7 GHz LGA 1155 55W Desktop Processor - BX80637G1620
Intel Celeron G1620 - Celeron Ivy Bridge Dual-Core 2.7 GHz LGA 1155 55W Desktop Processor - BX80637G1620

Pros: This is an insanely efficient CPU. Fully loaded, CoreTemp is reporting that its drawing 16-17 watts. Idle is around 3-4. Coupled with a Radeon 7750, 16GB of ram and 7200 RPM hard drive, fully loaded system draw during gaming is around 80 watts total. That is an insane amount power for such a low power draw. I understand why the cooler is so small with this processor, it could very likely run a passive cooler in a case with good airflow and still stay cool..

Cons: Not sure there is any other than the lack of TurboBoost and Hyperthreading. But its a $60 processor, what can you expect.

Overall Review: If you're looking for a small enclosure based htpc, this is a great foundation for such a system. Go with an itx board and single slot card (Radeon HD7750 the current champ here) and you've got yourself a very capable htpc that you can actually play some games on. Was able to play World of Tanks at near max settings and World of Warcraft at near max settings without any issue at 1080p resolution.

Wow!

Antec Gaming Series one illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Antec Gaming Series one illusion Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Pros: Fantastic airflow. Seems almost custom made for x79 mATX board and Corsair H80 setup. Very light but feels sturdy. Love the hard drive cage in this case. Made for a super quick build. The side panel is nice as you can tuck wiring away behind the motherboard tray.

Cons: Can't really think of any. Sure, this will not house a monster machine, but for a relatively high end gaming rig, it's a great case.

Overall Review: System build: ASRock X70-Extreme-4m Core i7 3930k 4.6 GHz 32GB RAM 3TB Seagate HDD GTX 660ti x2 Corsair H80 liquid cooling