First of all, sorry if this is in the wrong spot. "Components" seemed like the best place to put this since I didn't see a "cases" section. Sorry if I missed it. 
So I'm looking to replace my current case - an NZXT Phantom 410. It's been nice but since I moved my PC into my room to keep it away from my dog (ah heck put 3 small but noticeable scratches in the side panel ):< most people wouldn't notice but I sure do) and out of the high traffic area. Problem is, the noise is amplified in my room because it's dead silent in here. What I thought was a dead silent case in the family room is now kind of noisy on my desk. Also, it's started to pick up a nasty rattle from the hard drives that seems to be a result of the side panel not being secured in the middle. I'm looking to get the quietest PC i can without going nuts and buying a gazillion Noctua fans. I'll probably sell my Phantom in the online classifieds. Most people can get about $50-65 on there from what I've seen for a decent case, since where I live there's a sudden large amount of rich people moving here due to the oil boom looking for something to do in their free time.
Anyways, I'm down to 2 cases - the 550D and the Define R4. It seems that they both have their pros and cons, namely that the R4 has a lot of plastic in the front and is currently pretty spendy. I think it's close to $120 on newegg after shipping right now for the black windowed version. I haven't heard many bad things about the R4, just that it's a bit plastic-y in the front, and that the fans included with the case are sometimes kind of bad.
As for the 550D, I can get it with the Amazon warehouse deals and free 2 day shipping in "like new" condition for about $85. The only issues I have with that case are the fact that it's not so quiet if you remove the top fan guard, and the lack of fan controller. The reason that I need top ventilation is because my CPU cooler, the Phanteks PH-TC12DX, has to mount north-south on AMD builds, so I'd basically be exhausting air into a wall. How much would this affect the cooling capabilities, and would the rear exhaust fan take care of that heat coming off the CPU? Also, is there a little breathing room through those removable panels on the 550D?
Also, I kind of need a fan controller or a couple of 3 pin splitters because my motherboard, although it's a good board, only has 3 case fan headers, with one of those being a "power fan" header, so it runs the fan really really fast. I'm pretty sure I could turn that down in the BIOS, but whatever. I guess I could buy a cheap fan controller with the money I saved, or do a ghetto low noise adapter and mod a couple of molex to 3 pin adapter to draw 7V if I wanted, since I really want this thing to be quiet. Or I could buy a powered PWM fan splitter, which seems like a good idea, since I'd only need one header and a molex to power like 4 fans and be able to control them in the BIOS.
As you can see, I have a lot of options for cooling in either case and need some help deciding between them.
Does anyone have experience with either or both of these cases? Most reviews I see say that they're both really good, but I always see that the Fractal is the more common recommendation among the 2.
Also, how are the included fans with both of the cases? I hear wildly varying opinions, but most of them say that the fans are quiet but have meh airflow, which isn't really an issue for me, since I have aftermarket CPU cooling and will have an MSI HD 7870 with 2 fans. I'm mostly wondering about the corsair fans, since the Fractal has the fan controller, and I can just turn it down if they're noisy The included fans are pretty important to me, because I don't have the budget to buy a case full of $15 fans. Heck, I'll just have enough money to get this case between the cash I made selling my old GPU and getting a very slight downgrade (wasn't really using that 660 Ti to its potential anyway) and selling the Phantom case.
I sold my 660 Ti because there was a fair bit of whine from the chokes/power delivery system I think. Since I'm young and can really hear those high pitched noises, it REALLY bugged the crap out of me. My parents put their ear next to it and said they absolutely couldn't hear it, so I figured I could sell it without mentioning the whine, since it's considered normal, but not super common. Chances are that the person that bought it can't even hear it. He left me positive feedback on eBay saying it worked great so I guess he doesn't notice it ^_^ I picked up the 7870 new in box on eBay for $125. Can't beat that especially if I can overclock, which I couldn't do with the 660 Ti. Sucker wouldn't budge more than 15 Mhz. Hopefully I can overclock it so I can lose as little performance as possible.
Sorry for the huge post, and thanks for any opinions or help! If someone can find the Fractal online for cheap (I've seen it on newegg/amazon for something like $80 before.) I'd probably just get that.
EDIT: If I get the R4 and have the fan controller, could I safely run splitters from the 3 pin leads connected to the controller? I have some misc. fans that are really quiet when they're running at 5V/7V, and I'd like to minimize the amount of clutter coming off my motherboard while gaining some airflow without it being loud. I wouldn't think that this could hurt anything, but I saw online that Fractal Design's support told someone that it was a bad idea.
So I'm looking to replace my current case - an NZXT Phantom 410. It's been nice but since I moved my PC into my room to keep it away from my dog (ah heck put 3 small but noticeable scratches in the side panel ):< most people wouldn't notice but I sure do) and out of the high traffic area. Problem is, the noise is amplified in my room because it's dead silent in here. What I thought was a dead silent case in the family room is now kind of noisy on my desk. Also, it's started to pick up a nasty rattle from the hard drives that seems to be a result of the side panel not being secured in the middle. I'm looking to get the quietest PC i can without going nuts and buying a gazillion Noctua fans. I'll probably sell my Phantom in the online classifieds. Most people can get about $50-65 on there from what I've seen for a decent case, since where I live there's a sudden large amount of rich people moving here due to the oil boom looking for something to do in their free time.
Anyways, I'm down to 2 cases - the 550D and the Define R4. It seems that they both have their pros and cons, namely that the R4 has a lot of plastic in the front and is currently pretty spendy. I think it's close to $120 on newegg after shipping right now for the black windowed version. I haven't heard many bad things about the R4, just that it's a bit plastic-y in the front, and that the fans included with the case are sometimes kind of bad.
As for the 550D, I can get it with the Amazon warehouse deals and free 2 day shipping in "like new" condition for about $85. The only issues I have with that case are the fact that it's not so quiet if you remove the top fan guard, and the lack of fan controller. The reason that I need top ventilation is because my CPU cooler, the Phanteks PH-TC12DX, has to mount north-south on AMD builds, so I'd basically be exhausting air into a wall. How much would this affect the cooling capabilities, and would the rear exhaust fan take care of that heat coming off the CPU? Also, is there a little breathing room through those removable panels on the 550D?
Also, I kind of need a fan controller or a couple of 3 pin splitters because my motherboard, although it's a good board, only has 3 case fan headers, with one of those being a "power fan" header, so it runs the fan really really fast. I'm pretty sure I could turn that down in the BIOS, but whatever. I guess I could buy a cheap fan controller with the money I saved, or do a ghetto low noise adapter and mod a couple of molex to 3 pin adapter to draw 7V if I wanted, since I really want this thing to be quiet. Or I could buy a powered PWM fan splitter, which seems like a good idea, since I'd only need one header and a molex to power like 4 fans and be able to control them in the BIOS.
As you can see, I have a lot of options for cooling in either case and need some help deciding between them.
Does anyone have experience with either or both of these cases? Most reviews I see say that they're both really good, but I always see that the Fractal is the more common recommendation among the 2.
Also, how are the included fans with both of the cases? I hear wildly varying opinions, but most of them say that the fans are quiet but have meh airflow, which isn't really an issue for me, since I have aftermarket CPU cooling and will have an MSI HD 7870 with 2 fans. I'm mostly wondering about the corsair fans, since the Fractal has the fan controller, and I can just turn it down if they're noisy The included fans are pretty important to me, because I don't have the budget to buy a case full of $15 fans. Heck, I'll just have enough money to get this case between the cash I made selling my old GPU and getting a very slight downgrade (wasn't really using that 660 Ti to its potential anyway) and selling the Phantom case.
I sold my 660 Ti because there was a fair bit of whine from the chokes/power delivery system I think. Since I'm young and can really hear those high pitched noises, it REALLY bugged the crap out of me. My parents put their ear next to it and said they absolutely couldn't hear it, so I figured I could sell it without mentioning the whine, since it's considered normal, but not super common. Chances are that the person that bought it can't even hear it. He left me positive feedback on eBay saying it worked great so I guess he doesn't notice it ^_^ I picked up the 7870 new in box on eBay for $125. Can't beat that especially if I can overclock, which I couldn't do with the 660 Ti. Sucker wouldn't budge more than 15 Mhz. Hopefully I can overclock it so I can lose as little performance as possible.
Sorry for the huge post, and thanks for any opinions or help! If someone can find the Fractal online for cheap (I've seen it on newegg/amazon for something like $80 before.) I'd probably just get that.
EDIT: If I get the R4 and have the fan controller, could I safely run splitters from the 3 pin leads connected to the controller? I have some misc. fans that are really quiet when they're running at 5V/7V, and I'd like to minimize the amount of clutter coming off my motherboard while gaining some airflow without it being loud. I wouldn't think that this could hurt anything, but I saw online that Fractal Design's support told someone that it was a bad idea.
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