Post your gaming setup!

[Drunkenvalley]

Here's a start.

[DeltrusDisc]

How many cases have you had now? :P

Looks pretty.

[Drunkenvalley]

Hush, Deltrus. You can never have enough cases.
Also I think around 9.

[DeltrusDisc]

So, I guess the question is then... which have you liked building in the most/and least?

[Drunkenvalley]

Short of it...

Ace Ecco
...something? It was literally the cheapest case on the market I could find at the time. Some Swedish brand. Honestly, I don't even recall how that went. I don't recall what model it was. Nothing.

Thermaltake Level 10 GT
It was pretty neat. Its hotswap bay was cute, albeit in retrospect not ideal. It had a preinstalled cable connecting all the drives to a single SATA, so you only needed to hook up a single SATA to power all your drives, rather than having to awkwardly fiddle in place a bunch of them. You had to connect data cables for each one though. Building in it was fairly straightforward, especially since it was one of the first cases I'm aware of that had those preinstalled cable-ties. Think I kept a bunch of them around for a while even. And it had a bulging sidepanel, which helped a lot. Biggest gripe was that the rear sidepanel was "push into place and forward into slot", which was no fun because any loose cable could cockblock you bad.

It was a pretty interesting case though, although I realized over time that it really overdid the use of plastic. A bunch of things seemed like they could be modded, but only if you were willing to cut through 8 layers of plastic and steel it felt like.

Coolermaster HAF X
Classmate wanted to build a PC. He asked the wizard. I was the wizard. I built a PC for him. We used the HAF X, which... frankly just really felt too fucking huge for its own self. Its fans were also rather awkward. There was this plastic shroud thing I seem to recall. Overall, we mostly noticed that it was a few years old. Had to pop out the motherboard to install the cooler separately because the CPU cutout simply didn't line up with an 1155 motherboard.

Oh yeah. I remember why I hated the fans. The sidepanel one had a really, really short cable considering it was the frigging sidepanel.

Coolermaster CM 690 II
And then there was a literal albino in my class I had to partially build his PC for, because he was literally too blind to do it solo. Overall, pretty meh in every respect. Same problem with CPU-cutout as HAF X. It was off-target compared to standards then. And some dumb shit thought an 8pin cutout requiring wizardry to get the 8pin through was okay.

NZXT Phantom
I convinced a friend of mine to buy this case. I regret the decision. It had no filters worth mentioning whatsoever, so my friend always complained about dust. It was also incredibly tacky in retrospect, while having a very minimal amount of redeeming features. Hell, I can't even remember much of when we built it.

Silverstone Raven
Think I'm forgetting a case, but whatever. The Raven. It was interesting. I've considered rebuilding in it with some modifications, but left that aside. It was one of the easiest to build in though, unexpectedly. I think the only real hiccup was that certain cables had a bit of a snug fit through the grommets. Why was it easy to build in? Because directly below the 24pin on the mobo you had a hole down into the PSU chamber. A small grommet by the 8pin made it very comfortable to pop it in place, etc.

Again though, a lot of plastic. Said plastic wasn't very durable. The feet of it arrived broken to begin with. The plastic top is finnicky to remove and reinstall because of its plastic tab design. The door at the front had a spring that made it autoclose sexily, but the lock broke so you couldn't keep it open.

It's a fun case, but I feel like it could do with some minor changes to its designs. A more sturdy design to the plastic for one. The interior layout could be adjusted slightly in places. It could be modernized a tad. But honestly, Raven holds a special place in my heart for its apparent potential that I never had the modding skills to dare go through with.

Corsair 650D
I am fairly certain I forget a case now. Oh well. The 650D's most redeeming feature was, out of the gate, its beautiful aesthetic. It also had some interesting mechanics, like the powersupply bracket that let you secure the PSU without screws at all. The drivecages were interesting and fun.

At the end of the day, its actual cable-management was pretty good as well, but by today's standard is fairly average I think. And despite an interesting aesthetic, Corsair dropped the ball when they put in their own proprietary 200mm fan size. Should've just put in dual 120mm slots and a cut-out in the 5.25 bay and they would've been even further ahead of their time.

Another case where Corsair could probably just do minor changes to its design and re-release it honestly. The space for a radiator in the front was almost there to start with. The fans should've been 120mm. Hot-swap in the top should've had a more humanly usable lid, rather than that monstrosity you decide to never, ever touch again after the first time.

Oh, and it has a fucking horrendous power-button. I forget sometimes, but Jesus, it's so... it doesn't feel like a button. It feels like a piece of plastic that you have to push until it finally decides to budge slightly.

Corsair 600T
With only minute changes to the interior of the 650D, this case was interesting. It felt a lot like, when building in it, that Corsair wanted to put in a lot of watercooling support, but stopped a hair short of going through with it. Again, the 200mm fan in the front should've been 120s. Put a cutout in the 5.25 bay for radiator to poke through. Made the roof support 3x 120 fans like it almost seems designed to do.

Again, Corsair could totally just fix the problems they had with its design and release it again. I think its appearance remains fairly timeless. The sidepanels were pretty cool and were reversible to boot. Lots of plastic though, but that was par the course.

Coolermaster HAF XB
Removable motherboard tray did not save this thing. It felt pretty meh in terms of its overall design, even if interesting in a lot of ways. I think the drive-caddies should be industry standard though. Those were beautiful. You see them occasionally. They're two-part joined together to form a sled. One part can be partially released to widen it, and you pop a drive in it. And then you just squeeze it back together and your drive's secured. It was beautiful.

Fractal Design Define R... 3?
God the grommets were horrible. Jesus fuck the sidepanels were terrible. Tiny metal tabs that bent easily, so the sidepanel was a nightmare to fit on. That's not even accounting for if the back was full of cables. It was universally a pretty weak experience imo, with lots of awkwardly thought out solutions.

Oh yeah, and that 8pin cutout was stupid. It was literally in the very top-right corner... underneath the metal lip that the sidepanels would latch to. Did I mention the space behind the motherboard tray wasn't very big? So yeah, getting 8pin through there took some timespace continuum breaking.

Fortress 03
This case was... strenuous. Mostly because it was bloody tiny, so you had to battle with the limitations of space a lot, whether that be whether you could fit your hands in the case or not. It also required a fair bit of disassembly.

Overall though, it was a very cool case. I think that if I'm ever going for another mATX build I'll definitely grab one of these.

That said, its construction was a bit awkward. The sidepanels didn't lock in place, so you had to pick your evil as far as to what to carry it by is what it felt like.

NZXT Switch 810
Oversized. Overdesigned. Overly shiny. It had okay cable-management. What drew me to it was the innate watercooling potential. It's been very good for that job, but I feel like I dropped every other feature in the case just to do that. Most of its redeeming features is the bottom fan-filter being accessible from the front, rather than a single long one at the back.

Oh, and thank fuck so much of the case is held together by screws. You could disassemble huge sections of it, which was neat.

Corsair Vengeance C70
It's awkward. It places itself roughly around the 650D/600T in ease of building, albeit comically stupid with its awkwardly positioned main grommet by the powersupply, but if you want to watercool it really feels like this case was built like they wanted to give you options, just so they could then add complications to make you want a different case instead.

The roof has no mounting for 360 radiator, even though literally the only thing it needed for it was 4 screw-holes built in. The front's 120mm fans are awkwardly spaced out. Only a limited selection of 240mm radiators will even fit in the front at all, and only fits with barbs down. And you only have one fanslot to secure the radiator to the case, because the other fan slot is, as mentioned, awkwardly spaced. For some inexplicable dumb reason.

[DeltrusDisc]

Holy shit dude, lol, wasn't expecting the essay! It's a shame you can't be an official reviewer of cases, on YouTube or something. :P The more opinions the better, especially when coming from people who get really in-depth and not just on the surface BS.

For instance, I know a lot of folks don't care for TTL, but he really gets into the nitty grits, meanwhile Hardware Canucks seems to just love tossing around "DAMN GOOD" reviews willy nilly, even when the case or product is otherwise being poorly received by the public. At least it seems so to me, I've practically never seen a negative review from them, meanwhile TTL had the balls to really say some nasty stuff in regards to the Cosmos 2 for instance, or comparing the Fractal Design Define R4 to the NZXT H440 or whatever way back.

[Sunnydee]

Pro: I bought a NZXT S340 red/black. It's all black matte and gorgeous, with red accents. Incidentally, the PCI brackets that were originally those unusable "pop out" ones have apparently been replaced with reusable ones now. Doesn't really matter, but I guess that's nice.

Con: Camera battery too low to transfer pictures from camera. Currently recharging said battery.

Would you mind posting a picture of the s340 w/o frontpanel attached?
It's on sale right now but im not to fancy of the red, so hoping i can remove the front panel, plastidip the cablecover and go with 2x colored fans in front.

[Remilia]

Holy shit dude, lol, wasn't expecting the essay! It's a shame you can't be an official reviewer of cases, on YouTube or something. :P The more opinions the better, especially when coming from people who get really in-depth and not just on the surface BS.

For instance, I know a lot of folks don't care for TTL, but he really gets into the nitty grits, meanwhile Hardware Canucks seems to just love tossing around "DAMN GOOD" reviews willy nilly, even when the case or product is otherwise being poorly received by the public. At least it seems so to me, I've practically never seen a negative review from them, meanwhile TTL had the balls to really say some nasty stuff in regards to the Cosmos 2 for instance, or comparing the Fractal Design Define R4 to the NZXT H440 or whatever way back.

I really don't look at a lot of case reviews, let alone video ones but TTL's is imo really good. Sure hes shit on some product type review but cases I think he does it well and it seems like a point of interest for him which may be why.
If he didn't have any interest I imagine he'd really not get in detail as he generally does. It's like me reviewing a mouse as opposed to a monitor.

[Drunkenvalley]

Would you mind posting a picture of the s340 w/o frontpanel attached?
It's on sale right now but im not to fancy of the red, so hoping i can remove the front panel, plastidip the cablecover and go with 2x colored fans in front.

The metal panel at the front is just held on with roughly 8 screws or something. So you should totally be able to plastidip it. I can't really take a picture right now though.

[Sunnydee]

Hmm sounds reasonable. ordered then. couldnt let a sale @ 35 euro go to waste lol!

Gun be a fun tuesday, lots of new shit and gonna try plastidip a SSD \o/

[Sunnydruid]

Hmm sounds reasonable. ordered then. couldnt let a sale @ 35 euro go to waste lol!

Gun be a fun tuesday, lots of new shit and gonna try plastidip a SSD \o/

Matte black? gunmetal? Colors! what colors?!

Just make sure you really tape off the connections, had a bad experience not doing that myself. Was out 125 bucks on that mistake

[Sunnydee]

Matte black? gunmetal? Colors! what colors?!

Just make sure you really tape off the connections, had a bad experience not doing that myself. Was out 125 bucks on that mistake

guess you're gonna have to wait and see
And since the SSD docking on s340 is so perfect according from google images i most likely only need to pain top/halfway down the sides and front part, so iz all gewd!

[DeltrusDisc]

I really don't look at a lot of case reviews, let alone video ones but TTL's is imo really good. Sure hes shit on some product type review but cases I think he does it well and it seems like a point of interest for him which may be why.
If he didn't have any interest I imagine he'd really not get in detail as he generally does. It's like me reviewing a mouse as opposed to a monitor.

Aye, I just know several folks here (and elsewhere) who can't stand TTL haha. It's just his length and ranting that gets to some people. Personally, I like it, but I also like his amazing British accent. :P

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I really don't look at a lot of case reviews, let alone video ones but TTL's is imo really good. Sure hes shit on some product type review but cases I think he does it well and it seems like a point of interest for him which may be why.
If he didn't have any interest I imagine he'd really not get in detail as he generally does. It's like me reviewing a mouse as opposed to a monitor.

His break in the tech world came from case modding, so it makes sense that he really goes in depth on case reviews.

Might want to take this discussion to the chat thread though

[Sunnydee]

Page 3?! not acceptable!!!!

Got new fans! also bought new fans for my pc (i r funneh).
2x Corsair Air series AF140 Quiet edition on my kraken x61. pretty happy with em, just don't like that you're shitting bricks when swapping the colour-ring cuz it's on pretty hard.

[Drunkenvalley]

Nice to see your build up and running. Just mind the hardrive cage might cause noise from what I heard. (I completely forgot to care, since it's irrelevant to what I'm intending.)

[Sunnydee]

Nice to see your build up and running. Just mind the hardrive cage might cause noise from what I heard. (I completely forgot to care, since it's irrelevant to what I'm intending.)

Honestly havent heard anything making noice (only me shouting when tried to get the damn kraken in xD).. Sorta forgot i had to put fans between cooler and case and not reverse, there's alot of cables from frontpanel that screwed that up.

[lockedout]

Not my setup but I saw it on Reddit and thought you guys would enjoy.
http://imgur.com/a/sJnxh

[DeltrusDisc]

Holy shit...

I wish I had the know-how. =/

[MonsieuRoberts]

I saw that sexy beast on Imgur a few days ago. There's a huge amount of tech-unsavvy people on Imgur and even they were impressed.