I ordered this case for my new rig, since i dont trust new egg reviews too often i wanna have all your opinions.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6811156062

looks like a decent case to me. if you don't like it, RMA it...

Eh... 1 120mm intake seems fine, but everything else is 80mm... ewwwww

Also, not too sure how a Raidmax PSU will be, it should be fine, but I wouldn't bet on it...

Everything else seems fine, as a case, it isin't too bad, decent cooling, might get loud though. Worried about how the PSU is, Raidmax PSU's don't really have a habit of being leaders in reliability and service.

Also, if your looking to save a bit of money, check out:

www.directron.com

I used to work there and their prices are usually cheaper than Newegg. Their inventory isin't as large, but they have excellent customer service and I still buy everything I can from them.

I ordered this PSU for the case >>
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817128002

Heard some good reviews about it, so should i take out the 80mm fans and put in some 120 mm ones? Where can i get some cheap fans that are worth replacing those crappy 80mm ones. Thanks

Looks pretty nice.

I do agree than a 120mm exhaust would have been a lot better. You may not be getting the exhaust >= intake with that case. Actually, taking another look, it has 1 120mm front intake and 2 80mm site intakes (one over cpu, one over gpu) and only the one 80mm exhaust (and the psu exhaust too). That is definately going to have problems cooling.

You will probably need to make sure the rear 80mm has a high CFM rating. I would also consider picking up a PCI exhaust slot fan to put below your graphics card.

Other than the cooling aspect, the case looks good. I like how both sides can open up like that, different and useful. Seems like a decent price, as long as the PSU holds out.

Personally I don't like the graphics on the case, but I built a rig for someone in the case and it was incredibly easy to set up. The sides open so nicely and it was cake to work inside. Pretty solid feel to it too, if you like the looks, you will like the case.

For the price it looks to be decent, and if all else fails you can always use a dermal and add a blow hole and there might be a chance to still fit a 92mm maybe 120mm fan in the rear with a adapter or some modification. Obliviously you will have to take measurements before attempting this.

And the best cheep 120mm fans I can think of are Yate Loons (1,350rpm max). If you want to slow them down you will need to do the 7v mod or use a Zalman fan speed controller. They do not work well with power management fan speed controllers. Arctic Cooling and Antec tricool fans are also not bad.
http://www.jab-tech.com/120mm-Fans-c-81.html

And Yate Loon is the suppler of fans to nexus, and nexus fans are among the best. And they come in such a lovely orange color (yes they also come in black).

I'm not a fan of case with front doors/panels that you have to open in order to access the ROMS, but that's my quirk...80mm exhaust fans may not be enuff unless you get high cfm 80's to go with that front 120mm fan...not sure about the psu, might wanna think about swapping it out for something a little more "name brand"...I do like the fold out side panel with the built in mobo tray, fans and psu aside, the case would be worth getting just to have the ease of use and build because of that fold out panel and tray, just gotta be mindful of how you wire it up so the panel can still fold out without yanking any cables...good luck with it!

That Hiper PSU is decent, it'll do.

Ugh, 3 intake, 1 exhaust (2 if you count PSU)... Not what I consider an optimal configuration, but not really much you can do.

Suggestion, Vantec Tornado on rear, and we're talking real exhaust. However, your case is likely to lift off the ground and go shooting off into space while blasting your ears with 55+ dB of sound...

It will be fine for most cases, your northbridge might get a bit hot, but your vga and cpu and hdd's should be fine (I assume the 120mm is in front of the hdd cages). Not much else you can do unless you got a dremel around. If you do, a 80mm fan on top would do wonders.

Does a blowhole really help that much? It seems like it would be taking some of the cooler air coming in from the front and venting it out the top which wouldn't get the air to the CPU or GPU. This is at least in the usual situation of front HD area 120mm and rear 120mm by the CPU. I would think that you would want to make sure the air gets to the rear of the case. I could see a blowhole being helpful in a situation where you have a side intake over the CPU / GPU area (like this case), but otherwise does the blowhole help?

I like it with the removable motherboard tray. The price is good too. Odd name though. Smilodon? Can someone translate that?

I have the tower and i like it...id rather have a 120mm exhaust fan but my cooling is pretty good. my e6300 stays in the mid to upper 30's idle and is the low 50's full load and i have it overclocked to 3.33.

Thanks for that video review posted, it seems that the cooling is quite alright. I wont be doing much OC'ing anyway. Any idea where to put a zalman fan there? Or is this 80mm just being taken too seriously

Guys would this 80mm - 120mm converter in radioshak here be helpful for the case then?
http://www.radioshack.com/product/ [...] Id=2211696

I wouldn't bother using that adaptor after reading that Pininfarina review...

I have used 60mm to 80mm adaptors on cpu heatsinks, helps both increase cooling and reduce noise - cheap cooling mods are awesome. Can't say I have used one on a case mount...

I think the blowhole would especially since heat rises, positioning also seems to matter. Most cases have a top blowhole midway on the case, which would pretty much suck air out in a cone and cover GPU/some of the front intake. Well, you have a point that it will suck some of the front intake, but I have multiple HDD's as you can see, so my front intake is just basically a glorified HDD cooler, so I really don't have that much cool air coming from the front.

Also, the longer graphics card reach past halfway most of the time, and if it doesn't have a rear exhaust, then the top blowhole would handle that too, even better if there is a side mounted vga cooler. I'm also a proponent of more exhaust than intake, so this would gurantee there is a steady air flow. Front in, Side in, top out, rear out.

But I'm only a lowly EE, any ME's out there who know better, please speak up.

I agree - looks like we are in the same boat, damn hdd heat...



I think I went through 2 hdd failures before I put intake fans on each of those hdd cages! Have not had a problem since.

WTF... how many HDD's and what case is that? The case I was looking at can only hold 5 internal 3.5" drives, but if I count right, that is holding 8 of them...

How did you put intake fans on each cage anyways? Did it have mounting screws or was it a custom job?

It's the X-Navigator the hdd cages / blow hole fan were probably the main selling points. Well the "micro center" $100 gift card I had was probably a major factor, since they had it for $120 with that power supply

In that pic there are 10 (2 below the 2 optical drives in the 5 1/4" bays, I recently yanked one and put a 400gb drive there.

There is an 80mm fan at the bottom of the case for the lower cage, the middle cage has a 60mm mount and I had to mod the case slightly and put another 60mm there, and put another in the lower 5 1/4 bays and that seems to keep all the hdds under 90F, the case is a bit noisy but I will pay that price for the cooling capacity.

I got my case today and put together all my parts, this included the e6400 dual core intel, radeon x1900xt, 2 gigs corsair ram ddr2 pc6400, gigabyte-ds3, dvd+r, seagate barracuda 320 gig hd and a 580 hiper psu(this psu looks godamn awesome). The installation and all went well on this case. The removable mother board tray was a big A+, however i had some trouble with the fan installations. I got my 120mm inthe front working, the back as well however this one side fan seems to not be working no matter how i plug my cables to it. I'm pretty sure the fan itself is broken so it looks like i gotta buy another 80mm to replace it.. the cooling seems to be ok for now..36 degrees at idle.


How can i mod this shit to make the back fan into a 120mm

Ugh, I like the amount of HDD's it can hold, but I still would like better cooling for the case as a whole since I'll still be doing some decent OC'ing and gaming...

Once I max out my HDD's, I'll see what my options are then =)